English literature -- Scottish authors; Scottish literature
He has many ways, many hopes, many faces. He bends above those who meet
in twilight, above the cradle, above dwellers by the hearth, above the
sorrowful, above the joyous children of the sun, above the grave. Must
he not be divine, who is worshipped of all men? Does not the wild-dove
take the rainbow upon its breast because of him, and the salmon leave
the sea for inland pools, and the creeping thing become winged and
radiant?
The Wind, Silence, and Love: if one cannot learn of these, is there any
comradeship that can tell us more, that can more comfort us, that can so
inhabit with living light what is waste and barren?
And, in the hidden hour, one will stoop, and kiss us on the brow, when
our sudden stillness will, for others, already be memory. And another
will be as an open road, with morning breaking. And the third will meet
us, with a light of joy in his eyes; but we shall not see him at first
because of the sunblaze, or hear his words because in that summer air
the birds will be multitude.
Meanwhile they are near and intimate. Their life uplifts us. We cannot
forget wholly, nor cease to dream, nor be left unhoping, nor be without
rest, nor go darkly without torches and songs, if these accompany us; or
we them, for they go one way.
BARABAL
A MEMORY
I have spoken in "Iona" and elsewhere of the old Highland woman who was
my nurse. She was not really old, but to me seemed so, and I have always
so thought of her. She was one of the most beautiful and benignant
natures I have known.
I owe her a great debt. In a moment, now, I can see her again, with her
pale face and great dark eyes, stooping over my bed, singing "Wae's me
for Prince Charlie," or an old Gaelic Lament, or that sad, forgotten,
beautiful and mournful air that was played at Fotheringay when the Queen
of Scots was done to death, "lest her cries should be heard." Or, later,
I can hear her telling me old tales before the fire; or, later still,
before the glowing peats in her little island-cottage, speaking of men
and women, and strange legends, and stranger dreams and visions. To her,
and to an old islander, Seumas Macleod, of whom I have elsewhere spoken
in this volume, I owe more than to any other influences in my childhood.
Perhaps it is from her that in part I have my great dislike of towns.
There is no smoke in the lark's house, to use one of her frequent
sayings--one common throughout the west.
I never knew any one whose speech, whose thought, was so coloured with
the old wisdom and old sayings and old poetry of her race. To me she
stands for the Gaelic woman, strong, steadfast, true to "her own," her
people, her clan, her love, herself. "When you come to love," she said
to me once, "keep always to the one you love a mouth of silk and a heart
of hemp."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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