The Druid Path
9781613102923
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Phadraig, son of Nihil of the Ua Dinan, held silent his white hound on the hill of Cromm Cru, and looked down the far valley of blue mists where the sea of the west rolled in. Back beyond the sweet-smelling reaches of the heather he could hear the bay of the hounds of his uncle Kieran, Tiern over North Tormond. He could no longer hear the clink of their silver bridles, nor the laughter of their ladies, nor the scream of hawk on dove. But the hill of the ancient god was a sweet place in the silence, and he rested there, and made him a pillow of fern—and listened to the soft breath of the wind in the rowan tree. Its sigh of love for the green earth was a sweet song, and he slept there to that music, while the sun rushed beyond the wide seas of the west, and soft-footed dusk crept after, filling all the hollows with the gray web in which the night is held. A curious dream of white birds came to him there; the dream had come to him before, yet not with clearness—and in the dream was a dusk path in an ancient wood, and a well there—a well rising and sinking with the tide, and a vision of a maid moving before him into the shadows—a vision swathed in a white cloud, with hidden face but a voice in which was held all the music of beauty of life in all the world. His soul was as a harp on which that music played, and his body was but as a shell left behind while the wings of harmony lifted him—lifted until he was borne as a cloud far from the touch of the earth—and he heard a word over and over in his ear, until he strove with might to echo it, and then, in the striving, the smell of the heather was again in his nostrils, and the forefeet of the white hound were on his breast, and above him a star shone in the soft rose of the sky. He lay entranced, thrilled by the ecstasy of the perfect dream, and somewhere from the very earth came a song to his ear and an earth echo of the word he had striven for and missed. And this was the song he heard—Make strong your charms against Danaan, Danaan of the snowy breast, Who lured the souls of the Gods of Old To the land of the mystic west. The voices were those of two boys, and with them was an old shepherd who bore fire in a strange bowl of thin carven stone, and in the arms of the boys were dry heather and branches of yew. And in fear they let fall the yew at sight of Phadraig, and at sight of his white hound beside him. “Peace to you,” spake Phadraig. “And who be you to sing here a song of charms? And who is Danaan?” “A blessing of all saints on you from Jerusalem to Innis Gluair,” spake the ancient who bore the fire. “We bear here boughs for the puring fires of Beltain, and the mothers of these boys bade them make a prayer and sing the song ere they crossed the three magic circles of the Tor of Cromm Cru.” “And is this that hill?” asked Phadraig. “As a childling they tell me I was nursed in sight of it, but never before have I stood on it, and who made the song of the charm?” “One of the anointed of the saints who loved every plain and black crag and forest dell between us and the sea. It was no other than Nihil of the Deep Wood.” “Strange, that is,” said Phadraig, the son of Nihil, “other songs of that singer I have been taught, but never this one until I hear it as in a dream in this strange place; and look, there are white sea birds against the stars—and they also were of the dream.” “On the night of Beltain strange power is abroad—and strange dreams! And what is the name of you who venture to sleep on the hill of the ancient gods in the dusk of this day?” And when Phadraig told him, the old herdsman would have knelt, but Phadraig took his hand and spoke to him in kindness, yet could get from him no other word as to the song of Danaan. “Go to Roiseen of the Glen, the wise woman down by the sea,” he said. “She was nurse to you and knows all your father Nihil would have had you know of the names of the ancient gods of the land.”
