They were the prophetic words of one who had spent his life in converting a people almost as savage and invincible—the Picts.
CHAPTER XII.
The Fair.
More than a year had gone by since his flight from Damnonia when Cormac found himself once more in Britain. Following the advice of S. Columba, he landed in Northern Wales; and, leaving the body of his warriors to follow, made haste to the great Fair on the banks of the Conway, in connection with the ancient assembly—the Gorsedd, from which arose, a little later, the Eisteddfod.
He was almost unattended. He wished to mix, as a stranger, with the crowd at the Fair, believing in this manner he would more easily become acquainted with the people from whom he wished to gather warriors.
Long before he arrived at the scene of the Fair he found the country scattered with the mares and stallions of the visitors, who had journeyed there before him. As he rode down a rich glade the clang and clash of barbaric music came to his ears, a quaint city rose in sight, backed by wild and glorious hills. The walls of the city were shaped into a triangle; they bristled with spear and pike-point, standard and pennon. The one and twenty towers, rising from the walls, were hung with quaint scrolls written with the weird characters of the Ogham language, bidding all the world make merry in the assembly that Aedd the Great had founded centuries before Julius Cæsar had landed in Britain.
The scent of mead came to Cormac’s nostrils as he entered the crowded labyrinths of the Fair. Great vats of it were piled just near the entrance; some of the vats had been broken open, the mead spilt upon the ground, its pungent sweetness filling the air—the famous Pictish mead brewed from heath honey, and so fragrant that Boetius believed it was brewed from flowers themselves. Beside the spilt mead some drunken Caledonian Picts were sleeping in the sunshine; their wares lay around them—brooms, brushes, and beds of heather, and soft bales of yellow heath-dyed wool, bound together by hempen ropes.
Passing through a place of barter Cormac found himself amongst booths and work-shops. On every side was a continuous crush of musicians, merchants, snake-charmers, bards, and law-givers. Spinners, potters, carpenters, workers in gold and silver cried their wares. Everything was offered to the passer-by, from an ingot of gold to roasted cow-flesh on spits. Now came a blinding flash from sun-lit metal, and a sword was thrust in Cormac’s face. Gold and silver-smiths were proclaiming their work. “An Excalibur! An Excalibur!” they chanted. “Without trouble of crossing the lake and suing unto Morgan le Fay! Young men and warriors! An Excalibur!”
Other marvels of their work they showed; delicate thread of pure gold as fine as hair, and sword handles of such miraculous workmanship that a square inch of mosaic held on its surface more than two thousand points of gold.
Cormac made his way, with care, through mazes of pottery—art brought from Rome. There was precious Samian ware; red, satin-glazed and wrought with fairy-like ornament—fit for daintiest lady, and so highly prized that when broken it was delicately mended with rivets of bronzed lead; plain biscuit ware, shaped into lamps, and other common vessels of black Roman pottery. He stopped and watched the play of the potter’s wheel—as hundreds have done before and after him—to see the clay, rising birdlike, to the potter’s hand; receiving there, as it were, his life and thought—created, not made. Poets sang of its dance of joy upon the wheel; bards symbolised its play in their music. Homer had compared the rhythm of its rise and fall under the potter’s hand to a dance.
Then he lingered, fascinated, before the work of the Gaulish bell-casters. Fair and noble ladies knelt before the furnace and cast therein their ornaments of gold and silver; a joy and penance—both—that they should add to the golden tongues that called the folk to prayer; some of the little four-sided bells bore upon them that mystic form of the cross—the Fylfot.