English literature -- Scottish authors; Scottish literature
The little girl who knew so much about Shanny knew nothing about her own
A B C. But I owe her a debt, since through her I came upon my good
friend "Gunainm." From her I heard first, there on Iona, on a chance
visit of a few summer days, of two of the most beautiful of the ancient
Gaelic hymns, the Fiacc Hymn and the Hymn of Broccán. My friend had
delineated them as missals, with a strangely beautiful design to each.
How often I have thought of one, illustrative of a line in the Fiacc
Hymn: "There was pagan darkness in Eiré in those days: the people
adored Faerie." In the Broccán Hymn (composed by one Broccán in the time
of Lugaid, son of Loegaire, A.D. 500) is one particularly lovely line:
"Victorious Bride (Briget) loved not this vain world: here, ever, she
sat the seat of a bird on a cliff."
In a dream I dream frequently, that of being the wind, and drifting over
fragrant hedgerows and pastures, I have often, through unconscious
remembrance of that image of St. Bride sitting the seat of a bird on the
edge of the cliff that is this world, felt myself, when not lifted on
sudden warm fans of dusk, propelled as on a swift wing from the edge of
a precipice.
I would that we had these winds of dream to command. I would, now that I
am far from it, that this night at least I might pass over Iona, and
hear the sea-doves by the ruins making their sweet mournful croon of
peace, and lift, as a shadow gathering phantom flowers, the pale orchis
by the lapwing's nest.
One day, walking by a reedy lochan on the Ross of Mull, not far inland
from Fionnaphort, where is the ferry for Baile-Mòr of Iona, I met an old
man who seemed in sorrow. When he spoke I was puzzled by some words
which were not native there, and then I learned that he had long lived
in Edinburgh and later in Dunfermline, and in his work had associated
with Hollanders and others of the east seas.
He had come back, in his old age, to "see the place of his two
loves"--the hamlet in Earraid, where his old mother had blessed him
"forty year back," and the little farm where Jean Cameron had kissed him
and promised to be true. He had gone away as a soldier, and news reached
them of his death; and when he came out of the Indies, and went up Leith
Walk to the great post-house in Edinburgh, it was to learn that the
Earraid cottage was empty, and that Jean was no longer Jean Cameron.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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