“Is it not beautiful, my fawn?” he asked, with tears in his eyes. Then, without waiting for my answer, he said quietly, “Listen, dear, and I will tell you.”
He was strangely still—breathless, he seemed to me—for a minute or more. Then he spoke.
“I was little more than a child—a boy just in my teens—when something happened, something that came down the Rainbow-Arches of Cathair-Sìth.” He paused here, perhaps to see if I followed, which I did, familiar as I was with all fairy-lore. “I was out upon the heather, in the time when the honey oozes in the bells and cups. I had always loved the island and the sea. Perhaps I was foolish, but I was so glad with my joy that golden day that I threw myself on the ground and kissed the hot, sweet ling, and put my hands and arms into it, sobbing the while with my vague, strange yearning. At last I lay still, nerveless, with my eyes closed. Suddenly I was aware that two tiny hands had come up through the spires of the heather, and were pressing something soft and fragrant upon my eyelids. When I opened them, I could see nothing unfamiliar. No one was visible. But I heard a whisper: ‘Arise and go away from this place at once; and this night do not venture out, lest evil befall you.’ So I rose, trembling, and went home. Thereafter I was the same, and yet not the same. Never could I see as they saw, what my father and brothers or the isle-folk looked upon as ugly or dreary. My father was wroth me many times, and called me a fool. Whenever my eyes fell upon those waste and desolated spots, they seemed to me passing fair, radiant with lovely light. At last my father grew so bitter that, mocking me the while, he bade me go to the towns and see there the squalor and sordid hideousness wherein men dwelled. But thus it was with me: in the places they call slums, and among the smoke of factories and the grime of destitution, I could see all that other men saw, only as vanishing shadows. What I saw was lovely, beautiful with strange glory, and the faces of men and women were sweet and pure, and their souls were white. So, weary and bewildered with my unwilling quest, I came back to Eilanmore. And on the day of my home-coming, Morag was there—Morag of the Falls. She turned to my father and called him blind and foolish. ‘He has the white light upon his brows,’ she said of me; ‘I can see it, like the flicker-light in a wave when the wind’s from the south in thunder-weather. He has been touched with the Fairy Ointment. The Guid Folk know him. It will be thus with him till the day of his death, if a duinshee can die, being already a man dead yet born anew. He upon whom the Fairy Ointment has been laid must see all that is ugly and hideous and dreary and bitter through a glamour of beauty. Thus it hath been since the Mhic-Alpine ruled from sea to sea, and thus is it with the man Alison your son.’
“That is all, my fawn; and that is why my brothers, when they are angry, sometimes call me the Anointed Man.”
“That is all.” Yes, perhaps. But oh, Alison Achanna, how often have I thought of that most precious treasure you found in the heather, when the bells were sweet with honey-ooze! Did the wild bees know of it? Would that I could hear the soft hum of their gauzy wings.
Who of us would not barter the best of all our possessions—and some there are who would surrender all—to have one touch laid upon the eyelids—one touch of the Fairy Ointment? But the place is far, and the hour is hidden. No man may seek that for which there can be no quest.
Only the wild bees know of it; but I think they must be the bees of Magh-Mell. And there no man that liveth may wayfare—yet.
THE HILLS OF RUEL
THE HILLS OF RUEL
One night Eilidh and Isla and I were sitting before a fire, of pine logs blazing upon peats, and listening to the snow as it whispered against the walls of the house. The wind crying in the glen, and the tumult of the hill-stream in spate, were behind the white confused rumour of the snow.