William Sharp (Fiona Macleod): A Memoir Compiled by His Wife Elizabeth A. Sharp

by Elizabeth A. Sharp

Nov. 29, 1900.

My dear Miss Macleod,

I left one or two of your questions unanswered in my last. I am no Celtic scholar. It was your ‘Prayer of the Women’ which suggested to me first how far you might feel for your sisters, and how far you might journey to find succour....

A woman who gazes into Columba’s Well and sees how the bubbles burst on its surface, needs all her own wisdom lest she be dizzy, and a hand held out from the opposite side the spring may help her to gaze more steadily. Midhir, I believe to be the same as the oriental Mitherd, the Recipient of Light, and its translator in the Midhc-Myth, A voice from the “Otherworld” as you say, but the wearer of the Miter, speaking not from the Underworld, but the Upperworld i.e. He is a High Priest speaking in the full light of the Sun.

Etain is difficult, and my own ideas by no means formulated. I merely suggest that ere your Etain was born, her name typified the strong hope of the singer, his immortality, his knowledge that the Sun not merely creates but re-creates in renewed beauty.

If you remember Cairbre, the son of Etain, you may also remember those other Ethainn who sung before the Ark in a far country. The Father is put on one side for the Mother, by the singer, the Mother for the Bride. Even Milton, puritan though he was, must invoke a woman to the aid of “adventurous song” and is careful not to change the sex when in the Muse of Sinni and Silva is seen the Spirit of the Creator.

As regards Dalua, I know nothing of him by name except what you yourself have written. Is there any connection between the name and Dala (the Celtic) which is sometimes found in company with Brat and Death, in your Celtic genealogies?

At the same time I have dimly guessed all my life how folly might be better than the wisdom of wise men, and remembering dimly how much wiser I was myself as a child than after I had grown up, I have incessantly desired a return to that state of childish thought, and tried to learn from children, when I had the chance, the secrets of their folly which carried them so near to divinity, if they were not hurried away from their vision by those about them.

J. A. G.

The Essay entitled “Celtic” had originally appeared in the Contemporary Review a few weeks before the publication of the new volume, and had aroused considerable comment. In Britain it was regarded as a clear statement of the aims and ideas of the so-called Celtic Revival—(a term which “F. M.” greatly disliked). It was otherwise in Ireland, and naturally so, considering the different conditions on both sides of the Irish channel out of which the movement had grown. On this side political considerations had not touched the question; it was mainly concerned with the preservation of the old language, with racial characteristic feelings, and their expression in literature. On the other side of the water, the workers had many more issues at heart than in the Highlands. So the Highland Celt and the Irish Celts did not quite understand one another; an animated correspondence ensued in private and in the press. The Irish press was divided in its opinion on ‘Celtic,’ because the writers were not of one mind among themselves in their methods of working towards the one end all Celts have at heart. There were those, who being ardent Nationalists regarded the Celtic literary movement as one with the political, or as greatly coloured by it. This factor gave a special element to the Irish phase of the movement which sharply differentiated it from the movement in Scotland, Wales or Brittany. Other workers were interested in the movement as a whole, in each of the “six Celtic Nations,” and “The Celtic Association” was formed, with Lord Castletown at its head, with a view of keeping each of the six branches of the movement in touch with each other: the Irish, Scots, Welsh, Manx, Breton, and Cornish or British. This Society desired to make a Federation of these working sections an actuality, and to that end decided to hold a Pan Celtic Congress every three years. The first of these was held in Dublin, and to it my husband subscribed as W. S. and as F. M., though, as an obvious precaution against detection, he did not attend it.