by Neil M. Gunn
But they would not listen to this, and when these matters had been discussed back and fore, it came about that, to entertain the company, Finn had to start on the story of their first trip to the West.
By this time, Finn had gathered a few special sea names and terms, mostly Viking, used by the people, and he introduced them skilfully. He had, too, the experience of having told his story to seamen in Helmsdale, and in the simplicity of his recital he smiled when the danger was at its worst and became grave when about to include Rob or Callum in a jest that made the company cry out with pleasure. His reward came when he saw Rob’s mouth fallen slightly adrift and his eyes set in solemn wonder.
Before Finn went to sleep that night on his heather bed, old Finn-son-of-Angus said to him: “You told the story well. You brought us into the far deeps of the sea and we were lost with you in the Beyond where no land is, only wind and wave and the howling of the darkness. You kept us in suspense on the cliffs, and you had some art in the way you referred to our familiars of the other world before you told of the figure of the man you felt by the little stone house. There you saw no-one and you were anxious to make this clear, smiling at your fancy. It was well enough done. It was all well done. It was done, too, with the humour that is the play of drift on the wave. And you were modest. Yet—all that is only a little—you had something more, my hero, something you will not know—until you look at it through your eyes, when they are old as mine.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Finn.
But the old man shook his head and turned away. “Go to your sleep, my boy. Many a one may come,” he muttered to himself, “in the guise of the stranger.”
*
The third night started as a merry night, for it looked like their last. Finn was now deeply interested in the customs and ways of the people, for the more he knew of them the more he seemed to discover what had long lain hidden in himself; and that not seriously, but with a humour prompting his eyes to glisten or his mouth to laugh. This was the night that revelation came upon him, and as with most men who are strongly male in themselves, it came through a woman.
It started with dancing. Hector, who had the great fund of romance stories, was ever curious to compare one place with another and to gather new material where he could. “Are you telling me that?” he would ask, with a deceptive air of wonder. “Now what …” And so in a moment he was at the heart of what he was after, his eyes watching.
When the talk had gone a little way on dancing, he asked, “Is that all you have? Do you mean to tell me you know nothing of the real ancient dances like, say, The Fight of the Cocks?”
“No,” answered Finn. “What’s that?”
“Do you know the dance called The Waddling of the Ducks?”
“No.”
“Nor The Reeling of the Blackcocks?”
“No,” answered Finn, laughing.
“Ah, well, you’ll know The Old Wife of the Mill-dust?”
“No.”
“Well, well. It’s little of the meaning of dancing you do know.” He shook his head. “Our world is passing away. It is going from before us. And soon, maybe, here itself all you will have will be an old man telling of the dances he once saw in his youth that are now no more. And already—already, my grief!—there are places in these islands where dancing of any kind is stopped by the new ministers. A terrible blight is coming upon the happiness of the human heart and upon the happiness of the world. Ai, ai, and you tell me you have never even seen The Old Wife of the Mill-dust?”
“No, but I would give anything to see it,” said Finn.
Hector cocked his eye at a young woman, and in a few moments she took the floor, followed by a tall fellow who was handed a short stick. She was fair and he was dark, and Hector tuned his fiddle and smothered the tail-piece in his bushy, grey beard.
Finn never before or after saw any dance like it. The dancers faced each other, struck attitudes and gestured, with vigour and decision, speaking at each other through their bodies and arms, interjecting with the stamp of a foot, parting, quick-stepping, exchanging places, the man swinging his stick over his own head, over her head, until in the climax of that first part he brought the stick down with skilful lightness and stretched her dead at his feet.
His sorrow now when he sees what he has done! Round her he dances, gesticulating wildly, sadly. He looks upon her; gets down on a knee. He lifts her limp left hand and stares into its palm. He breathes on the palm and touches it with the stick. At once the hand comes alive. The hand goes up and down, to left and right, up and down, to left and right, keeping time to a music as old as the dance. With this sign of life the man is delighted, and dances round the figure in joy. Now for the right hand … the right foot … and now all four limbs are active. But the body—the body remains dead. Down over it the man kneels, and breathes the breath of life into its mouth and touches the heart with the druid’s wand. Whereupon the woman leaps to her feet, and together they dance as in the first part, with vigorous happiness.
*
After that, the woman who next moved Finn was a girl of no more than nineteen, though she looked older because of the strong bone in her face. From the very beginning Finn had thought the face unusual and even remarkable, though he had not been particularly attracted by it. She had a pointed chin, high cheek-bones, a broad, rather low, forehead, and eyes large and set wide apart. Her hair had the blackness of peat in the moss, but her eyes were blue, with black lashes. There was at once something a little ungainly about her and at the same time very old, archaic, a dark one out of the old race. Though usually those of this race are noticeably small in stature, and dark-eyed, Matili Maccuithean was, in height, above the average of the rest of the girls and rather slower in her movements. She was a grand-daughter of Black John.
From actual dancing the talk had turned to fairy-dancing, and Rob had upheld the honour of the strangers with an extremely circumstantial story about the origin of the little people themselves, told to him, he said, by his mother’s mother, who had heard it from her mother’s mother in a little hollow of ground on a summer’s day, and the hollow is there yet, and that wasn’t yesterday. But if Rob knew a thing or two about fairies, it was nothing to what they knew in North Uist, where there was one family itself called Black-fairy. And for all they knew about fairies, it was little enough compared with what the fairies themselves would be up to, especially when it came to stealing human children.
There was a little old woman, Hector’s sister, who put a quickening down Finn’s spine by introducing into her story the golden butterfly that is man’s soul. “And if you catch that butterfly and kill it you kill the soul in its flight. Like God’s fool, it flits …”
Finn listened, fascinated, and when they turned to Matili and asked her to give them a song, he gazed at the girl with such concentration that he saw for the first time the antique beauty of her features. When she had sung two notes, all his skin ran cold.
The song was a lullaby that illustrated in its own way the subject matter under discussion. But for Finn it was charged with a power that held his quivering body in its invisible hand. It was a lullaby his mother had sung to him on the green brae with its bushes and birds above the little stream in the time of the herding.
Matili sang it as if the song were evolving itself, effortlessly, out of a memory so old that it was quiet with contemplation. The girl’s voice had in it the innocent note of the child, and surrounding it the primordial innocence of the mother.
For Finn the evocation of his mother was so strong that he had the extraordinary sensation of smelling her breast and breath as a child, and in the same moment of recognizing her withdrawn destiny, without losing his own identity as the grown man.
At first it was the mother and child in communion, but, as the rhythm went on, the mother’s face lifted from her child and stared away over the green braes and over the burn. And the child felt this withdrawnness in the mother and felt it too in himself, yet could neither protest nor
move, held by the song’s intangible loveliness with the half-terrifying, sweet sadness at its core. And the child was apart from the mother, and the mother from the child, though he was sitting on her lap, close, close to her.
The effect upon Finn was deep and self-revealing. Love for his mother cried out in him, the love that now understood the withdrawn fatality of the mother. He had been blind, blind. The awful inexorable simplicity of the singing became too much to bear. He tried to put it from him, not to listen; he moved his head and pressed his right heel into the clay floor, so that his body be kept within control. He wanted to cry out, for the relief of the cry. They were all so still, listening to the girl singing the old lullaby of the mother whose child was stolen by the fairies:
I left my darling lying here,
A-lying here, a-lying here,
I left my darling lying here,
To go and gather blaeberries.
H ó-van, hó-van, Gorry óg O,
Gorry óg O, Gorry óg O;
H ó-van, hó-van, Gorry óg O,
I’ve lost my darling baby, O!
I’ve found the wee brown otter’s track.
The otter’s track, the otter’s track;
I’ve found the wee brown otter’s track,
But ne’er a trace of baby, O!
I found the track of the swan on the lake,
The swan on the lake, the swan on the lake;
I found the track of the swan on the lake,
But not the track of baby, O!
I found the track of the yellow fawn,
The yellow fawn, the yellow fawn;
I found the track of the yellow fawn,
But could not trace my baby, O!
I found the trail of the mountain mist,
The mountain mist, the mountain mist;
I found the trail of the mountain mist,
But ne’er a trace of baby, O!
Finn shook his head with a strained smile when they asked him to sing. “The only one who sings here,” he said, ‘is Rob.”
“That’s what they said the last time we were in a house,” Rob explained sarcastically. “But when I did sing a stave or two—the trouble then was getting them to stop. No, no. It’s not me that will be taken in again.”
This drew the whole house upon him and it was a packed house. Rob was at last clearing his throat, when he saw Callum wink to Finn. “Look at him winking. If he can wink he can sing.” He shut his mouth.
For some reason this set up a wave and a roar of mirth, and the girls in particular would not leave Rob alone.
Finally he gave in. “Well, if I give you a verse it is on the one understanding: that we haven’t to listen to them for the rest of the night, because if so I’m going home now.”
Rob had a harsh, tuneless voice, concerned with the story in the words rather than the music. As he started to sing, he stared straight before him, and did not break the look until he had finished. When the girls joined in the chorus he was so inspired that at the next verse he went off the key and his voice cracked, but back he came and found it again. Before the compliments that fell on him, he scratched his beard. “Och, it’s not often I do much at it,” he said negligently,
“But when you do you make up for it,” observed Finn, who seemed extravagantly happy.
So nothing would do but that Finn himself must sing.
“Well, with Rob’s permission——”
Rob groaned. “Didn’t I tell you? I’m off home.”
The girls pressed down his shoulders as he made to get up.
“This”, said Finn, “is a song I heard from a woman in my native county of Caithness, and the name of it is: As the Rose Grows Merry in Time.”
“Say that again,” requested Black John, looking at Finn.
“As the rose grows merry in time,” repeated Finn, smiling.
Black John savoured the words in sound and meaning. Finn saw that the house was caught by the surprise that the words had first roused in himself. The bright eyes of old Finn-son-of-Angus were on him.
The melody was not much in itself, but it did contrive a persistent, hypnotic effect. And Finn was able to give it full value, because of a quickening deep in his personality, and a nervous radiance above. The last two lines of each verse were repeated:
As I came in over yonder hill.
As the rose grows merry in time,
I met a fair maiden her name it was Nell
Saying, an you will be a true lover of mine,
You must make unto me a cambric shirt,
As the rose grows merry in time,
Without one stitch of your own needlework,
Before you can be a true lover of mine.
You must wash it in yonder well,
As the rose grows merry in time,
Where water ne’er flowed nor dew ever fell,
Before you can be a true lover of mine.
“It’s questions three you have put to me,
As the rose grows merry in time,
But twice as many more you must answer to me
Before you can be a true lover of mine.
“An acre of land you must plough to me,
As the rose grows merry in time,
Between the salt waters and sands of the sea,
Before you can be a true lover of mine.
“You must plough it with a wild ram’s horn,
As the rose grows merry in time,
And sow it all over with one peck of corn,
Before you can be a true lover of mine.
“You must reap it with a wild-goose feather,
As the rose grows merry in time,
And bind it together with the sting of a nether, (adder)
Before you can be a true lover of mine.
“You must build it on yonder sea,
As the rose grows merry in time,
And bring in the last sheaf dry unto me,
Before you can be a true lover of mine.
“You must thresh it on yon castle wall,
As the rose grows merry in time,
And mind on your life don’t let one pickle fall,
Before you can be a true lover of mine.
“And—when you have finished your work,
As the rose grows merry in time,
You may call upon me for your cambric shirt,
And then you can be a true lover of mine.”
The following evening the wind died away, and though the sky remained overcast, Henry smelt a warmth from the brimming tide, “The turn has come,” he said. The words were hardly out of his mouth when lads who had been fishing at the far point came running with the magic cry: “Herring!”
Willing backs got under the White Heather. She took the water and, followed by a few ancient small craft, headed for the sea under her slow, heavy sweeps. At first the crew had been doubtful of the news because one of the lads had said it was as if big drops of rain were falling in a shower, and that looked like mackerel, but soon all doubt was put aside. “They’re here, boys,” said Callum, and excitement ran along their veins in fire, the excitement that never staled in all the years of a man’s life.
There was a motion in the sea, a darkened sky, and the daylight was going. Perfect fishing weather. “We’ll shoot only half the drift,” said Henry, “till we see.”
As they lay to the nets, Finn asked, “Did you feel that?” It was a fitful soft air out of the south. They all nodded.
“If only we could do it!” exclaimed Callum.
“Be quiet, will you?” said Rob, who was against all expressions of luck and hope—as a temptation to the perverse ones who might overhear. For though nothing had been said, they all knew why Henry had shot only half the drift and what a southerly breeze would mean. With twenty crans, the boat would not be so deep, but that a following wind might see her in Stornoway before tomorrow was dead.
If there wasn’t much light when they began to haul, it was enough for Rob to speak like a father to his children: “Come, my little da
ncers; come, my silver darlings—steady, now—up!—that’s you!” His voice was very matter-of-fact. “Are they any size, Rob?” shouted Callum, winking at Finn wildly from habit. “They’ll pass,” replied Rob. “Yes, they’ll pass. In fact, I have never seen anything like them. Not on this coast.” “They’re what we have heard about but seldom seen, eh?” “You mind what you’re doing,” answered Rob. They were drenched with excitement and sweat.
About twenty-five crans, reckoned Henry. The two sails were hoisted and the four oars began to pull away.
“I’ll tell you what you’re thinking, Rob?” cried Callum.
“Is that so?” replied Rob.
“You’re thinking it’s the great pity to be leaving all that fish in the sea.”
“The sea will keep them.”
“Till we come again,” said Finn.
*
As the world lightened the wind strengthened. “Take a snooze when you can,” said Henry. “We have a long day before us.”
“And maybe a few blisters,” smiled Callum, settling himself.
But sleep was far from Finn. The good weather was cleaning the sky and the land had colour and the stillness that never failed to move him. It was the stillness of sleep, not sleep as one knew it on land, but sleep as a magic arrestment, observed from a boat sailing by islands and inlets in the thin clear light of early morning. The gulls were white with this sleep.
Finn closed his eyes, so that Henry might think he was sleeping.
The antique features of the singing girl came before him, and presently he experienced again the feeling that had been roused in him about his mother, but with the bodily detachment of the light before sunrise. He was fond of her, would ever have for her a natural affection, but he saw her now as a woman under the spell of her own destiny. And that somehow was eternally right, like the movement of a figure through the mesh of fate in one of Hector’s old stories, or like a swan on the Irish sea in the legend by Finn-son-of-Angus. And this brought to him, beyond understanding, a cool aloof relief.
