This is the longest letter I have written for—well, I know not when. But, then, you are a good friend.
Believe me, yours most sincerely,
Fiona Macleod.
To Mons. Anatole Le Braz, the Breton romance-writer and folklorist, F. M. had written previously:
Dear M. Le Braz,
Your letter was a great pleasure to me. It was the more welcome as coming from one who is not only an author whose writings have a constant charm for me, but as from a Celtic comrade and spiritual brother who is also the foremost living exponent of the Breton genius. It may interest you to know that I am preparing an étude on Contemporary Breton (i. e. Franco-Breton) Literature; which, however, will be largely occupied with consideration of your own high achievement in prose and verse.
It gives me sincere pleasure to send to you by this post a copy of the ‘popular’ edition of Adamnan’s Life of St. Colum—which please me by accepting. You will find, below these primitive and often credulous legends of Iona a beauty of thought and a certain poignant exquisiteness of sentiment that cannot but appeal to you, a Breton of the Bretons....
It seems to me that in writing the spiritual history of Iona I am writing the spiritual history of the Gael, of all our Celtic race. The lovely wonderful little island sometimes appears to me as a wistful mortal, in his eyes the pathos of infinite desires and inalienable ideals—sometimes as a woman, beautiful, wild, sacred, inviolate, clad in rags, but aureoled with the Rainbows of the west.
“Tell the story of Iona, and you go back to God, and end in God.” (The first words of my ‘spiritual history’)....