He had pleasure in telling sgeul after sgeul of the ancient days. Far more readily at all times would he repeat stories of this dim past he loved so well than the more intimate tales which had his own pulse beating in them, as “The Daughter of the Sun” and others that I have given elsewhere. Often he would look up from where he held his face in his hands as he brooded into the dull steadfast flame that consumed the core of the peats; and without preamble, and with words in no apparent way linked to those last spoken, would narrate some brief episode, and always as one who had witnessed the event. Sometimes, indeed, these brief tales were like waves: one saw them rise, congregate, and expand in a dark billow—and the next moment there was a vanishing puff of spray and the billow had lapsed.
I cannot recall many of these fugitive tales—seanachas, as he spoke of them collectively, for each sgeul was of the past, and had its roots in legendary lore—but of those that remained with me, here are four. All came upon me as birds flying in the dark: I knew not whence they came or upon what wind they had steered their mysterious course. They were there, that was all. Ancient things come again in Ian’s brain: or recovered out of the dim days, and seen anew through the wonder-lens of his imagination.
It was in a white June, as they call it, in the third year after the pirates of Lochlin had fed the corbies of the Hebrid Isles, that the summer-sailors once more came down the Minch of Skye.
An east wind blew fresh from the mountains, though between dawn and sunrise it veered till it chilled itself upon the granite peaks of the Cuchullins, and then leaped north-westward with the white foam of its feet caught from behind by the sun-glint.
The vikings on board the Svart-Alf laughed at that. The spray flew from the curved black prow of the great galley, and the wake danced in the dazzle—the sea-cream that they loved to see.
Tall men they were, and comely. Their locks of yellow or golden or ruddy hair, sometimes braided, sometimes all acurl like a chestnut-tree bud-breaking in April, sometimes tangled like sea-wrack caught in a whirl of wind and tide, streamed upon their shoulders. In their blue eyes was a shining as though there were torches of white flame behind them: and that shining was mild or fierce as home or blood filled their brain.
The Svart-Alf was the storm-bird of a fleet of thirty galleys which had set forth from Lochlin under the raven-banner of Olaus the White. The vikings had joyed in a good faring. Singing south winds had blown them to the Faroe Isles, where from Magnus Cleft-Hand they had good cheer, and the hire of three men who knew the Western Isles and had been with the sea-kings who had harried them here and there again and again.
From Magnus-stead they went forth swelled with mead and ale and cow-beef: and they laughed because of what they would give in payment on their way back with golden torques and bracelets and other treasure, young slaves, women dark and fair, and the jewel-hilted weapons of the island-lords.
Cold black winds out of the north-east drove them straight upon the Ord of Sutherland. They sang with joy the noon when they rounded Cape Wrath and came under the shadow of the hills. The dawn that followed was red not only in the sky but on the sheen of the sword-blades. It was the Song of the Sword that day, and there is no song like that for the flaming of the blood. The dark men of Torridon were caught unawares. For seven days thereafter the corbies and ravens glutted themselves drinking at red pools beside the stripped bodies which lay stark and stiff upon the heather. The firing of a score of homesteads smouldered till the rains came, a day and two nights after the old women who had been driven to the moors stole back wailing. The maids and wives were carried off in the galleys: and for nine days, at a haven in the lone coast opposite the Summer Isles, their tears, their laughter, their sullen anger, their wild gaiety, their passionate despair gave joy to the yellow-haired men. On the ninth day they were carried southward on the summer-sailing. At a place called Craig-Feeach, Raven’s Crag, in the north of Skye, where a Norse Erl had a great Dûn that he had taken from the son of a king from Eirèann whose sea-nest it had been, Olaus the White rested awhile. The women were left there as a free spoil: save three who were so fair that Olaus kept one, and Haco and Sweno his chief captains took the others.
Then, on an evening when the wind was from the north, Olaus and ten galleys went down the sound. Sweno the Hammerer was to strike across the west for the great island that is called Lewis: Haco the Laugher was to steer for the island that is called Harris: and Olaus himself was to reach the haven called Ljotr-wick in the Isle of the Thousand Waters that is Benbecula.