Arnott

“ Here Mr Arnott entered; and Mrs Harrel called out “O brother, we have been distressed for you cruelly; we have had a man here who has plagued Mr Harrel to death, and we wanted you sadly to speak to him.”
“I should have been very glad,” said Mr Arnott, “to have been of any use, and perhaps it is not yet too late; who is the man?” ”

“ To a great age Dr. Arnott retained clear faculties, and his old spirit of inventiveness never forsook him. Among his last devices was a chair-bed for preventing sea-sickness. Having a large circle of scientific friends, and being a prominent member of the Royal Institution, he lived much in the society of the most progressive men of science in London. His benefactions were widely spread. In 1869 he gave 2,000l. to the university of London, and 1,000l. to the universities of Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow, and St. Andrews. In 1865 Mrs, Arnott gave 1,000l. ”

“ Mr. Arnott began,—but, "Oh no, papa!" "Oh no, sir!" every voice again exclaimed, "we want to go for them."
"Go for them!—and pray, young ladies, how will you go?—am I to drive you?"
"Oh no, papa! we want to walk; and Andrew"—this was the name of Mr. Arnott's gardener—"says they will let us go into the garden and pick them ourselves—and you know, mamma, Eliza can go with us and carry our baskets," added Florence, anticipating her mother's objection to their going without some attendant to a place a mile off. ”

“ His intellect was very versatile. It widely embraced both languages and science. As an inventor he possessed many resources. He was a very sociable man, was extremely amiable, and always full of philanthropic aims and objects. There is a crayon drawing of Arnott by Mrs. W. Carpenter in the Royal Society, and a portrait by Partridge in Marischal College, Aberdeen.
[Obituary notice of Dr. Neil Arnott, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol. xxv. 1877; Bain's Biographical Memoir of Dr. Neil Arnott, read before the Aberdeen Philosophical Society, 1881.] ”

“ She had caught sight of Arnott's Board uniform, leaped to the switch, and turned it full on.
We were checked, gasping, waist-deep in current this time, three yards from the verandah.
'We only want to know what's the matter with Illinois,' said De Forest placidly.
'Then hadn't you better go to Chicago and find out?' she answered. 'There's nothing wrong here. We own ourselves.'
'How can we go anywhere if you won't loose us?' De Forest went on, while Arnott scowled. Admirals of Fleets are still quite human when their dignity is touched. ”

“ Arnott, and I hope you will not put any such idea into Anthony’s head. If you do he might refuse to marry me, and that would break my heart.”
“No, I dare say you do not fear it, but there are other—well, things must take their course. If we were always thinking of the future no one would dare to stir.” ”

“ No; Uncle Arnott has too much to do. It was a pretty story altogether. He was an officer at Edinburgh, and fell in love with Aunt Flora, but my grandfather Mackenzie thought him too poor to marry her, and it was all broken off, and they tried to think no more of it. But grandpapa died, and she came to live here, and somehow Mr. Arnott turned up again, quartered at Whitford, and papa talked over my Uncle Mackenzie, and helped them—and Mr. Arnott thought the best way would be to go out to the colonies. ”

“ She increased Miss Maitland’s salary in recognition of her worth, and became a mere cipher in the management of her home.
The arrangement pleased Arnott. Miss Maitland was more efficient as a housekeeper than Pamela had ever been; and her release from these ties enabled his wife to devote more of her time and attention upon himself. She too was happier in the new arrangement. Arnott showed a renewed pleasure in her society. Being a man who did not make friends, his wife’s companionship was to a great extent necessary to him ”

“ You will not be gone, Mr. Arnott says, more than six weeks. For an object so important as your child's improvement, you will not, I am sure, my dear friend, hesitate to separate yourself from her for so short a time. You know nothing pleases me more than to surround myself with children; and though I acknowledge there is no teacher like a mother, when the choice lies between a mother at a watering-place, and—"
"There is no room to hesitate," said Mrs. Arnott, interrupting me: "I should rejoice to have Florence with you even were I to remain at home ”

“ But a slip of blue paper, humorously accompanied by a shilling, told him that his presence was imperative at the adjourned inquest on the body of the man unknown, who had been found murdered in the greenhouse at Streatham.
"Now what possible connection can I have with that?" he grumbled, as he ate his breakfast. "It was bad enough for Manfred to thoughtlessly lose his life in my conservatory: And here's a letter from George Arnott. He has a great deal of complaint about you, Angela." ”

“ We never kill. No!'
'But it's not true,' Arnott insisted. 'What can you do with people who don't tell facts? They're mad!'
'Hsh!' said Pirolo, his hand to his ear. 'It is such a little time since all the Planet told lies.'
We heard Vincent silkily sympathetic. Would they, he asked, repeat their assertions in public—before a vast public? Only let Vincent give them a chance, and the Planet, they vowed, should ring with their wrongs. Their aim in life—two women and a man explained it together—was to reform the world. Oddly enough, this also had been Vincent's life-dream. ”

“ Romance and love, war and slaughter, noble deeds as well as foul, wordy boastfulness but also delightful poetic utterance, glamour and sordid reality, beauty if also squalid conditions of life, are found side by side in these stories of ancient Ireland and Wales. ”

“ The god sang to the voyagers and told how he was passing over a flowery plain, for what Bran saw as the sea was to Manannan a plain. The speckled salmon in the sea were calves and lambs, and steeds invisible to Bran were there also. People were sitting playing and drinking wine, and making love without crime. Bran's coracle was not on the waves, but on an immortal wood, yielding fruit and perfume; the folk of that land were immortal and sinless, unlike Adam's descendants, and in it rivers poured forth honey. Finally Manannan bade Bran row to Tír na m-Ban, which he would reach by sunset. ”

“ Their occupations were fighting on a vast scale, the records of which, like those of the Cúchulainn saga, are often tiresome and ghastly; mighty huntings, watched from some hill- top by Fionn, and described with zest and not a little romantic beauty as the hunt wends by forests, glens, watercourses, or smiling valleys; lastly, love-making, for these warriors could woo tenderly and with compelling power. Their vast strength and size—one of their skulls held a man seated— tend to remove them from the puny race of mere human beings ”

“ In writing this book it has been some relief to try to lose oneself in it and to forget, in turning over the pages of the past, the dark cloud which hangs over our modern life in these sad days of the great war, sad yet noble, because of the freely offered sacrifice of life and all that life holds dear by so many of my countrymen and our heroic allies in defence of liberty. ”

“ Gods figure as kings, heroes, saints, or fairies, and a new mythical past has been created out of the débris of an older mythology. There is little of the limpid clearness of the myths of Hellas, and yet enough to delight those who, in our turbulent modern life, turn a wistful eye upon the past.
To make matters worse, modern writers on Celtic tradition have displayed a twofold tendency. They have resolved every story into myths of sun, dawn, and darkness, every divinity or hero Into a sun-god or dawn-goddess or ruler of a dark world. ”

“ Possibly the rushing stream was personified as a steed, and the horse-goddess Epona is occasionally connected with streams, while horses which emerge from lakes or rivers may be mythic forms of water-divinities. In more recent folk-belief the monstrous water-horse of France and Scotland was capable of self-transformation and waylaid travellers, or, assuming human form, he made love to women, luring them to destruction. ”

“ Three factors, however, played their part in corrupting and disintegrating the myths. The first of these was the dislike of Christianity to transmit whatever directly preserved the memory of the old divinities. In the surviving stories their divinity is not too closely descried; they are made as human as possible, though they are still superhuman in power and deed; they are tolerated as a kind of fairy-folk rather than as gods. ”

“ Clear glimpses through this Celtic mist are rare. This is not to be wondered at when we consider how much of the mythology has been long forgotten, and how many hands have worked upon the remainder. The stories are relics of a dead past, as defaced and inexplicable as the battered monuments of the old religion. Romancers, would-be historians, Christian opponents of paganism, biographers of saints, ignorant yet half-believing folk, have worked their will with them. ”

“ Nutt maintained that the story of Mongan was one form of a Celtic myth which might be fitted to any real or imaginary hero— that of a wonder-child, born of a mortal mother and a supernatural father, gifted magically by him, associated with him in the divine land, and passing thence at death. ”

“ Morrígan appeared as a beautiful woman offering Cúchulainn her love, her treasures, and her herds, but he replied that the opportunity was not fitting, since he was engaged in a desperate contest, and contemptuously refused her help. ”

“ Transformation allied to rebirth was asserted of various Celtic divinities, and if the myths have been transformed, enough of their old selves remained for identification after romantic writers and pseudo-historians gave them a new existence. Some mythic incidents doubtless survive much as they were in the days of old, but all alike witness to the many-sided character of the life and thought of their Celtic progenitors and transmitters. ”

“ With religious and social changes it was forgotten that the gods were gods, and they became more or less human, for the mediaeval story-teller was "pillaging an antiquity of which he does not fully possess the secret." ”

“ Now it was prophesied that he would have a son by a woman of unknown race, but before he sent for her, a bird flew through the roof-light, and doffing Its plumage, became a man, to whom Mess Buachalla yielded herself. ”

“ Manawyddan having lamented that he was landless, Pryderi gave him land in Dyfed and his mother Rhiannon as wife. All three, with Kicva, Pryderi's wife, were seated on a knoll when a thunder-clap was heard; and as the cloud which accompanied it cleared away, they found the country desolate, without creature or habitation. Lack of food impelled them to seek a living as saddlers, shield-makers, and shoe-makers successively, but they were always expelled by the regular craftsmen. ”

“ When they sat down to eat, Manannan produced a table-cloth on which appeared whatever food was demanded, and a cup. If one told a lie, it would break, but if truth was then spoken, it would be restored; and to prove this, he informed Cormac that his lost wife had had a new husband, whereupon the cup broke. "My husband has lied," cried the goddess, and at her words the cup was repaired. Manannan then said that tablecloth, cup, and branch would be Cormac's and that he had wrought magic upon him in order that he might be with him that night in friendship. ”

“ Sometimes the god opposes their departure by appearing to them along with those who minister to him, and these divine ministrants themselves prophesy or tell things which have been revealed to them as dreams of Saturn when they visit his cave. ”

“ The parallel between Celtic and early Greek conceptions of Elysium25 is wonderfully close. Both are open to favoured human beings, who are thus made immortal without death; both are exquisitely beautiful, but sensuous and unmoral. In both are found islands ruled by goddesses who sometimes love mortals; both are oversea, while a parallel to the síd Elysium underground may be found in the later Greek tradition of Elysium as a region of Hades, which may have had roots in an earlier period.26 The main difference is the occasional Celtic view of Elysium as a place where gods are at war. ”

“ Fruit-bearing, musical trees, in whose branches birds are constantly singing, grow in the gods' land. In the síd of Oengus were three trees always in fruit; and there were also two pigs, one always living, and the other always cooked and ready for eating—the equivalent of the Mucca Mhanannain, or "Pigs of Manannan"—and a jar of excellent beer, Goibniu's ale. ”

“ In these stories of divinities or heroes hunting fabulous swine it is possible that the animals represent some hurtful power, dangerous to vegetation; for the swine is apt to be regarded in a sinister light and might well be the embodiment of demoniac beings. On the other hand, the animal sacrificed to a god, or of which the god is an anthropomorphic aspect, is sometimes regarded as his enemy, slain by him. Whether this conception lurks behind these tales is uncertain, as also is the question whether the magic immortal swine—the food of the gods—were originally animals sacrificed to them. ”