In the spring of the year that my boy Tormaid died, the moon-daisies were as thick as a woven shroud over the place where Giorsal, the daughter of Ian, the son of Ian MacLeod of Baille ’n Bad-a-sgailich, slept night and day.[11]
[11] Baille ’n Bad-a-sgailich: the Farm of the Shadowy Clump of Trees. Cairstine, or Cairistine, is the Gaelic for Christian, as Tormaid is for Norman, and Giorsal for Grace. “The quiet havens” is the beautiful island phrase for graves. Here, also, a swift and fatal consumption that falls upon the doomed is called “The White Fever.” By “the mainland,” Harris and Lewis are meant.
All that March the cormorants screamed, famished. There were few fish in the sea, and no kelp-weed was washed up by the high tides. In the island and in the near isles, ay, and far north through the mainland, the blight lay. Many sickened. I knew young mothers who had no milk. There are green mounds in Carnan kirk-yard that will be telling you of what this meant. Here and there are little green mounds, each so small that you might cuddle it in your arm under your plaid.
Tormaid sickened. A bad day was that for him when he came home, weary with the sea, and drenched to the skin, because of a gale that caught him and his mates off Barra Head. When the March winds tore down the Minch, and leaped out from over the Cuchullins, and came west, and lay against our homes, where the peats were sodden and there was little food, the minister told me that my lad would be in the quiet havens before long. This was because of the white fever. It was of that same that Giorsal waned, and went out like a thin flame in sunlight.
The son of my man (years ago weary no more) said little ever. He ate nothing almost, even of the next to nothing we had. At nights he couldna sleep because of the cough. The coming of May lifted him awhile. I hoped he would see the autumn; and that if he did, and the herring came, and the harvest was had, and what wi’ this and what wi’ that, he would forget his Giorsal that lay i’ the mools in the quiet place yonder. Maybe then, I thought, the sorrow would go, and take its shadow with it.
One gloaming he came in with all the whiteness of his wasted body in his face. His heart was out of its shell; and mine, too, at the sight of him.[12]
[12] A cochall a’ chridhe: his heart out of its shell—a phrase often used to express sudden derangement from any shock. The ensuing phrase means the month from the 15th of July to the 15th of August, Mios crochaidh nan con, so called as it is supposed to be the hottest if not the most waterless month in the isles. The word claar used below, is the name given a small wooden tub, into which the potatoes are turned when boiled.
This was in the season of the hanging of the dog’s mouth.
“What is it, Tormaid-a-ghaolach?” I asked, with the sob that was in my throat.
“Thraisg mo chridhe,” he muttered (my heart is parched). Then, feeling the asking in my eyes, he said, “I have seen her.”