Legend of the Celtic Stone

by Michael Phillips

  “Let them come!” he had shouted, standing to the full six-and-a-half feet of his measure and raising a fist in the air. Truly he was a giant of a man, an imposing chief and worthy successor to the tradition of the Wanderer and his grandson the Hunter, whose blood flowed in Taran’s veins. His elders allowed him to speak, while they sat in silence.

  “Let the Taezali or Maeatae from Sutherois or Inbhir Nis come! Let the Smertae from beyond Kildonanoid in Gallaibh come down to meet us! Let even the Scothui from the mountains beyond Bruid or even from Eirinn itself come to us! We will defeat them! We have no need to hide ourselves behind stone walls and towers and barricades!”

  The elders listened with patient respect. They knew their chief was a fighter after his own kind, filled with the blood of many generations of hunters and warriors, who had killed their food with their own hands, and who had had to kill to hold the ground they chose to call their own.

  The wild blood of Taran’s Celtic stock ran hot with thrill for the hunt. He was like, and yet also different from, his dear friend Pendalpin, in whose veins and heart mingled the pedigree of both Hunter and Highland Mystic, Sons of Wanderer’s Son. Pendalpin vented his own Celtic fervor in verse and tale, and with lyre and lute, harp and syrinx.

  So they had listened. But in the end the hill-fort had been built. And Taran had consoled himself by listening to the melancholy strains of Pendalpin’s voice as he sang of seasons now gone, times past remembering, and legends whose roots were obscured by the primeval haze of historical beginnings.

  Caldohnuill was changing. All the land was changing. The elders knew it, but saw no way to stop the flood of new arrivals.

  Though the old men knew nothing of the fact that they occupied a portion of an island, they had heard tales of a huge land across the Dark Waters, a land of tribes and peoples who were growing and moving and bringing boats to their land. Neither did they know that the Borestii and Maeatae and Selgovae, and most of all the Belgae—that half-Germanic tribe who had brought their warlike spirit and druidic religion to the southern portion of the island a thousand years earlier, and even before that had given a wife to a certain aging nomad—were in fact sharers of their own primal Celtic blood. All they knew was that these other tribes were pushing ever closer.

  The blood of the Wanderer and his Celtic cousins had been so intermingled as to seal the brotherhood of these peoples for all time, even as it obliterated their common roots. Now Celtic tribe battled Celtic tribe for supremacy. As the Belgae settled in the south, the tribes of the Vacomagi and Maeatae and Taezali and Venicones had moved further north, while the more ancient tribes that had long occupied the regions of Rois and Caitt, including the Pritenae of Kildonanoid and Caldohnuill and Rossbidalich, struggled to maintain their hold on territories that had once been so wide and free that few other humans were to be seen.

  Even the Scothui from across the water in Eirinn to the west were making more and more forays this way. They carried the seed of Boatdweller, Grandson of Wanderer. But common blood notwithstanding, they were intruders. Taran and his people felt the squeeze in the unfolding slow stretch of territorial muscle.

  Strife over the land was not the only change coming to Caldohnuill, though it was the chief reason that stronger fortifications were necessary. The coming of the age of bronze and iron centuries earlier had greatly advanced the ability to make weapons, but it had also tremendously improved the agricultural possibilities for Taran’s people. Like many of the tribes indigenous to the area, the Pritenae were now clustering more and more into small settlements where they might tend crops and raise cattle and sheep. The life of the nomadic hunter was coming to an end.

  Now, with the hill-fort completed and his people at peace and much of Caldohnuill as his domain, Taran was an old man, whose white beard and stooped shoulders gave ample evidence that the giant warrior represented a passing era. Fortunately for the future of this land, the archaic Celtic ritual from the continent by which aging chiefs were disposed of by the knife had long before given way to revering them, and Taran was held in great esteem by his clansmen.

  His consolation as the years progressed was that he might be blessed as no chief before him with the joy of knowing his own son would succeed him as ruler of the tribe. In the matriarchal system of lineage which determined chieftainship of the Pritenae, never had a son succeeded a father. But the line of Taran’s mother Gabran had ended with him. Both of her brothers had been chief before him. She had no sister, and thus no nephew to whom the line might pass.

  Taran’s two wives had each given him a son. It would be one of them, Taran hoped, probably Fidach, the eldest, who would succeed him. Of course, the elders must ultimately decide, and it might be that they would choose some other as ancient Cowall’s more legitimate heir.

  Three

  The two young men, each carrying an end of the long, thick spear with the dead boar jostling from side to side between them, mounted a small incline, then stopped to rest.

  Beyond them, about five hundred yards distant, lay Loch Laoigh. Behind them, only barely visible now in the gathering dusk, sat the fringes of Muirenthryth Wood, which they had left an hour earlier. They had another’s hour or two journey ahead of them. It would be late when they arrived home. But not too late to bring rejoicing at the gift they bore the chief.

  “What do you think, Fidach?” said the one as he set down his end of the load. “Are the boars returning to Muirenthryth?”

  “We can only hope,” replied his companion. “For myself, I would rather hunt the great stag of the north.”

  “Not so dangerous, eh?” chided the other good-naturedly.

  “You laugh, my brother,” rejoined Fidach. “But it was I, you recall, who nearly fought you for the privilege of holding the spear today. Even though, for our father’s sake, I deferred to your strength, I did not fear the danger. But it is the glory of the stag I admire. He runs so mighty and free. He represents a challenge, the challenge of this land to conquer and subdue. Knowing that only by cunning will the quest be successful, that he can easily outrun our swiftest spears, that he can hear us coming while we are yet many yards distant—that is what summons me to the hunt!”

  “A magnificent creature, you are right in that,” the other mused, beginning to be caught up in his brother’s enthusiasm.

  “Let us go to Muigh-bhlaraidh Ecgfrith, Cruithne! Let us see whether the great white stag has not returned to the forest.”

  “He has not been seen in many years, Fidach.”

  “My heart beats within my breast, telling me a change is coming to Caldohnuill. Perhaps the stag’s return will signal it.”

  “You always know such things before they come to pass. I have learned to trust what you feel. Has some voice spoken to you about the stag?”

  “No,” laughed Fidach. “Only a wonderful dream that you and I were stalking him. We had been following his track for days, and at last we cornered him at the end of a small hollow. The trail led straight up rocky cliffs all around. The two of us guarded the only entrance to the place. Slowly we crept toward him. At last, when we stood but some twenty paces from him, the stag turned to face us. His giant eyes looked into mine. And those eyes—Cruithne, they pierced through me. They held no fear, but more a look of . . . recognition. It was as if no mere animal stood before us, but a creature almost human. And suddenly I sensed he had known all along that we followed, that he had led us into the ravine after him.”

  Cruithne opened his mouth to comment on the improbability of such a thing, but then he held his tongue.

  “Then, for what seemed an eternity,” Fidach continued, “the stag’s eyes held mine. You and I both held our spears poised, yet neither of us could move. The animal’s eyes seemed to say, ‘Why must you kill? Know you not that we are brothers of the land?’

  “Then suddenly the stag sprang toward us, reaching the point where we stood in two bounds that seemed less than the blink of an eye! Still we could not move. As he reached us, the magnifice
nt creature leapt into the air and flew over our heads, and in the same instant we were released from our trance.

  “Quickly we spun around, but the white stag had already receded from sight. He had grown wings and soared into the sky. We watched him circle around and upward until we could see nothing but the blue. And as we watched, a wave of . . . of tenderness came over me . . . for the beasts . . . even . . . for our enemies. I began to weep, and the same moment I awoke.”

  They were silent several moments.

  “And you think you will find this winged stag in the forest to the north?” posed Cruithne at length.

  “Perhaps not. But I hope to discover what I was meant to understand.”

  “Meant to understand?” queried his brother. “Who would mean you to understand something in a dream? What are dreams but nonsense?”

  “Not always, Cruithne. Pendalpin says I have the second sight.”

  “Bah! Pendalpin is so full of tales, one must be careful what to believe.”

  “Our father listens to him.”

  “As do I, Fidach. But not about everything.”

  “A dangerous word to speak about the tribe’s bard.”

  “I respect Pendalpin. But I do not know if I believe in the second sight. Even Domnall does not claim to possess it, and Domnall is his son.”

  “Nor do I make such a claim. I only say I have dreams, and I try to know what they mean.”

  Fidach paused, then added, “Will you come to Muigh-bhlaraidh Ecgfrith with me?”

  “Certainly!” answered Cruithne jubilantly. “You follow your dream, and I will follow the great stag. Perhaps together we will find what we seek.”

  They rose, again lifted their burden to their shoulders, and started off on the remainder of their trek. It would lead them beside the shores of Loch Laoigh and westward to the hill-fort where dwelt their people.

  Four

  Both young men—the practical huntsman and the lover of the stag—were of twenty-two years. They were not twins, however, but half brothers, sons of their father’s two wives. Born late in Taran’s long life, the boys had since birth been nearly inseparable, bound closer to each other than any half-shared link of blood to the chief could explain—a fact rendered all the more remarkable by the antipathy that existed between their mothers.

  Fidach, witness to the unseen and dreamer of dreams, was the older by almost four months. His features were soft, his skin pale, and his hair black as the pools of water on the moors in the dead of winter. He had inherited his father’s keen mind, as well as the poetic nature of the ancestors about which the bard Pendalpin sang with his harp.

  Perhaps his mother’s nature was more in evidence as Fidach grew older. A quiet, even-tempered woman, Aethilnon did not, like many wives of the tribe, strive to make her matriarchal influence felt. As the chief’s first wife—many said she was still the favored one—she could easily have lorded it over the other women. Instead, she took upon herself as wife of the chief an incumbency to serve her kind. She regarded the chieftainship, and thus her position, as a sacred duty, not as an authority to be flaunted. Whence came this view of her calling it would be difficult to say. It embodied raising the very essence of clan motherhood to the high stature of a loving servant. As old Taran carried the blood of the Wanderer and his son, so she carried that of Eubha-Mathairaichean, the mother, the wife, the source of life.

  Aethilnon could not have been more unlike her rival for the chief’s attentions, Cruithne’s mother Eormen. The question of what had possessed a man of otherwise sensible judgment like Taran to bring under his one roof two such opposites as the scheming and fractious Eormen and the gentle, unselfish Aethilnon was one that had been asked many times by the wisest minds in Caldohnuill. Now that his years were advanced, his two sons now men, and the line of his mother Gabran without a clear successor, it had been widely anticipated that a rivalry would break out between the two sons.

  But such had never occurred. The rivalry dwelt only in the heart of Eormen. The vision of one day rising above other women as mother to the chief had become her consuming passion.

  As for Cruithne, he was clearly of his father’s mold—tall, a muscular man who relied on his hands and feet and prowess of strength and limb. The angularly precise features of his face and the thick, dusty gold thatch of hair atop his head made him always the most instantly visible in any crowd, his natural charisma enhanced by a wide mouth full of white teeth and always ready for a smile or roar of laughter. In a sprint of less than two hundred yards, no man of any age in the tribe was his match, though at longer distances his leaner brother, who might run ten miles or more out of the sheer joy of testing his physical and mental limits, overtook him and left him out of sight. No man in all Caldohnuill was more chieftainlike in his bearing and imposing carriage than young Cruithne, son of Taran.

  Cruithne had also been blessed with a large heart. He loved his brother and would sooner die than seek preeminence over him.

  Indeed, the two youths, for all their vigor and strength of body and mind, rejoiced more in the successes of the other than in their own. Some of the older men had considered the boys feeble of brain in their earlier years because of the sensitive bonds they displayed toward one another. As they grew into adulthood, however, most of these old hunters and warriors and fishermen came to respect Fidach and Cruithne all the more for the ties of their brotherhood.

  Neither boy cared a squirrel’s tail for the chieftainship. It seldom occurred to them that one of them might actually be chief someday, since no son within memory had ever directly succeeded his own father. But then, this was an unusual time, for Gabran had no daughters, no nieces, no nephews. Taran was the only living member of a long line that had preceded him.

  If only, Taran had mused many times, Cruithne might become the warrior chief to lead the people with his strength, and Fidach become the dream-inspired bard to uphold the hearts of the people in song. Together they might rule in harmony.

  There could, however, be but one bard, and Pendalpin was already preparing his own sixteen-year-old son Domnall to follow after him.

  And there could be but one chief.

  Five

  Two hours after their rest, the sons of Taran began the final ascent up the hill to their home, passing the dun, used now for storage of grain, metal tools, or fishing implements, and continued up to the hill-fort. Fires burned in many of the huts as they approached, and from inside the fort, smoke still rose from two of the bake ovens.

  It was young Domnall who first spied their approach.

  “Fidach and Cruithne have returned!” he shouted. “They carry a wild boar!”

  The two set down their porcine burden as a number of the men wandered out of their stone huts to investigate the commotion.

  From around the western wall, Fidach’s mother Aethilnon walked into view.

  “You have returned home I see, my son,” she said. “Good evening to you as well, Cruithne. Your hunt has been successful!”

  “As we had hoped, mother of my friend,” returned Cruithne. “How is our father?”

  “Not well, I fear. He sleeps now. Your mother is with him.”

  “The meat will revive him,” said Fidach.

  “He has longed for fresh boar,” added the woman with a sad smile. “Though I fear it may be the granting of a dying wish rather than an omen of returning vitality.”

  “Do not speak so, Mother. Surely he—”

  “We can talk of it later, my son,” said Aethilnon softly. “The time comes to all. It is not unexpected. But now I must go down the hill. Coelthryth expects me. She too is suffering.”

  “Ah, Mother,” sighed Fidach, “is there not one in all the camp who is not your charge?”

  She laughed. It was a musical laugh, full of pleasure in the unknowing compliment her son had given her.

  “It is my duty to serve our people, Fidach,” she replied. “And my happiness. It is what sustains my health and gives me joy.”

  “You are a g
ood woman, Aethilnon,” said Cruithne. “If only all sons might be blessed with such mothers,” he added wistfully.

  “What does Coelthryth need, Mother?” asked Fidach. “May I be of help?”

  “Only some meal. I bring her barley from our stores. But you might see to her fire. She could surely make use of more wood or peat. The night looks to bring cold with its darkness.”

  “With pleasure. Cruithne,” he said, turning to his brother, “will you see to the boar while I go with Mother?”

  “Domnall will help me,” replied Cruithne as the bard’s son now ran up to meet them. “We will carry it to Uurcell to begin preparations for the chief’s feast tomorrow.”

  “I will see you in the morning, then,” said Fidach. He turned with a wave of his hand and then accompanied his mother down the hill toward a small group of rude huts about a hundred yards away.

  For a few moments Cruithne watched them in silence. Then he turned back to young Domnall, who stood awaiting orders.

  Six

  Forty minutes later Cruithne ducked low and entered the dry-stone house where he dwelt with father, mother, and his father’s other family.

  The chief’s was the largest dwelling of the clachan, or community, supported across the top of its twenty-foot width with large timbers. Under its thick roof of turf and peat were positioned two nearly separate rooms wherein dwelt the chief’s two wives, Eormen and Aethilnon, and their two sons. Each had its own separate hearth, above which a one-foot round hole in the roof emitted the fragrant smoke from peat and occasional oak fires beneath. The floor was of hard-packed dirt, with here and there an animal skin lying upon it. All the walls were two feet thick, constructed of skillfully set stones without mortar. On the windward side of the perimeter, the outside wall of stones had been packed with turf to the height of the roof to protect it from the freezing winds out of the north. Over all the roof was spread a network of dried grasses and thatch that, along with peat, managed to keep out a good deal of the rain and snow which came to that region.