That night, with the sea breaking less than a score yards from where I lay, I slept, though for three nights I had not been able to sleep. When I woke, my trouble was gone.
It was but a reminder to me. But to others it was more than that.
I remember that winter for another thing, which I may write of here.
From the fisherman's wife with whom I lodged I learned that her daughter had recently borne a son, but was now up and about again, though for the first time, that morning. We went to her, about noon. She was not in the house. A small cabbage-garden lay behind, and beyond it the mossy edge of a wood of rowans and birches broke steeply in bracken and loneroid. The girl was there, and had taken the child from her breast, and kneeling, was touching the earth with the small lint-white head.
I asked her what she was doing. She said it was the right thing to do; that as soon as possible after the child was born, the mother should take it—and best, at noon, and facing the sun—and touch its brow to the earth. My friends (like many islanders of the Inner Hebrides, they had no Gaelic) used an unfamiliar phrase; "It's the old Mothering." It was, in truth, the sacrament of Our Mother, but in a far ancient sense. I do not doubt the rite is among the most primitive of those practised by the Celtic peoples.
I have not seen it elsewhere, though I have heard of it. Probably it is often practised yet in remote places. Even where we were, the women were somewhat fearful lest "the minister" heard of what the young mother had done. They do not love these beautiful symbolic actions, these "ministers," to whom they are superstitions. This old, pagan, sacramental earth-rite is, certainly, beautiful. How could one better be blessed, on coming into life, than to have the kiss of that ancient Mother of whom we are all children? There must be wisdom in that first touch. I do not doubt that behind the symbol lies, at times, the old miraculous communication. For, even in this late day, some of us are born with remembrance, with dumb worship, with intimate and uplifting kinship to that Mother.
Since then I have asked often, in many parts of the Highlands and Islands, for what is known of this rite, when and where practised, and what meanings it bears; and some day I hope to put these notes on record. I am convinced that the Earth-Blessing is more ancient than the westward migration of the Celtic peoples.
I have both read and heard of another custom, though I have not known of it at first-hand. The last time I was told of it was of a crofter and his wife in North Uist. The once general custom is remembered in a familiar Gaelic saying, the English of which is, "He got a turn through the smoke." After baptism, a child was taken from the breast, and handed by its mother (sometimes the child was placed in a basket) to the father, across the fire. I do not think, but am not sure, if any signal meaning lie in the mother handing the child to the father. When the rite is spoken of, as often as not it is only "the parents" that the speaker alludes to. The rite is universally recognised as a spell against the dominion, or agency, of evil spirits. In Coll and Tiree, it is to keep the Hidden People from touching or singing to the child. I think it is an ancient propitiatory rite, akin to that which made our ancestors touch the new-born to earth; as that which makes some islanders still baptize a child with a little spray from the running wave, or a fingerful of water from the tide at the flow; as that which made an old woman lift me as a little child and hold me up to the south wind, "to make me strong and fair and always young, and to keep back death and sorrow, and to keep me safe from other winds and evil spirits." Old Barabal has gone where the south wind blows, in blossom and flowers and green leaves, across the pastures of Death; and I ... alas, I can but wish that One stronger than she, for all her love, will lift me, as a child again, to the Wind, and pass me across the Fire, and set me down again upon a new Earth.