Celtic Lore & Legend (23 page)

For the first year of their existence in the country, there had long been much speculation as to who they were and what they did with themselves up among the clouds and eagles. Some said that Coll Dhu was a scion of the old family from whose hands the surrounding lands had passed; and that, embittered by poverty and pride, he had come to bury himself in solitude, and brood over his misfortunes. Others hinted of crime, and flight from another country; others again whispered of those who were cursed from birth, and could never smile, nor yet make friends with a fellow-creature till the day of their death. But when two years had passed, the wonder had somewhat died out, and Coll Dhu was little thought of, except when a herd looking for sheep crossed the track of the big dark man walking the mountains gun in hand to whom he did not dare say ‘Lord save you’ or when a housewife rocking her cradle of a winter’s night, crossed herself as a gust of storm thundered over her cabin-roof, with the exclamation “Oh then, it’s Coll Dhu that has enough o’ that fresh air about his head up there this night, the creature!”

Coll Dhu had lived thus in his solitude for some years, when it became known that Colonel Blake, the new lord of the soil, was coming to visit the country. By climbing one of the peaks encircling his eyrie, Coll could look sheer down a mountain-side and see in miniature beneath him a grey old dwelling with ivied chimneys and weather-slated walls, standing amongst straggling trees and grim, warlike rocks, that gave it the look of a fortress, gazing out onto the Atlantic for ever with the eager eyes of its windows, as if demanding perpetually ‘What tidings from the New World?’

He could see now masons and carpenters crawling about below, like ants in the sun, over-running the old house from base to chimney, daubing here and knocking there, tumbling down walls that looked to Coll, up among the clouds, like a handful of jack-stones and building up others that looked like toy fences to a child’s farm. Throughout several months he
must have watched the busy ants at their task of breaking and mending again, disfiguring and beautifying; but when all was done he had not the curiosity to stride down and admire the handsome panelling of the new billiard-room, nor yet the fine view which h the enlarged bay-window in the drawing room commanded of the water highway to Newfoundland.

Deep summer was melting into autumn and the amber streaks of decay were beginning to creep out and trail over the ripe purple of the moor and mountains when Colonel Blake, his only daughter and a party of friends arrived in the country. The grey house below was alive with gaiety but Coll Dhu no longer found an interest in observing it from his eyrie. When he watched the sun rise or set, he chose to ascend some crag that looked on no human habitation. When he sallied forth on his excursions, gun in hand, to set his face towards the most isolated wastes, dipping into the loneliest valleys, and scaling the nakedest ridges. When he came by chance within call of other excursionists, gun in hand he plunged into the shade of some hollow, and avoided an encounter. Yet it was fated for all that, that he and Colonel Blake should meet.

Towards the evening of one bright September day, the wind changed and in half an hour the mountains were wrapped in a thick, blinding mist. Coll Dhu was far from his den, but so well had he searched these mountains, and inured himself to their climate, that neither storm, rain, nor fog, had power to disturb him. But while he stalked on his way, a faint and agonised cry from a human voice reached him through the smothering mist. He quickly tracked the sound and gained the side of a man who was stumbling g along in danger of death at every step.

“Follow me!” said Coll Dhu to this man and in an hour’s time, brought him safely to the lowlands and up to the walls of the eager-eyed mansion.

“I am Colonel Blake”, said the frank soldier, who, having left the fog behind him, they stood in the starlight under the lighted windows. “Pray tell me quickly to whom I owe my life.”

As he spoke, he glanced up at his benefactor, a large man with a sombre, sun-burned face.

“Colonel Blake” said Coll Dhu after a strange pause “your father suggested to my father to stake his estates at the gaming table. They were staked, and the tempter won. Both are dead; but you and I live, and I have sworn to injure you.”

The colonel laughed good humouredly at the uneasy face above him.

“And you began to keep your oath tonight by saving my life?” said he. “Come! I am a soldier, and know how to meet an enemy; but I had far rather meet a friend. I shall not be happy till you have eaten my salt. We have merrymaking tonight in honour of my daughter’s birthday. Come in and join us?”

Coll Dhu looked at the earth doggedly.

“I have told you” he said, “who and what I am, and I will not cross your threshold.”

But at this moment (so runs my story) a French window opened among the flower-beds by which they were standing and a vision approached which stayed the words on Coll’s tongue. A stately girl, clad in white satin, stood framed in the ivied window, with the warm light from within streaming about her richly-moulded figure into the night. Her face was as pale as her gown, her eyes were swimming in tears, but a firm smile sat on her lips as she held out both hands to her father. The light behind her touched the glistening folds of her dress—the lustrous pearls around her throat—the coronet of blood-red roses which encircled the knotted braids at the back of her head. Satin, pearls and roses—had Coll Dhu, of the Devil’s Inn, never set eyes upon such things before?

Evleen Blake was no tearful miss. A few quick words—“Thank God! You’re safe; the rest have been home an hour”—and a slight pressure on her father’s fingers between her own jewelled hands, were all that betrayed the uneasiness she had suffered.

“Faith my love I owe my life to this brave gentleman” said the blithe colonel. “Press him to come in and be our guest Evleen. He wants to retreat in his mountains and lose himself again in the fog where I found him; or rather, he found me! Come sir” (to Coll) “you must surrender to this fair besieger.”

An introduction followed. “Coll Dhu!” murmured Evleen Blake, for she had heard the common tales about him; but with a frank welcome she invited her father’s preserver to taste the hospitality of that father’s house.

“I beg you to come in sir,” she said, “but for you our gaiety must have been turned to mourning. A shadow will be upon our mirth if our benefactor disdains to join in it.”

With a sweet grace, mixed with a certain hauteur from which she was never free, she extended her white hand to the tall, looming figure outside the window; to have it grasped and wrung in a way that made the proud girl’s eyes flash their amazement, and the same little hand clench itself in displeasure, when it hid itself like an outraged thing among the shining folds of her gown. Was this Coll Dhu mad, or rude?

The guest no longer refused to enter, but followed the white figure into a little study where a lamp burned and the gloomy stranger, the bluff colonel, and the young m’stress of the house, were fully discovered to each other’s eyes. Evleen glanced at the newcomer’s dark face, and shuddered with a feeling of indescribable dread and dislike, then to her father accounted for the shudder in a popular fashion, saying lightly: “There is someone walking over my grave.”

So Coll Dhu was present at Evleen Blake’s birthday ball. Here he was, under a roof which ought to have been his own,
a stranger, known only by a nickname, shunned and solitary. Here he was, who had lived among the eagles and foxes, lying in wait with a fell purpose to be revenged on his father’s foe for poverty and disgrace, for the broken heart of a dead mother, for the loss of a self-slaughtered father, for the dreary scattering of brothers and sisters. Here he stood, a Samson shorn of his strength; and all because a haughty girl had melting eyes, a winning mouth, and looked radiant in satin and roses.

Peerless where many were lovely, she moved among her friends, trying to be unconscious of the gloomy fire of those strange eyes which followed her unweariedly wherever she went. And when her father begged her to be gracious to the unsocial guest when he would fain conciliate, she courteously conducted him to see the new picture-gallery adjoining the drawing rooms, explained under what odd circumstances the colonel had picked up this little paining or that; using every delicate art her pride would allow to achieve her father’s purpose, whilst entertaining at the same time her own personal reserve; trying to divert the guest’s oppressive attention from herself to the objects for which she claimed his notice. Coll Dhu followed his conductress and listened to her voice, but what she said mattered nothing; nor did she wring many words of comment or reply from his lips, until they paused in a retired corner where the light was dim, before a window from which the curtain was withdrawn. The sashes were open and nothing was visible but water; the night Atlantic, with the full moon riding high above a bank of clouds, making silvery tracks outward towards the distance of infinite mystery dividing two worlds. Here the following g little scene is said to have been enacted.

“This window of my father’s own planning, is it not creditable to his taste?” said the young hostess, as she stood, herself glittering like a dream of beauty, looking on the moonlight.

Coll Dhu made no answer, but suddenly, it is said, asked her for a rose from a cluster of flowers that nestled in the lace on her bosom.

For the second time that night Evleen Blake’s eyes flashed with no gentle light. But this man was the saviour of her father. She broke off a blossom, and with such good grace, and also with such queen-like dignity as she might assume, presented it to him. Whereupon, not only was the rose seized, but also the hand that gave it, which was hastily covered with kisses.

Then her anger burst upon him.

“Sir,” she cried, “if you are a gentleman you must be mad! If you are not mad, then you are not a gentleman!”

“Be merciful,” said Coll Dhu. “I love you. My God, I never loved a woman before! Ah!” he cried, as a look of disgust crept over her face, “you hate me. You shuddered the first time your eyes met mine. I love you and you hate me!”

“I do,” cried Evleen vehemently, forgetting everything but her indignation. “Your presence is like something evil to me. Love me?—your looks poison me. Pray sir, talk no more to me in this strain”

“I will trouble you no longer”, said Coll Dhu. And, stalking to the window, he placed one powerful hand upon the sash and vaulted from it out of her sight.

Bare-headed as he was, Coll Dhu strode off to the mountains, but not towards his own home. All the remaining dark hours of that night he is believed to have walked the labyrinths of the hills, until dawn began to scatter the clouds with a high wind. Fasting, and on foot from sunrise the morning before, he was glad enough to see a cabin right in his way. Walking in, he asked for water to drink, and a corner where he might throw himself to rest.

There was a wake in the house, and the kitchen was full of people, all wearied out with the night’s watch, old men were dozing over their pipes in the chimney-corner and here and there a woman was fast asleep with her head on a neighbour’s knee. All who were awake crossed themselves when Coll Dhu’s figure darkened the door, because of his evil name, but an old man of the house invited him in, and offering him milk, and promising him a toasted potato by-and-by, conducted him to a small room off the kitchen, one end of which was strewed with heather, and where there were only two women sitting gossiping over a fire.

A warrior hears strange news from a far land.

“A thraveller”, said the old man nodding his head at the women who nodded back as if to say ‘he has the traveller’s right’. And Coll Dhu flung himself on the heather, in the farthest corner of the narrow room.

The women suspended their talk for a while, but presently guessing the intruder to be asleep, resumed it in voices above a whisper. There was but a patch of window with the grey dawn behind it, but Coll could see the figures by the firelight over which they bent; an old woman sitting forward with her withered hands extended to the embers, and a girl reclining against the hearth wall, with her healthy face, bright eyes and crimson draperies, glowing by turns in the flickering blaze.

“I do know”, said the girl, “but it’s the quarest marriage iver I h’ard of. Sure it’s not three weeks since he tould her right an’ left that he hated her like poison!”

“Whist asthoreen!” said the colliagh, bending forward confidentially; “throth an’ we all know that o’ him. But what could he do the crature! When she put the burragh-bos on him!”

“The
what
?” asked the girl.

“Then the burragh-bos machree-o? That’s the spancel o’ death avourneen; an’ well she has him tethered to her now; bad luck to her!”

The old woman rocked herself and stifled the Irish cry breaking from her wrinkled lips by burying her face in her cloak.

“But what is it?” asked the girl eagerly. “What’s the burragh-bos, anyways an’ where did she get it?”

“Och, och! It’s not fit for comin’ over to young ears but cuggir (whisper) acushla! It’s a shtrip o’ the skin o’ a corpse, peeled from the crown o’ the head to the heel without a crack or split or the charm’s broke; an’ that rowled up, an’ put on a sthring roun’ the neck o’ the wan that’s cowl’d by the wan that wants to be loved. An’ sure enough it puts the fire in their hearts, but an’ sthrong. afore twenty-four hours is gone.”