Where the forest murmurs

by William Sharp

The Awakening of the Bat ... yes, that too is a sign that Spring has gone by, singing on her northward way and weaving coronals of primrose and cowslip, or from her unfolded lap throwing clouds of blossom on this hawthorn or on this apple-orchard, or where the wind-a-quiver pear leans over the pasture from the garden-edge, or where in green hollows the wild-cherry holds the nest of a speckled thrush. She will be gone soon. Before the cuckoo’s sweet bells have jangled she will be treading the snows of yesteryear. But no, she never leaves the circling road, Persephone, Earth’s loveliest daughter. Onward forever she goes, young, immortal, singing the greening song of her ancient deathless magic far down below the horizons, beyond the lifting line of the ever upwelling world. And already Summer is awake. She hears the nightjar churring from the juniper to his mate on the hawthorn-bough, and in the dew among the green corn or from the seeding pastures the crek-crāke! crek-crāke! of the ambiguous landrail. This morning, when she woke, the cushats were calling from the forest-avenues, the bumble-bee droned in the pale horns of the honeysuckle, and from a thicket newly covered with pink and white blossoms of the wild-rose a proud mavis saw her younglings at last take flight on confident wing.

A good symbol, that of the Awakening of the Bat. Darkness come out of the realm of sleep and dreams: the realm itself filled with the west wind and the dancing sunlight, sleep put away like a nomad’s winter-tent and dreams become realities. Often I have wondered how it is that so little is commonly known of the bat-lore of our own and other races. Doubtless there is some book which deals with this lore. There may be some familiar one for aught I know, but I have never met with or heard of it.

Recently I tried in vain to get some such book dealing with the folklore and mythology of the bat. And yet in the traditional lore of all countries there are many allusions to this ‘blind bird of the dusk.’ The Greeks, the Romans, the Celts of Europe, the westering Gaels, had many legends and superstitions connected with it. To-day the Finn, the Magyar, the Basque and the island Gael keep some of the folklore that has ebbed away from other nations, or become confused or remembered only by old folk in old out-of-the-way places. Somewhere I have notes of several bat-legends and fragments of bat-lore collected once for a friend, who after all went ‘to hunt the bat’ before he could use them. That was the phrase which started the quest. He had read it, or heard it I think, and wrote to me asking if I had ever heard the phrase ‘to hunt the bat’ as synonymous with death. I have heard it once or twice in the last few years, and once in a story where the teller, speaking of an outlaw who was a great deer-hunter in the wilds of Inverness, was found dead ‘with the fork of an ash-root through his breast, pinned like a red fox he was, and he by that time hunting the bat in the black silence.’ It would be inapposite, here, to linger on this theme, but I am tempted to record one or two of these bat-lore fragments which I recall: and perhaps, from the scarcity of such traditional flotsam and jetsam, some readers and bat-lovers may be interested.

The bat, commonly called in Gaelic an ialtag, or dialtag, though even in the one Shire of Argyll at least six other common names might as likely be heard, is occasionally poetically called the Bàdharan-dhu, the dark wandering one. I remember being told that the reason of the name was as follows. In the early days of the world the bat was blue as the kingfisher and with a breast white as that of the swallow, and its eyes were so large and luminous that because of this and its whirling flight its ancient name was a name signifying ‘flash-fire’—though now become, with the Gaelic poet who told me this, dealan-dhu badhalaiche choille, ‘the little black wandering flame of the woods.’ But on the day of the Crucifixion the bat mocked at the agony of the Saviour, and while the redbreast was trying to pull out a thorn, now from Christ’s hand, now from His foot, the bat whirled to and fro crying, ‘See how lovely I am! See how swift I am!’ Christ turned His eyes and looked at it, and the blue and the white went out of the bat like the ebbing wave out of a pool, and it became blind and black and whirled away till it met the rising of night and was drowned in that darkness for evermore. And that is why the bat is seen in the dusk and at night, and wheels to and fro in such aimless wandering flight, with his thin almost inaudible voice crying, ‘See how blind I am! See how ugly I am!’

From the same source I had dealan-dhu bais, the little black flame (or flash) of death, and a still stranger note to the effect that bats are the offspring of lightning and smitten trees: the connection being more obvious to Gaelic ears, because dealan-bàs is one of the names of lightning.

The other name I heard as a child, and it long puzzled me. Beuban-an-Athar-Uaibhreach: literally, the malformed one of the Haughty Father. Now why should the bat be called beuban, a thing spoiled, wilfully malformed? ‘An t’ Athair Uaibhreach’ (of which an athar is the genitive) is one of the evasive names used by the Gael for Satan ... for that proud and glorious angel, the Father of Evil, who fell from his high estate through inconquerable pride. Why, then, was the bat the malformed creature of Satan? It was years afterwards before I had the story told me, for my old nurse (from whom I heard the phrase) did not think the tale fitting for a child’s ears. When Judas hanged himself on a tree, so the tale ran, and his soul went out lamenting on the wind, the Haughty Father flung that wretched spirit contemptuously back into the world. But first he twisted it and altered it four hundred and forty-four times, till it was neither human nor bird nor beast, but was likest a foul rat with leathern wings. ‘Stay there till the last day,’ he said, ‘in blindness and darkness, and be accursed for ever’ ... and that is why the bat (the triollachan dhorchadas, ‘the little waverer of the dark,’ or triollachan fheasgair, or little waverer of the dusk, as a more merciful legend has it) flies as he does, maimed, blind, accursed and feared, and shrieking in his phantom voice Gu la’ bais! Gu la’ bais! (‘till the day of death’ ... i.e., the Last Day).

In some parts of Argyll the bat is said to live for three generations of an eagle, six generations of a stag, and nine generations of a man. With less poetic exactitude I have been told that it lives thirteen years in flight and thirty-three years in all! ... though equally authentic information avers that the average life of the bat is twenty-one years. A forester told me once that he did not think any bat lived longer than nine years, but he thought fifteen as likely as nine. On the other hand, he himself spoke, and as though for all he knew it might well be so, of an old tradition that a bat lives to a hundred years. This, I may add, I have heard again and again. The other day a fisherman from the island of Lismore gave the unexpected answer: ‘How old will the ialtag be? Well, now, just exactly what the age of Judas was the hour he kissed Christ and betrayed Him, and not a day more and not a day less.’ Nothing explicit as to that, however, could be obtained. A gardener told me once a rhyme about how to get at the age of man, but I have forgotten it except that it was to the effect that a losgunn (a toad) was twice the age of an easgunn (an eel), and that a dialtag (bat) was twice the age of a losgunn, and that am fiadh (the stag) was twice the age of a dialtag, ‘and put ten to that and you’ll have the allotted age of man’ [i.e., an eel is supposed to live about seven years to seven and a half years: a frog or toad to about fifteen: a bat to about thirty: a deer to about sixty. I should add, however, that my informant was not sure if in the third instance it wasn’t a iolair (eagle) instead of a deer].

One of the strangest English names for the bat (among over a score only less strange) is the Athern-bird—a Somerset term, I believe, whose meaning I do not know.

But now to return to the rear-guard of Spring of whom we spoke first. Yet the folklore of the house-martin is so familiar that it need not be alluded to. We all know that it is time to think of summer when the martin clings once more to her last year’s clay-house under the eaves.

It is when the wild-doves are heard in the woods that one realises the Spring-Summer borderland is being crossed. When the cushat calls, all the clans of the bushes are at home, runs a Highland saying: meaning that every mavis and merle and finch is busy with hatching the young brood, or busier still feeding the callow nestlings. But when the voice of the turtle is heard in the land, then Summer has come over the sea on the south wind, and is weaving roses for her coronal and will be with us while we are yet unaware.