Legend of the Celtic Stone

by Michael Phillips

  The Wanderer’s only granddaughter, the third-born of his son, carried on the artistry of her mother and the Belgae grandfather she never knew. During her own lifetime she left behind hundreds of etchings, carvings, and artifacts which told the stories she had heard when her father and his father had come to this land, as well as those her mother passed on about her people. She found a husband from another group of Celts who had recently arrived in the vicinity, and passed along to her own daughters the nurturing strength and practical creativity that would infuse generations of their female descendants.

  Two things remained that Wanderer’s generations of sons and daughters were unable to vanquish. Never would they moderate the fierce wintry snow, hail, and sleet that swept down in icy blasts from the frigid polar cap, a yearly reminder of the ice-glaciers which had only recently departed this region. Nor would they tame the mountainous inlands and rocky deserts in the far north known as the Highlands—not nearly so high as the White Mountains from whence the Wanderer and his son had begun their quest, but rugged, austere, desolate, vacant, and grim.

  In spite of its gray, dreary inhospitableness, this land yet possessed a curious capacity to infect the soul. The Wanderer’s grandsons and granddaughters for a hundred generations to follow would thus remain here, would prevail in spite of the natural environment’s brutal hostility, would even come to cherish it.

  The Wanderer’s third and youngest grandson, with his wife and young brood, ended his own trek in a tiny sheltered glen beneath two high mountains. The mysterious Highlands somehow bespoke to him the prophetic essence of what Caledonia would become. Ever after would he call these high barren hills and rocky peaks his home, giving parentage to a clan that would trace its origin to the Highland Mystic, Son of Wanderer’s Son.

  From these original dwellers of the Highlands, future generations would know of the one stag among ten thousand, born with white coat rather than red, and what he would come to symbolize for the people of this land. More than any other in the world of beasts, the stag would come to signify the mystique of the beloved Highlands.

  When Highland Mystic first set eyes on the resplendent creature he had till then only heard about from his father, standing atop a high peak, rays of brilliant sunlight reflecting off its light-hued coat and enormous crown of antlers, he felt the stag’s message, and was forever changed.

  As Mystic’s own sons grew, they listened to tales and haunting ballads, songs, and poems of the arrival with his father in Caledonia of this first of its bards, with striking remembrances implanted into their young memories of the old Wanderer himself. These they would carry forth into the fabric of legend, which would interweave among many branches of the clan they would one day become.

  Wanderer’s Son and his aging wife traveled north to spend their final years with the family of their youngest son. As they stared into the orange embers of fire at night, the mysterious words and tones from the Mystic-bard’s voice entered the hearts of his sons, imbuing their deepest souls with an identification with this place, and what it meant to be one with this land, its beasts, and its multitude of wonders. They listened to the tale of the great mammoth, and of the legend of the white stag. And as their grandfather listened too, his own hair now white, his heart was filled with many memories of those years with the Wanderer, when he had been no older than they.

  Saoibhir sith nan sian an nochd air Tir-an-Aigh.

  Is ciuine ciuil nam fiath ag iadhadh Innse Graidh,

  Is easgaidh gach sgiath air fianlach dian an Dain

  Is slighe nan seann seun a siaradh siar gun tamh.

  Saoibhir com nan cruach le cuimhne laithean aosd,

  Sona gnuis nan cuan am bruadair uair a dh aom;

  Soillseach gach uair an aigne suaimhneach ghaoth.

  Rich is the peace of the elements of night over the Land of Joy,

  And rich the evenness of the calm’s music round the Isles of Love,

  Every wing flies urgently in obedience to nature

  While the path of the old spells winds inexorably westward.

  Rich the breast of the hills with memories of bygone days,

  Serene the face of the seas

  With dreams of the times that are gone.

  When the Son of Wanderer finally breathed his last, his youngest son wept, sang a doleful lament, then went in search of a suitable and fitting place to lay his father in final peace. He found a great slab of stone, nearly flat on its top, under which some animal had once carved out a now unused den. After enlarging this cavity, they buried the old man beneath the enormous rock of a shrine, filling it in with stones.

  For days after, it was the old man’s wife—she known as Mother and source, now the eldest of the family—who, alone with her memories, chiseled upon the giant gravestone with sharp flint and stone a series of figures. On this stone she would tell for all time of this man she had loved and what they had seen and done together. It was she who passed into the future the legacy of her man who now dwelt beneath the stone and gave his blessing to their mystic son. With hand upon his thoughtful head, in her strong yet aged voice, in a tongue long forgotten, she intoned the words Highland Mystic would never forget.

  The land, its creatures, all nature is one, and we with it.

  Revere nature, honor life, forget not that existence is a circle without end.

  Her voice broke into the song of a strange melody of mingled lament and rejoicing.

  Look up, look around, look beyond, my children, at those who make the earth their home.

  Look up and wonder.

  Behold the sky, the stars, the clouds, the winged creatures, the emptiness.

  Look about you and wonder. Wonder at the storm. Wonder at the brightness of the sun.

  Behold the creatures and trees, the stones and brooks, the fields and the sea.

  Behold those with whom you share life, for they have much to teach you.

  The fertility of the earth brings life, but nature takes life in its time,

  For is not life a circle without end?

  Mystic’s own wife heard the words and melodies with the rest. They entered her soul, and in her turn after years she likewise passed Mystic’s blessing and her own carvings and symbols and their meanings on to their sons and daughters. Mythologies of nature worship grew out of such beginnings and gave rise to yet more symbolic art. Statues of stone and wood, later metal, came to replace drawings on leather, as idols representing a host of creature-deities. And out of the honor these patriarchs of antiquity bestowed upon their women were laid down the roots of what in later years would be a succession of kingship through the women of this prehistoric Caledonian clan.

  Ever after, as long as Mystic’s family dwelt near that place, they would return periodically to the great stone, stand for a few minutes atop it, gazing upon the crude-carved story of a life, in silent contemplation of him who lay beneath it, remembering the men from whence they had come who had brought them to this land.

  Eleven

  The grandsons and daughters and families which sprung from Mystic’s seed and that of his two adventuresome brothers and artistic sister were followed by many others.

  Hunter, Son of Wanderer’s Son, taught his descendants to kill and eat the boar, the deer, wild cattle, proliferative grouse and small game, as well as many land birds.

  The progeny of Boatdweller, Grandson of Wanderer, gathered fish from the sea and shellfish from its beaches, as well as an occasional stranded whale. This would lead to the making of the first bone whaling harpoons by his fearless great-grandsons, as more and more methods were tried and discovered to extract life from the tempestuous ocean waters.

  Those who succeeded Highland Mystic, Son of Wanderer’s Son, in making the wild and lonely spaces their homes also hunted for their meat. They also gradually learned to till what soil they found in the protected valleys and glens of the mountains, and as they migrated back southward into the low-lying and more fertile regions. In the absence of mammoth bone or tusk, antlers
from highland deer provided the earliest form of plough with which they dug and worked the earth and put into it things to bring forth food on vine, root, shrub, stalk, and tree.

  One of the Mystic’s sons migrated west, across a wide moor, and down into the protected valley which future generations would call Glencoe. There he settled, and there his family and descendants remained. Neither he nor his brothers nor sisters forgot the great slab of stone and what it signified. As generations passed, many forgot its exact location. But there always remained a few throughout the generations who knew. For bard followed bard, and mystic followed mystic. It was their duty to remember.

  Not only did the Highlands give Caledonia the snow of the arctic—its very terrain provided the means to endure that cold. One of the Mystic’s sons unearthed a remarkable fact, for the Celts of ancient Caledonia a discovery as vital to survival as fire itself. The mystery was simply this: The same turf upon which they built their crude homes, and which they had learned as far back as the Wanderer’s time to cut into slabs to stack in piles to fend off the blizzards which came every year, or to partially seal the mouth of a cave against icy chill, was not dirt at all. It was a remarkably dense organic material which, when dry, burned hot and slow. It was the single discovery which, more than any other, would make life in the Highlands for the Mystic’s successors possible.

  And so did the descendants of the Wanderer explore and settle the land of the north. Future historians and archaeologists, sifting through the sparse implements his people left behind, and through the cloudy, mythical stories perpetuated by the Mystic’s descendants, would wonder who came with the Wanderer to this land. Scraping through fragments and traditions and dusty legends of the past, they would speculate whether his Celtic bloodline was the first to settle. Or were the Wanderer’s people but one of several such ancient roaming peoples to migrate toward the extremities of the world’s landmass?

  As the climate continued to improve for the fifteen centuries after the Wanderer’s arrival, more stalwart nomads of his Celtic race followed, in small though increasing numbers. Celtic tribes on the continent rose and expanded. Their dynamic energy pushed at the boundaries of colonization. By now the earthquakes and crust shifts and tremors had cut this land off from the rest of the continent. But across the created channel of water they steadfastly came, following if not in the Wanderer’s footsteps, at least in the direction of his path.

  The small transplanted race of Celts flourished, if not in numbers, certainly in hardiness and courage. A mixing and blending of Celtic blood took place. Family and tribe remained the unit of strength. Out of the mingled origins of tribe and filial loyalty was born the clan. And though most of the derivative shoots which eventually occupied Caledonia shared common racial beginnings, their Celtic origins also infused within them a fierceness capable of erupting against rival families and clans as readily as against a common enemy.

  As this was no tame land, likewise its inhabitants were no tame breed. They were, however, an emotional and intuitive people, who venerated their chiefs and bards. Spinners of tales—poets and storytellers and singers all in one—rose from within their ranks to carry on the tradition of the Mystic. They spoke and sang of past adventures, aided by crude musical instruments. Harps were made from willow, ideal for lightness, density, and resilience. Strings were fashioned from long, sturdy strings of intestines, cut and dried after a hunt, attached top and bottom with carved bits of bone. The willow was considered a sacred tree, which gave the music a magical significance. Poets and storytellers and singers of ballads placed the foundational folk epics and allegorical narratives into melody and rhyme. These bards came to be venerated alongside the chiefs of emerging clans.

  They also revered their gods, for they were a polytheistic people. As Mathair, the Source, had taught them, they believed the supernatural lay all about, in the spirits which pervaded men and rivers and animals and mountains and sun and moon and all of nature.

  The storyteller in time also became a religious leader. He spoke not only of what had come before, but of the invisible world all around, gradually infused with druidic influences from the south as learning and awareness expanded and overlapped. The bard entertained and instructed. He taught his people to think and seek meaning, though he yet himself knew little of the greater God to which his pantheistic deities dimly pointed.

  Thus was added to the fire of Celtic emotion the kindling of religious fervor. This spiritual passion would flow through time as a constituent characteristic of these people and a dynamic force to influence the later history of their land.

  Twelve

  Out of the Wanderer’s and Eubha-Beanicca’s mutual seed eventually emerged the animal tamer and soil tiller whom paleontologists would call Neolithic, or “new stone” man, whose dominion on the land lasted until approximately the first millennium BC The era was characterized by the development of increasingly sophisticated uses of stone, later pottery, then metals, all of which led to wider and more stable sources of food supply.

  Slowly these men and women settled the land rather than merely drifting back and forth across it.

  The foraging existence of the ranging hunter and fisher gave place to a more systematic life. As more people arrived, a cross-fertilization of discoveries resulted, leading to improved implements and methods, and greater understanding of plants, seeds, techniques, and new foods.

  Celts were curious after their own kind. As the Wanderer had adopted the shell-saw from a chance encounter eons before, so men continued to observe one another. Faraway civilizations brought advances to the outskirts of human settlement, carried on the feet and tongues of new generations of nomads and wanderers.

  As the diversity of tools and instruments widened, forests were cut so land could be tilled. Gradually man felled larger trees, crafted longer and wider boats, fashioned both stone and wood to build larger structures.

  Primitive settlements formed. Implements improved. Metalwork was refined in the early years of the first millennium BC as the use of bronze was developed, changing weaponry and toolmaking forever. Men cleared and worked the land and soil to make the earth yield more of its fruits. Planting, cultivation, and harvesting became more effective. Not only was land cleared for growing, it was cleared for pasture. Man took dominion over domesticated animals and began altering earth’s environment to suit the purposes of his expanding rule.

  Steady colonization by the expanding tribes of the Celtic race followed in increasing numbers the Wanderer’s dim historical footprint. To Ireland they came, and to all parts of Britain and Caledonia, the Western Isles, the outer Isles, the Orkneys and Shetland. They came from the continent, from the Mediterranean, from the north, round the Iberian peninsula, along the coast of France, along Brittany, up the Irish Sea and to the Hebrides.

  The Celtic race approached the zenith of its power and creative energy on the continent. As they arrived to these western regions they were absorbed into the ancient brotherhood of those who had come before. These new Celt arrivals carried with them a knowledge of society and technology far in advance of their predecessors. They brought major developments in metal technology. Swords, knives, chisels, cauldrons, sickles, axe heads, spear tips were fashioned and put into use, and an immense variety of additional tools and devices. Gold and silver were melted down and crafted into jewelry.

  Stout explorers continued to brave the North Sea and turbulent channel. The ancient Celtic tribe of Belgae—whose very legends told of one who had wandered through their primitive camps long before, whom one of their chieftains’ daughters had married and whom some of their people had followed westward—settled in great numbers in the south.

  Though in time he was all but forgotten to memory, nonetheless did the Wanderer’s blood flow throughout all the branches large and small that went to make up this surging tide of human occupation.

  He was the father of this land, the Adam of a people into whom were grafted a hundred generations of newcomers. Had the old wander
ing nomad been able to rise up out of his grave and gaze out of the past toward the continent whence his steps had brought him, he would have seen a thriving race. They were, after all, a people of his own origin—still vigorous, still strong, still proud.

  And they continued to spread the life and energy of his bloodline, as he himself had done, outward into a world still young.

  6

  Shake-Up in Westminster

  One

  Andrew Trentham closed the great book of childhood memory, set it aside, stood up and stretched. Would he himself ever have a family, he wondered, a heritage to pass down to others? What a privileged thing—to father a dynasty as the Wanderer had done.

  He had been so caught up in reading the story that he hadn’t noticed the descending dusk. The afternoon was obviously well advanced. Nor had he paid attention to the whereabouts of Duncan MacRanald. Now for the first time he saw that the fire in the hearth had grown cold.

  He called out to Duncan. But there was no reply.

  Andrew rose and walked to the door. He stepped outside. No sign of the Scotsman met his gaze, nor did a sound from the small barn adjacent to the house indicate his presence.

  He set out to walk around the cottage to see if Duncan was up on the hillside behind it.

  He had just rounded the corner of the stone building when the sound of horse’s hooves interrupted his thoughts.

  Andrew turned toward the downhill path. A rider was galloping toward him holding the reins of a second mount, riderless but saddled. Andrew recognized the Derwenthwaite groom.

  “Mr. Trentham!” called the man even before he had his horse well stopped, “I came to find you, sir.”

  “Yes, what is it, Horace—” replied Andrew, “is something wrong?”

  “You’ve had an important phone call, sir—from London. It was your office, sir.”