BOOKS.
THREE VOLUMES OF CELTIC TALES.* MATTHEW ARNOLD in that last fine lecture of his upon Celtic Literature distinguished the special characteristics of the Celtic strain in our English poetry as a turn for style, a turn
for melancholy, and a turn for natural magic. As to the second and third of these good gifts there can be no two opinions ; the Celtic poetry breathes the very soul of sombre passion, and it is unequalled for the felicity with which it
renders the magical charm of Nature. But a turn for style, the word Matthew Arnold himself uses of Pindar and Virgil,
Dante and Milton, does not seem quite so happy a charac- terisation as the others. Used of these great poets the word implies not only a general distinction and dignity, a remote- ness from the commonplace both in view of things and in expression, but also a perfect sureness of touch and an absolute rightness of judgment as to the too much or too little. Now Macpherson's " Ossian " may not be altogether the genuine thing in Celtic poetry that our fathers loved to think it; it may be true that the poem as we have it contains but a half-pennyworth of " Ossian " to an intolerable deal of Macpherson. Still, it has typical Celtic qualities, which Arnold was inclined himself to press upon an unwilling public. It certainly has gloom, and it has something that may pass for natural magic. But style, in the sense the word bears when we use it of Dante, it certainly has not. Miss Macleod's stories seem to us in every way superior to Macpherson's poetry. Whether this is due altogether to the greater genius of Miss Macleod we stand in doubt, because we are sadly ignorant how far the material of her tales is original. But even if the substance be borrowed from Western legend, as she would modestly have us believe, there remains much genius in the telling, and of this we have pleasure in recording our appreciation.
We must say, however, that while we have marked passage after passage that for passion and magical charm breathed the very spirit of the Celt, we have marked also not a few where the sense of style, using that word as we have defined it, seemed at fault. A favourite trick, for example, which we cannot but esteem a blemish, is the use of certain grammatical forms which, while they may exactly represent the corre- sponding Gaelic forms, are not idiomatic English, and make on English ears the sense of listening to an uneducated Irishman. This may be justified when the stories are put into the mouth of one of Miss Macleod's boatmen, but not otherwise. To illustrate these qualities in Miss Macleod's romantic method we will quote a somewhat long passage from one of "The Three Marvels of Iona," which tells how St. Columba was taught humility. He had been told in a dream that Murtagh, one of the brethren, had been taken to Paradise before himself because the Saint still kept Christ upon the Cross :-
" With that Colum rose in awe and great grief. There was no light in his cell In the deep darkness his spirit quailed. But, lo ! the beauty of his heart wrought a soft gleam about him, and in that moonshine of good deeds he rose and made his way to where Murtagh slept. The old monk slept indeed. It was a sweet breath he drew—he, young and fair now, and laughing with peace under the apples in Paradise. 0 Murtagh,' Colum cried, and thee I thought the least of the brethren, because that thou wait a Druid, and loved not to see thy pagan kindred put to the sword if they would not repent. But, true, in my years I am becoming as a boy who learns, knowing nothing. God cast the sin of pride out of my life !' At that a soft white shining, as of one winged and beautiful, stood beside the dead. Art thou Murtagh ? ' whispered Colum, in deep awe.—'No, I am not Murtagh,' came as the breath of vanishing song.—` What art
thou ? I am Peace,' said the glory. Thereupon Colum sank to his knees, sobbing with joy, for the sorrow that had been and was no more. Tell me, 0 White Peace,' he murmured, can Murtagh hearken, there under the apples where God is ?'— ' God's love is a wind that blows hitherward and hence. Speak, and thou shalt hear.' Colum spake. 0 Murtagh, my brother, tell me in what way it is that I still keep God crucified upon the Cross.' There was a sound in the cell as of the morning laughter of children, of the singing of birds, of the sunlight
' Reissue of the Shorter Stories of Fiona Macleod. Edinburgh : Patrick Geddes. streaming through the blue fields of heaven. Then Murtagh's voice came out of Paradise, sweet with the sweetness : honey- sweet it was, and clothed with deep awe because of the glory. Colum, servant of Christ, arise ! ' Colum rose and was as a leaf there, a leaf that is in the wind. Colum, thine hour is not yet come. I see it bathing in the white light which is the Pool of Eternal Life, that is in the abyss whore deep-rooted are the Gates of Heaven.'—' And my sin, 0 Murtagh, my sin ? God is weary because thou Nast not repented.'—' 0 my God and my God ! Sure, Murtagh, if that is so, it is so, but it is not for knowledge to me. Sure, 0 God, it is a blessing I have put on man and woman, on beast and bird and fish, on creeping things and flying things, on the green grass and the brown earth and the flowing wave, on the wind that cometh and goeth, and on the mystery of the flame ! Sure, 0 God, I have sorrowed for all my sins. Sorrow upon me ! Is it accursed I ant? 0 Murtagh, favoured of God, will you not be explaining to Him,'" &c.
It seems to us that the italicised expressions give a quite un- necessarily grotesque effect to a passage that would else be remarkably beautiful. The stories, as now arranged, fall under the heads of " Spiritual Tales," " Barbaric Tales," and " Tragic Romances," but the divisions are not mutually exclusive. The spiritual tales show the Celtic genius for the religions mystery, or as Miss Macleod prefers to say, morality. The legends of St. Bride of the Isles and St. Columba are delightfully told, not without humour; and two others, " The Fisher of Men," a story of the death of a tired old woman, and " The Melancholy of Ulad," a type of the man of genius mated with a soulless woman, both romantic studies upon very familiar themes, come with a rare relish to a palate somewhat over-satisfied with the tame domesticity of the predominant Scotch school. Some of the barbaric tales are barbarous enough. The "laughter of the Queen" of Skye was not pleasant to hear, and is as little pleasant to hear of; but that story, and others like "The Song of the Sword" and "The Flight of the Culdees," bring back vividly the days when the Vikings harried all the coasts, and when to preach Christianity meant, as a rule, martyrdom. The finest tales in this section, too, are those which deal with religious legend, such as The Washer of the Ford." The volume of romances contains "The Sin- eater," a tale of a human scapegoat, probably Miss Macleod's best-known story, and another which is far more poetical, "The Dan-nan-ron," or Song of the Seal, a tune played by a certain Gloom Achanna upon his oaten flute, with fatal con- sequences to the hero of the story, who was believed, and believed himself, to have seal's blood in his veins. Gloom seems to us the most finely imagined of all Miss Macleod's characters. He is thus described:— " Gloom, slighter of build, dark of hue and hair, but with hairless face ; with thin, white, long-fingered hands, that had ever a nervous motion, as though they were tide-wrack. There was always a frown on the centre of his forehe=ad, even when he smiled with his thin lips and dusky, unbetraying eyes. Ho looked what he was, the brain of the Achannas. Not only did he have the English, as though native to that tongue, but could and did read strange unnecessary books. Moreover, ho was the only son of Robert Achanna, to whom the old man had imparted bis store of learning; for Achanna had been a schoolmaster in his youth in Galloway, and he had intended Gloom for the priest- hood. His voice, too, was low and clear, but cold as pale-green water running under ice."
We should like to give one or two specimens of Miss Macleod's "natural magic," and perhaps it would not be unfair to do so, with the caution that such passages lose always by being torn from their context, and that the general atmosphere of the tales is more poetical than any fragment. As becomes a singer of the Western Highlands, Miss Macleod's sagas are full of the glamour of the sea. Here is a metaphor
of memory :-
" It is a true saying that memory is like the sea-weed when the tide is in—but the tide ebbs. Each frond, each thick spray, each fillicaun or pulpy globe, lives lightly in the wave : the green water is full of strange rumour, of sea-magic, and sea-music ; the hither flow and thither surge give continuity and connection to what is fluid and dissolute. But when the ebb is far gone and the wrack and the weed lie sickly in the light, there is only one con- fused intertangled mass. For most of us memory is this tide-left strand ; though for each there are pools, or shallows, which even the ebb does not lick up in its thirsty way depthward, narrow overshadowed channels to which we have the intangible clues."
And here is an island landscape :—
" The bleak moorland of it, the blight that had lain so long and so often upon the crops, the rains that had swept the isle for grey days and grey weeks and grey months, the sobbing of the sea by day and its dark moan by night, its dim relinquishing sigh in the calm of dreary ebbs, its hollow baffling roar when the storm- shadow swept up out of the sea, one and all oppressed him, even in memory."
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