Ho, ro, O Ron dubh, O Ron dubh!
An ainm an Athar, ’s an Mhic, ’s an Spioriad Naoimh,
O Ron-à-mhàra, O Ron dubh!
Then the men sat back, with that dazed look in the eyes I have so often seen in those of men or women of the Isles who are wrought. No word was spoken till we came almost straight upon Eilean-na-h’ Aon-Chaorach. Then at the rocks we tacked, and went splashing up the Sound like a pollack on a Sabbath noon.[11]
“What was wrong with the old man of the sea?” I asked Macrae.
At first he would say nothing. He looked vaguely at a coiled rope; then, with hand-shaded gaze, across to the red rocks at Fionnaphort. I repeated my question. He took refuge in English.
“It wass ferry likely the Clansman would be pringing ta new minister-body. Did you pe knowing him, or his people, or where he came from?”
But I was not to be put off thus; and at last, while Ivor stared down the green-shelving lawns of the sea below us, Phadric told me this thing. His reluctance was partly due to the shyness which, with the Gael, almost invariably follows strong emotion, and partly to that strange, obscure, secretive instinct which is also so characteristically Celtic, and often prevents Gaels of far apart isles, or of different clans, from communicating to each other stories or legends of a peculiarly intimate kind.