I. THE FESTIVAL OF THE BIRDS.
II. THE SABBATH OF THE FISHES AND THE FLIES.
III. THE MOON-CHILD.
I
THE FESTIVAL OF THE BIRDS
BEFORE dawn, on the morning of the hundredth Sabbath after Colum the White had made glory to God in Hy, that was theretofore called Ioua and thereafter I-shona and is now Iona, the Saint beheld his own Sleep in a vision.
Much fasting and long pondering over the missals, with their golden and azure and sea-green initials and earth-brown branching letters, had made Colum weary. He had brooded much of late upon the mystery of the living world that was not man’s world.
On the eve of that hundredth Sabbath, which was to be a holy festival in Iona, he had talked long with an ancient graybeard out of a remote isle in the north, the wild Isle of the Mountains where Scathach the Queen hanged the men of Lochlin by their yellow hair.
This man’s name was Ardan, and he was of the ancient people. He had come to Hy because of two things. Maolmòr, the King of the northern Picts, had sent him to learn of Colum what was this god-teaching he had brought out of Eiré: and for himself he had come, with his age upon him, to see what manner of man this Colum was, who had made Ioua, that was “Innis-nan-Dhruidhneach”—the Isle of the Druids—into a place of new worship.