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34 chapters
Where the Forest Murmurs
Where the Forest Murmurs
Dedication Pharais : A Romance of the Isles. The Mountain Lovers : A Romance. The Sin-Eater , and other Tales. The Washer of the Ford. Reissue Shorter Tales , with others. I. Spiritual Tales. II. Barbaric Tales. III. Tragic Romances. ( Reissued by David Nutt. ) The Laughter of Peterkin : Old Celtic Tales Retold. From the Hills of Dream : Poems. The Dominion of Dreams. The Divine Adventure. The Winged Destiny. To appear Shortly. Torches of Love and Death : Poems Old and New. The Immortal Hour
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WHERE THE FOREST MURMURS
WHERE THE FOREST MURMURS
It is when the trees are leafless, or when the last withered leaves rustle in the wintry air, creeping along the bare boughs like tremulous mice, or fluttering from the branches like the tired and starving swallows left behind in the ebbing tides of migration, that the secret of the forest is most likely to be surprised. Mystery is always there. Silence and whispers, still glooms, sudden radiances, the passage of wind and idle airs, all these inhabit the forest at every season. But it is not in
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THE MOUNTAIN CHARM
THE MOUNTAIN CHARM
A famous writer of the eighteenth century declared that to a civilised mind the mountain solitude was naturally abhorrent. To be impressed was unavoidable, he allowed; to love barrenness and the wilderness, to take delight in shadow and silence, to find peace in loneliness, was unnatural. It is humanity that redeems nature, he added in effect. The opinion is not one commonly held now, or not admitted. But many hold it who would not admit that they so felt or thought. I have often asked summer wa
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THE CLANS OF THE GRASS
THE CLANS OF THE GRASS
Of all the miracles of the green world none surpasses that of the grass. It has many names, many raiments even, but it is always that wonderful thing which the poets of all time have delighted in calling the green hair of earth. ‘Soft green hair of the rocks,’ says a Breton poet. Another Celtic poet has used the word alike for the mosses which clothe the talons of old trees and for the forests themselves. No fantastic hyperbole this: from a great height forests of pine and oak seem like reaches
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THE TIDES
THE TIDES
I remember that one of the most strange and perturbing pleasures of my childhood was in watching, from a grassy height, the stealthy motions of the tides. The fascination never waned, nor has it yet waned: to-day, as then, I know at times the old thrill, almost the old fear, when through a white calm or up some sea-loch I watch those dark involutions, in sudden twists and long serpentine curves, as the eddies of the tide force their mysterious way. For one thing my childish imagination was profo
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THE HILL-TARN
THE HILL-TARN
Isolated, in one of the wildest and loneliest mountain-regions of the Highlands of Ross, I know a hill-tarn so rarely visited that one might almost say the shadow of man does not fall across its brown water from year’s end to year’s end. It lies on the summit of a vast barren hill, its cradle being the hollow of a crater. Seven mountains encircle Maoldhu from north, south, east, and west. One of these is split like a hayfork, and that is why it is called in Gaelic the Prong of Fionn. Another, wh
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AT THE TURN OF THE YEAR
AT THE TURN OF THE YEAR
When one hears of ‘the dead months,’ of ‘dead December’ and ‘bleak January,’ the best corrective is to be found in the coppice or by the stream-side, by the field-thicket, in the glens, and even on the wide moors if the snow is not everywhere fallen, a coverlet so dense and wide that even the juniper has not a green spike to show, or the dauntless bunting a clean whin-branch to call from on the broomieknowe. Even the common sayings reveal a knowledge hidden from those to whom winter is ‘a dead s
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THE SONS OF THE NORTH WIND
THE SONS OF THE NORTH WIND
Down thro’ the Northlands Come the White Brothers, One clad in foam And one mailed in water— Foam white as bear-felt, Water like coat of mail. Snow is the Song of Me , Singeth the one; Silence the Breath of Me , Whispers the other. So sings a Swedish poet, a lineal descendant of one of the Saga-men whose songs the vikings carried to the ends of the world of that day. The song is called ‘The Sons of the North Wind,’ and the allusion is to an old ballad-saga common in one form or another throughou
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ST. BRIDGET OF THE SHORES
ST. BRIDGET OF THE SHORES
I have heard many names of St. Bridget, most beloved of Gaelic saints, with whom the month of February is identified ... the month of ‘Bride min, gentle St. Bride’ ... Brighid boidheach Muime Chriosd , Bride the Beautiful, Christ’s Foster Mother ... but there are three so less common that many even of my readers familiar with the Highland West may not know them. These are ‘the Fair Woman of February,’ ‘St. Bride of the Kindly Fire,’ and ‘St. Bride (or Bridget) of the Shores.’ They are of the Isl
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THE HERALDS OF MARCH
THE HERALDS OF MARCH
Under this heading I had meant to deal with the return of the Plover and Lapwing, having in mind a Galloway rhyme, “Whaup, Whimbrel, an’ Plover, Whan these whustle the worst o’ t’s over!” But on consideration it was evident that March has so complicated an orchestral prelude that the name could hardly be given to any one group of birds. Does not another rhyme go, “The Lavrock, the Mavis, The Woodlark, the Plover, March brings them back Because Winter is over.” But March brings back so many birds
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THE TRIBE OF THE PLOVER
THE TRIBE OF THE PLOVER
In the preceding paper I alluded to a Galloway rhyme— “Whaup, Whimbrel, an’ Plover, Whan these whustle the worst o’t ’s over.” By this time the neatherd by Loch Ken and the shepherd among the wilds of Kirkcudbright, like their kin from the Sussex downs, to the last sliabh or maol in Sutherland, may repeat the rhyme with safety. ‘The worst o’t ’s over.’ For to-day the curlews cry above the moors, the whimbrel’s warning note echoes down the long sands o’ Solway, and everywhere, from the salt bent
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THE AWAKENER OF THE WOODS
THE AWAKENER OF THE WOODS
The Spirit of Spring is abroad. There is no one of our island coasts so lone and forlorn that the cries of the winged newcomers have not lamented down the wind. There is not an inland valley where small brown birds from the South have not penetrated, some from Mediterranean sunlands, some from the Desert, some from the hidden homes on unknown isles, some from beyond the foam of unfamiliar shores. Not a backwater surely but has heard the flute of the ouzel, or the loud call of the mallard. The wr
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THE WILD APPLE
THE WILD APPLE
The foam of the White Tide of blossom has been flung across the land. It is already ebbing from the blackthorn hedges; the wild-cherry herself is no longer so immaculately snow-white. It drifts on the wind that has wooed the wild-apple. The plum is like a reef swept with surf. Has not the laurustinus long been as cream-dappled as, later, the elder will be in every hedgerow or green lane or cottage-garden? Not that all the tides of blossom are like fallen snow: is not the apple-bloom itself flush
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RUNNING WATERS
RUNNING WATERS
Is it because the wild-wood passion of Pan still lingers in our hearts, because still in our minds the voice of Syrinx floats in melancholy music, the music of regret and longing, that for most of us there is so potent a spell in running waters? We associate them with loneliness and beauty. Beauty and solitude ... these are still the shepherd-kings of the imagination, to compel our wandering memories, our thoughts, our dreams. There is a story of one snatched from the closing hand of death, who,
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THE SUMMER HERALDS
THE SUMMER HERALDS
If the cuckoo, the swallow, and the nightjar be pre-eminently the birds of Summer (though, truly, the swift, the flycatcher, and the corncrake have as good a title) the rear-guard of Spring may be said to be the house-martin, the cushat, and the turtle. Even the delaying wheatear, or the still later butcher-bird may have come, and yet Sweep-Sweep may not have been heard about the eaves of old houses or under and over the ruined clay of last year’s nests; the cushat’s voice may not have become ha
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THE SEA-SPELL
THE SEA-SPELL
Old magical writers speak of the elemental affinity which is the veiled door in each of us. Find that door, and you will be on the secret road to the soul, they say in effect. Some are children of fire, and some of air, some are of earth, and some of water. They even resolve mortal strength and weakness, our virtue and our evil, into the movement of these elements. This virtue, it is of fire: this quality, it is of air: this frailty, it is of water. Howsoever this may be, some of us are assuredl
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SUMMER CLOUDS
SUMMER CLOUDS
For one who has lived so much among the hills and loves the mountain solitude it may seem strange to aver that the most uplifting and enduring charm in Nature is to be found in amplitude of space. Low and rolling lands give what no highlands allow. If in these the miraculous surprise of cloud is a perpetual new element of loveliness, it is loveliness itself that unfolds when an interminable land recedes from an illimitable horizon, and, belonging to each and yet remote from either, clouds hang l
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THE CUCKOO’S SILENCE
THE CUCKOO’S SILENCE
There is silence now in the woods. That spirit of the south wind, that phantom voice of the green tides of May, has passed: that which was a wandering dream is become a haunting memory. Whence is the cuckoo come, whither does the cuckoo go? When our leaves grow russet and the fern clothes herself in bronze and pale gold, what land hears that thrilling call in ancient groves, or above old unvisited forests, or where arid declivities plunge into the gathering sands of the desert? Whither is gone S
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THE COMING OF DUSK
THE COMING OF DUSK
At all seasons the coming of dusk has its spell upon the imagination. Even in cities it puts something of silence into the turmoil, something of mystery into the commonplace aspect of the familiar and the day-worn. The shadow of the great change that accompanies the passage of day is as furtive and mysterious, as swift and inevitable, amid the traffic of streets as in aisles of the forest, or in glens and on hills, on shores, or on the sea. It is everywhere the hour of suspense. Day has not rece
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AT THE RISING OF THE MOON
AT THE RISING OF THE MOON
‘The dew is heavy on the grass: the corncrake calls: on a cloudy juniper the nightjar churrs: the fhionna or white moth wavers above the tall spires of the foxglove. The midsummer eve is now a grey-violet dusk. At the rising of the moon a sigh comes from the earth. Down the moist velvety ledges of the dark a few far-apart and low-set stars pulsate as though about to fall, but continuously regather their tremulous white rays. The night of summer is come.’ With these words I ended my preceding art
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THE GARDENS OF THE SEA (A MIDSUMMER NOON’S DREAM)
THE GARDENS OF THE SEA (A MIDSUMMER NOON’S DREAM)
I recall a singular legend, where heard, where read, I do not remember, nor even am I sure of what race the offspring, of what land the denizen. It was to the effect that, in the ancient days of the world, flowers had voices, had song to them as the saying is: and that there were kingdoms among these populations of beauty, and that in the course of ages (would they be flower-æons, and so of a measure in time different from our longer or shorter periods?) satraps revolted against the dominion of
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THE MILKY WAY
THE MILKY WAY
With the first sustained breath of frost the beauty of the Galaxy becomes the chief glory of the nocturnal skies. But in midsummer even what amplitude of space, what infinite depths it reveals, and how mysterious that filmy stardrift blown like a streaming banner from behind the incalculable brows of an unresting Lord of Space, one of those Sons of the Invisible, as an oriental poet has it, whose ceaseless rush through eternity leaves but this thin and often scarce visible dust, ‘delicate as the
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SEPTEMBER
SEPTEMBER
September: the very name has magic. In an old book, half in Latin half in English, about the months, which I came upon in a forgotten moth-eaten library years ago, and in part copied, and to my regret have not seen or heard of since, or anywhere been able to trace, I remember a singular passage about this month. Much had been said about the flowers of ‘these golden weekes that doe lye between the thunderous heates of summer and the windy gloomes of winter’; of those flowers and plants which bloo
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THE CHILDREN OF WIND AND THE CLAN OF PEACE
THE CHILDREN OF WIND AND THE CLAN OF PEACE
I was abroad on the moors one day in the company of a shepherd, and we were talking of the lapwing that were plentiful there, and were that day wailing continuously in an uneasy wavering flight. I had seen them act thus, in this excess of alarm, in this prolonged restless excitement, when the hill-falcons were hovering overhead in the nesting season: and, again, just before the unloosening of wind and rain and the sudden fires of the thundercloud. But John Logan the shepherd told me that now it
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STILL WATERS
STILL WATERS
Perhaps at no season of the year is the beauty of still waters at once so obvious and so ethereal as in Autumn. All the great painters of Nature have realised this crowning secret of their delicate loveliness. Corot exclaimed to a friend who was in raptures about one of his midsummer river scenes ... ‘Yes, yes, but to paint the soul of October, voilà mon idéal !’ Daubigny himself, that master of slow winding waters and still lagoons, declared that if he had to be only one month out of his studio
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THE PLEIAD-MONTH
THE PLEIAD-MONTH
From the Persian shepherd to the shepherd on the hills of Argyll—in a word, from the remote East to the remote West—November is known, in kindred phrase, as the Pleiad-Month. What a world of legend, what a greater world of poetry and old romance, centres in this little group of stars. ‘The meeting-place in the skies of mythology and science,’ as they have been called by one of our chief astronomers. From time immemorial this remote starry cluster has been associated with festivals and solemnitie
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THE RAINY HYADES
THE RAINY HYADES
“Where is the star Imbrifer? Let us adore it.” Years ago I remember coming upon this mysterious phrase in a poem or poetic drama by a French writer. The pagans, led by a priest, then went into the woods; and, in a hollow made of a hidden place swept by great boughs, worshipped a moist star. I forget whether the scourge of drought ended then, and if winds lifted the stagnant branches, if rains poured through the leaves and mosses and reached the well-springs. I recall only the invocation, and som
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WINTER STARS I
WINTER STARS I
To know in a new and acute way the spell of the nocturnal skies, it is not necessary to go into the everlasting wonder and fascination of darkness with an astronomer, or with one whose knowledge of the stars can be expressed with scholarly exactitude. For the student it is needful to know, for example, that the Hyades are Alpha, Delta, Eeta, etc., of Tauri , and lie 10° south-east of the Pleiades. But as one sits before the fireglow, with one’s book in hand to suggest or one’s memory to remind,
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WINTER STARS II
WINTER STARS II
Of all winter stars surely the most familiar is Polaris, the Pole Star or Lodestar: of all winter Constellations, the Plough, the Little Dipper (to give the common designations), Orion, and the lovely cluster of the Pleiades, are, with the Milky Way, the most commonly observed stellar groups. One of our old Scottish poets, Gawain Douglas, writing towards the close of the fifteenth or early in the sixteenth century, thus quaintly brought them into conjunction— “Arthurys hous, and Hyades betaiknin
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BEYOND THE BLUE SEPTENTRIONS TWO LEGENDS OF THE POLAR STARS
BEYOND THE BLUE SEPTENTRIONS TWO LEGENDS OF THE POLAR STARS
The star Septentrion is, for the peoples of the North and above all for the shepherd, the seaman and the wayfarer, the star of stars. A hundred legends embody its mystery, its steadfast incalculable service, its unswerving isolation over the Pole. Polaris, the North Star, the Pole-Star, the Lodestar, the Seaman’s Star, the Star of the Sea, the Gate of Heaven, Phœnice, Cynosure, how many names, in all languages, at all times. The Mongolian nomad called it the Imperial Ruler of Heaven: the Himalay
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WHITE WEATHER A MOUNTAIN REVERIE
WHITE WEATHER A MOUNTAIN REVERIE
To be far north of the Highland Line and among the mountains, when winter has not only whitened the hill-moors but dusted the green roofs of every strath and corrie, may not have for many people the charm of the southward flight. But to the hill-born it is a call as potent as any that can put the bittersweet ache into longing hearts. There is peace there: and silence is there: and, withal, a beauty that is not like any other beauty. The air and wind are auxiliary; every cloud or mist-drift lends
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ROSA MYSTICA (AND ROSES OF AUTUMN)
ROSA MYSTICA (AND ROSES OF AUTUMN)
... Rosa Sempiterna Che si dilata, rigrada, e ridole Odor di lode al Sol. ... Sitting here, in an old garden by the sea, it is difficult for me to realise that the swallow has gone on her long flight to the South, that last night I heard countless teal flying overhead, and before dawn this morning the mysterious honk-honk of the wild-geese. A white calm prevails. A sea of faint blue and beaten silver, still molten, still luminous as with yet unsubdued flame, lies motionless beneath an immeasurab
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THE STAR OF REST A FRAGMENT
THE STAR OF REST A FRAGMENT
Rest —what an OCEANIC word! I have been thinking of this unfathomable, unpenetrable word with mingled longing, and wonder, and even awe. What depths are in it, what infinite spaces, what vast compassionate sky, what tenderness of oblivion, what husht awakenings, what quiet sinkings and fadings into peace. Waking early, I took the word as one might take a carrier-dove and loosed it into the cloudy suspense of the stilled mind—and it rose again and again in symbolic cloud-thought, now as an infini
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SOME PRESS NOTICES
SOME PRESS NOTICES
“Not beauty alone, but that element of strangeness in beauty which Mr. Pater rightly discerned as the inmost spirit of romantic art—it is this which gives to Miss Macleod’s work its peculiar æsthetic charm.”— Mr. Ashcroft Noble. “Miss Macleod is a poet. Her prose is prose—it is a poet’s prose.... She excels in the very quality most Celtic literature so signally wants—namely, form .... But more than a sense of form is evident in her stories. She has the seeing eye, the hearing ear, the attentive
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