Legend of the Celtic Stone

by Michael Phillips

  Foltlaig waited for his words to penetrate. He then resumed in a moderate voice.

  “But despite the challenge of Gaelbhan,” he said, “our people were slaughtered by the thousands that day—slaughtered by the swords of this same enemy we now face. Were the words of Gaelbhan then in vain?”

  Again he waited.

  “I think not,” Foltlaig answered his own question. “It is still true that only by united effort will we succeed in preserving the freedom of the land that our ancestors possessed before the tramp of foreign armies was heard in the north.

  “But it is all our tribes that must join together, not just the Caledonii. Never has there been such a gathering of tribal leaders, laying aside past hostilities and disputes over land and regions. I say that we will indeed join as the brothers of ancient blood that we are. We are, as Gaelbhan prophesied, the last dwellers on this remote corner of earth’s shores. We must now show what manner of warrior we bring to the defense of our land!”

  “Is that why you have summoned us here, to rouse the men and women from our tribes to united attack?” asked Deargicca of the Damnonii, the single female chief among them. She was a woman of enormous frame, with long reddish brown hair and deep voice. A knife was strapped to her colored tunic, and her muscular wrist and forearm indicated that she knew well how to use it. She wore a twisted torque of gold about her neck and bracelets on both wrists, and a large brooch upon her chest fastened the cloak about her shoulders. One look in her eyes confirmed that an adversary would be foolish to underestimate her. “I am no coward,” she said, “but I do not relish Boudicca’s fate.”

  “What if they come out with thrice our muster?” added a Borestii warrior. “I too fought as a young man at Mons Graupius. I have no wish to see our people cut down again.”

  “We will fight to the death when we must,” added another. “But to do so is foolish if the cause is lost before it is begun.”

  Foltlaig raised his voice above the clamor of dissent that began to rise. “We must not only unite,” he said. “We must employ cunning. What I propose is to a different purpose than the mere raising of weapons.”

  “Warriors such as the Romans understand only the sword!” called out another.

  “Superior armies will never be ours,” rejoined Foltlaig. “The defeat of Gaelbhan proved that merely to raise swords against them is not enough. It will never be enough. Should all the tribes of Pictland join together, and every man and woman go out into battle . . . it will not be enough. This is a thinly peopled land. The enemies from the south will always possess greater numbers. So we must be shrewd. We must bring our wits to the aid of our swords.”

  “This is fool’s talk!” exclaimed one of the generals.

  “To go out with mere weapons,” Foltlaig answered levelly, “would be to face defeat again. I ask you—are you content to share your land with these Romans?”

  A general murmur throughout the gathering—resembling more the growling of angry dogs than a council of war—indicated the answer clearly enough.

  “Then we must achieve such an end with smaller numbers. I am certain the chieftainess of the Damnonii understands my meaning,” he added, glancing toward Deargicca, then the other three women present. Deargicca returned his gaze coldly, without expression. “The women of our kind do not rise to such positions of leadership among many men without superior wits and cunning.”

  One or two of the women answered by inclining their heads slightly in assent. Still the Damnonii chieftainess stared.

  “What is your plan, Foltlaig?” asked Ainbach of the Maeatae, who had the advantage of already having heard its general outline. “We will listen.”

  “To attack quickly, and by night—with a force so small as to be invisible.”

  “They fear us,” objected another, “with our war cries and our painted bodies. We are no cowards to steal about in the darkness!”

  “When the time is right for battle, we will face them with cries and our swords. But our numbers are far too small to confront their entire force. Far better to strike at the heart of their army, yet without losing our own. The blow that will carry throughout the land must be struck with stealth.”

  “How, Son of Gatheon?” asked Deargicca. At last she was intrigued.

  Foltlaig did not respond immediately. Now that he had their attention, he would choose his words with care.

  “With the coming of the first frost, send me forty of your strongest, swiftest, and most agile warriors from each of your seven tribes. There must be at least two skilled spearsmen among them. With these two hundred eighty, we will defeat this empire.”

  “You would defeat Rome with less than three hundred!” said the astonished Selgovae chief.

  “Perhaps not the entire empire,” replied Foltlaig, “but the corner of it that would bring our land under its domination.”

  “Bah! I ask again . . . how?”

  “The men you send—or women of equal skill—must be fleet of foot, able to survive in the wilds, and willing to obey my every command. Give me such individuals, and the legions will draw back across the southern hills from which they came.”

  This was not what any had expected. Except for Ainbach, each of the other leaders had come anticipating an invitation to amass their troops and descend upon the enemy in all-out war.

  The gathering fell silent. They pondered now the unexpected claim of Coel’s commander. They respected the reputation of the son of Gatheon. He was surely no fool. They would have to hear more.

  When the convocation broke up forty minutes later, each of the chiefs was satisfied. The way Foltlaig had laid out the details of his plan, the risk seemed small for so great an objective. Once he had gained the confidence of the wild-haired Deargicca and Ainbach, the others quickly joined in support.

  “Will druids accompany the forces so that the gods are with them?” asked the Borestii chief.

  “Your druids must offer their prayers and sacrifices in your villages and holy places, but may not accompany us. Speed and invisibility will be our allies. There can be no extra men or women among us.”

  A few murmurs went about. They knew their priests and magicians might object. If they agreed to Foltlaig’s plan, this was a chance they would have to take.

  “Why should our warriors travel all the way north to you, only to return southward again when you make your attacks?” asked the Selgovan leader. “Why do you not amass your troops nearer the fortresses of the enemy?”

  “The training will be the most vital phase in our success,” replied Foltlaig. “It can only be carried out far from risk of discovery. Your lands are too crossed with Roman byways.”

  Nods went around the group. At last all the questions had been satisfactorily answered.

  That same evening, the Caledonii of Rannoch treated their guests to a great celebration, a lavish feast of wild boar and highland venison. How long the leaders of the seven Pict tribes would remain on such friendly terms as to eat and drink, sing, and make merry together might have been a question to ponder. For now, however, none seemed inclined to raise past disputes. By the time the fires of the camp burned low and they retired to their beds, it was very late, and most of the guests were more than half drunk. The Caledonii had spared nothing in their hospitality, even to the liberal provision of the best wine and ale from Coel’s personal stores.

  When the visitors left for their home regions two and three days hence, all had agreed to the plan of Coel’s trusted general. When the warmth of summer was past, the assembling would commence of the two hundred eighty Picts who would withstand an empire.

  Until then, Foltlaig and his son continued to work out the tactics whereby they would coordinate the companies of tens and seventies that would provide the foundation of their force.

  Father and son spent the months of summer scouting through the land like Moses’ twelve, yet with the faith of Caleb and Joshua, traveling to and spying upon their intended targets. Under the very noses of their enemy, joining w
ith local natives selling livestock and produce, they managed to penetrate most of the forts. There they silently observed and mentally practiced what must be done.

  Thus were the details of their scheme perfected.

  Ten

  In late August, Foltlaig and Maelchon returned north to Rannoch through the lands of the Maeatae. At least temporarily there was no fear of harm from the southern descendants of their ancient Roismaeatae cousins who had slain King Cruithne’s beloved brother.

  As they were crossing the central plain between the forests of Ard and the Great River, which centuries hence would be called the Forth, Foltlaig’s thoughts bent themselves toward the distant northlands from which the ancestors of the present Caledonii and Maeatae had migrated.

  He had been waiting years for the right moment to take his son to the ancient stones and there, within sight of the deserted hill-fort and broch of Caldohnuill, to explain their meaning. His own father had made that same northern sojourn with him shortly before they left with the rest to fight for Mons Graupius.

  Such had been the Caledonii tradition, his father had told him, since the days of Cruithne himself. One by one the old king had taken his own sons, when they were well advanced into manhood, to the place where he had spent his early years. There had the king told to each the meaning of the stones and enjoined upon them the duty of carrying on the tradition. And there, for generations to come, the descendants of Cruithne had likewise taken their own sons.

  “Your own sons must be told,” Gatheon had told Foltlaig, “though that is not enough. You must not only tell them of Cruithne and Fidach. You must also teach them to tell their sons and their sons after them. Otherwise the message will die out in a few generations. Though bards pass along stories of the past, every father must be a bard to his own sons and daughters. You must take them to the stones, as I have taken you, that they might feel the ancient vision with their hands and also observe the cost of failing to heed it. Our grandsons must be told to pass it on to their grandsons and to teach their grandsons to do likewise—into future generations . . . for all time.”

  As Foltlaig grew older he had come to see the wisdom of old Cruithne’s patriarchal charge, dedicated to a principle that would extend in perpetuity to future generations. For the truth to be permanent, the generational links must not be broken.

  As great as was his confidence in the plan he had devised, thought Foltlaig, when man went to battle one could never be certain of the outcome. Within two moons of his own visit to the monument as a young man, his father had fallen dead on the field of battle. Now was the time. He could wait no longer. Maelchon would father his own sons and daughters before many more years. The charge must be given.

  When father and son arrived back at Rannoch after their final scouting mission, Foltlaig announced to Coel that all was in readiness. They now awaited only the proper season to strike. He then begged leave to journey to the north with his son. They would be gone perhaps three weeks.

  Coel nodded his assent. He understood the importance of the standing stones and the slab of Laoigh. He too was descended from Cruithne, through the line of Circinn, and he too had sons. And they were all descended from him who was said to rest under the great sacred stone.

  Three days later, Foltlaig and Maelchon set out on their northward journey, pursuing a course through the rugged Highlands. Many settlements and encampments of their own Caledonii brethren lay along their route. But they kept to themselves. This was a time for father and son to talk and laugh, to hunt and eat, to stalk game and share dreams, to sit and talk by the fire long into the night as two men—as comrades in the spartan challenge that life presented to those of these regions. Though their steps were hundreds of miles removed from those of their most ancient patriarchs—the Wanderer and his son—the feet of these two yet fell along the same pathways by which the old Celt’s three grandsons had first carried the ancient Boii bloodline into these northern climes.

  As they went, Foltlaig recounted to his son, as he often had before, many tales and legends of antiquity. Though the night rarely blackened their land during these warm months, it yet brought a subdued and quiet atmosphere. During its hours of solitude, Foltlaig broke occasionally into wailing chant or mournful melody as they sat by the fire, harmonizing in curious combination the characteristics of both his venerable ancient forebears—the Hunter, from whom he derived his wiles and prowess, and Highland Mystic, from whom emerged the poet and bard.

  The legacy of these early Celts of the north had been passed down in this way from father to son and mother to daughter, by word of mouth, over the ages. Eubha-Mathairaichean had given the charge to the Wanderer’s three grandsons. Taran had passed his life—and Pendalpin, his bard, had instilled a veneration for the past—into the two brothers who, centuries in advance of their time, understood how man had been appointed on this earth to relate to his fellows. The son of Gatheon now passed the same tradition of both bard and father on to his son.

  Arriving finally at Beinn Donuill, father and son took seats on the great jutting slab down the slope from the peak, as was the custom, gazing toward the two raised stones a short distance from them, and beyond across the valley floor to the disused ruins of the hill-fort of Laoigh. A long silence fell between them—the healthy silence of contemplation.

  “In unity is brotherhood—such is the meaning of the stones, my son,” said Foltlaig at length.

  “You have told me of them many times, Father,” replied Maelchon softly. “Now that I have seen the stones, and felt them with my own hands, I know they could not have been brought here, and raised upon this mountain, without many men laboring in brotherhood and unity.”

  “As we must now do against the intruders.”

  “Is that why you brought me here now?”

  Foltlaig nodded. “The stones are indeed fit symbol of the truth they reveal,” he said. “For our time and, as Chief Cruithne knew, for the times of all men.”

  “I will remember everything you have told me this day. So too shall my own sons remember.”

  “They must tell their own sons after them and teach them likewise to pass on the truth of brotherhood to their descendants.”

  “I will not forget, Father. What about this giant stone we are seated upon?”

  “Legends abound, my son,” replied Foltlaig. “It is said that the earth below it contains the bones of the most ancient pilgrim to this region. But the tales grow faint with the passing of years. Most of what I know concerns the nearby monument of the brothers.”

  Maelchon nodded. He set his hand upon the great stone below them and slowly rubbed his fingers back and forth across its rough surface, wondering if the legend could be true. Gone now, after centuries of weathering, were the images Fidach had noticed more than three centuries earlier, carved originally by her who had truly become a Source of life to the stalwart race who now occupied the land.

  After a few moments more, the two men climbed down off the prehistoric tomb and walked back down the mountain slope. They now stood pondering the standing pillars of the monument.

  “Why do we not raise the flat stone upon the two standing stones?” asked Maelchon.

  “What is your proposal?” laughed Foltlaig. “That we two do what the great Cruithne was unable to accomplish?”

  “I do not mean alone, Father. We could bring others, many of our men! When we are successful in driving out the soldiers from the south, why should we not signify the event by completing the monument?”

  Foltlaig smiled in fond reminiscence.

  “I asked the same thing of my father,” he answered. “Youth are always full of the dream to surpass what their fathers have done.”

  “What did my grandfather tell you when you asked?”

  “He gave me the same wisdom that I shall now pass on to you,” replied Foltlaig. “My father told me that the stones must be preserved as they are—as you now see them begun but unfinished, with the images upon them incomplete.”

  “But why
, Father?”

  “Such was Cruithne’s wish, which his seven sons passed on to those who came after. They must remain such as a reminder of what fleeting thing is the goodwill these stones represent—how fragile is unity, how easily broken.”

  Maelchon nodded. At last he apprehended the deeper significance of the monument.

  “Unity is a high thing for men to seek,” his father continued. “But when they forget brotherhood, it is undone. These stones of an unfinished monument not only help us remember the dream, they also remind us of the consequence when brotherhood is cast aside.”

  Maelchon observed the partially carved outline on the stone. “Tell me again of the white stag, Father,” he said.

  “It was the stag who caused the brothers to raise the monument—who summoned the men of this land to harmony. The brothers said that such was the message in his eyes.”

  “Is it true that King Cruithne could have killed him?”

  “It is another of the stories from the old times. My father said that the stag appeared to the brothers. Whether either had it in his earthly power to do the beast harm, who can say?”

  “When will the white stag be seen again in Caledonia, Father?”

  Maelchon knew the answer he would hear. He had asked the same question a dozen times throughout his life. It was part of the tradition that bound these people together, to ask and to listen. It was his duty as a son to ask the question, and to hear over and over the same answer he would give his own sons when he had taught them to inquire of the stag. It was a tradition that had come through the bardic line of their people from Pendalpin to Domnal down to the present time.

  “The stag will return,” answered Foltlaig solemnly, carrying out his portion of the sacred prophetic charge, “when brotherhood has come to our land. He will then allow men to gaze upon him. At last he will be pleased with them, for they will then have lain down the disputes that divide them. His return will signal that freedom will have come to Caledonia. When the land is one day united under a single king, legend says he will stand upon the great slab of antiquity. Upon it then will he take his crown, as symbol and reminder of those who came before, from whose loins we all have sprung.”