The most important legacy bequeathed by the Ice Age, however, was the simplest of all. The ice left behind nothing more nor less than another form of itself. For the geographic and climatic conditions created here came to be dominated by that most elemental of substances upon which life depends—water. A watery landscape became the defining substance of the region. Water fell from the sky. It lay in every hole and crevice. Its seas surrounded the land.
The ice returned every winter from above, covering the land with thick blankets of snow. The sea penetrated the coasts with long, fingery firths and scattered it about with islands. Persistent rains kept rivers full with swift, amber, peat-stained flow. And moors and water-soaked marshes were unable, because of the rocky substrata, to drain effectively.
Six
Water, terrain, and climate together insured that the region was slow to settle.
By the Wanderer’s time, icebergs no longer floated off the shores of the land. A livable degree of warmth had come, as if borne on the breezes of the southern winds, though the winters remained frigid. Vegetation and trees covered the land, however sparsely.
Those few humans who ventured here found in the wide, cold, windy spaces a correspondent melody from within their own souls. In the whispering of lonely winds through rocky clefts and in the eerie wail of gulls along high jagged coastlines, the sounds of desolation gave rise to a solitary joy of personhood unknown to those content to bask in the warmth of plenty and in fellowship with others of their kind. From out of the barren bleakness of wide gray moors came a silent, answering sense of home into the breast of those who felt the call of the north.
It was a call not heard by the many, but the few.
Eubha-Mathairaichean, who came to be called simply Mathair, or “source,” which later took on the same meaning as mother, was of similar temperament. Her Celtic blood was like that of her husband and his father. Nature spoke to her of mysteries and secrets, though she could only feel, not understand them. She often rose early, with young ones still asleep, and sought the lonely places, to look up and wonder. It was sensations from such moments that drove her to express herself with hands, in images of what she had seen, to make beauty, to communicate in a medium that required no words.
As the Wanderer and his son traveled, they had seen and learned much that enabled them to continue. Now the young wife joined them, taking an equal share in taming the land, adding strength when needed as well as fresh insights into difficulties they encountered. From occasional encounters with other men, they observed tools and implements not seen before. No metals yet—they would not come to this region for two thousand more years—but varied and cunning uses of stone, shells, tusks, and wood.
To the cagey skill with which the two men had become adept at stalking and killing wild game was now added the woman’s resourcefulness in making wider uses of what nature provided them. It was in her nature to improve, to create, to bring warmth and homeyness to their lives in a multitude of subtle ways. Her artistic bent enabled her to see what they could not—potential uses and possibilities for whatever they owned or encountered. The result was a multiplying source of skins and other beastly material with which to barter and trade.
Their inventory of implements slowly widened, a good many of feminine design, as well as ornaments like she had seen her father make, of symbolic and artistic rather than practical use. When necessary they traded such items from her hand in exchange for what they needed. Those they encountered were eager to display and adorn themselves with representations of objects which they felt possessed supernatural powers.
What they could not trade for, they studied, then, with the woman’s help, fashioned for themselves. As skill with hands and fingers became more dexterous, so did their minds. To the facts they learned, they added that great human uniqueness—ingenuity.
The most useful of these instruments proved to be what amounted to a crude saw or long-knife. A series of razor-sharp seashells—for which they had traded many skins to a tribe of fisher-people at the western shores of the sea they finally reached—were fastened in a long row, tightly bound with dry-tempered leather thongs against a slab of hardwood. The edge created along one side of the wood, with its evenly spaced, sharp-pointed shells in a precise line, made it a cutting instrument of much wider utility than mere sharpened stone or flint.
The fragility of the shells was of little use against the trunk of a tree. But they discovered it could be employed to great effect by cutting deep into the earth itself and sawing through it to extract large chunks of the grass and heather and matted root system, which extended many feet below the surface and held the soil together in a tightly bound mass.
They could not know that the boggy turf beneath their feet, so ill suited for so much and so difficult to traverse during the rainy months, in fact contained a cache of wealth that would enable them and their descendants to survive—not against hunger, as did the soil of the south, but against the elements of the weather itself. These first inhabitants sought only the insulating thickness of the sod to use for shelter. For their progeny farther north, however, the peat would provide a greater and more palpable warmth, the discovery of which would enable them to finally subdue this hostile environment and make it permanently livable for their kind.
Father, son, and daughter-in-law constructed a crude home for themselves and the son’s family from tree trunks. These they thickened against the strongest gusts of wind and rain with slabs of turf, which their shell-saw enabled them to cut from surrounding wastelands.
Inside, the wife hung skins she had cured and drew pictures and shapes on their smooth sides, adorning their dwelling with designs she hoped would keep the spirits of nature pleased. She occasionally carved designs on tree trunks as well, or scratched shapes onto rocks and boulders. As they moved about the land, the etchings came to tell the story of their travels. The Wanderer, his son, and his daughter-in-law would in turn explain the meanings of the shapes and designs to the four children of their family, thus beginning an oral tradition which they would themselves carry on to their progeny.
The youngsters were growing now too, the three sons big enough to help their father and grandfather slice down into the moist earth and drag the heavy cuttings from the moor. The daughter assisted her mathair with preparing the ground and planting what little could be grown there.
Meanwhile, the Wanderer, his hair white and his legs weary from the miles he had trod throughout his long life, watched his growing brood with all the pride of a primitive clan chieftain, which in reality he was.
Seven
It was toward the end of a summer season that the youngest of the Wanderer’s grandsons spotted the giant prints.
They were sunken so deep into the springy earth as to leave hardly a doubt that they belonged to some behemoth of a beast. The seasonal warmth had no doubt brought it down from the north, or up from the south. Never before had they seen the likes of such prints.
The moment the Wanderer heard of it, his heart began to pound. He followed his excited grandson, eyes wide with anticipation. The moment he had dreamed of was at hand!
The lad hurried back toward the bog where he had seen the tracks, father and two older brothers running at his side, the old white-haired forebear lumbering after them as well as he was able, with labored breath and heavy step. A few minutes more, and all five stood in a circle, breathing quietly from the exertion, staring down at the huge imprint of a foot.
The Son of the Wanderer, a muscular man now in the full virility of his prime, looked at his father. Both men knew what the moment signified. They had spoken of it frequently as they made their trek to this land, when the son was no older than his own sons were now.
The three youngsters—the eldest, in his teens, his twelve-year-old brother, and the eight-year-old discoverer of the print—glanced with wide eyes back and forth between father and grandfather, wondering what would follow.
The decision took scarcely a moment.
Afte
r a few seconds, the aging patriarch slumped to the ground and sat, still beholding the print with wonder. He would conserve his strength for this one final primordial contest between man and beast, this hunt for which he had yearned throughout his lifetime. Already his son and grandsons were hurrying back to retrieve spears, lengths of twisted vine-cord, slings, and their three stone axe-clubs. Whether the weapons that had brought the deer, the elk, and the hare into their power would likewise prove of effect against larger game, only time would tell.
There were five of them. Mostly they brought to this battle the cunning of mankind’s developing mind.
Ten minutes later the hunt was on.
The two eldest walked in front, father and son, each wielding spear and club in his two hands. The lanky and confident seventeen-year-old followed a few strides back, and several paces farther behind came the two youngest, whose wide eyes and uncertain knees evidenced that fear accompanied them toward the engagement in equal proportion to the anticipation of victory.
The tracks were fresh. The hunters had examined the holes with probing fingers and keen eyes sufficiently to determine that they had been made only a short time earlier, well after last night’s freeze and this morning’s thaw. The flatness and uniformity of the indentations, as well as the distance between steps, made it clear the beast was moving slowly. They should be well able to overtake it.
The five warriors hastened on.
Nothing was said. This was a moment that would bind together the ties of their family, and their bonds as men, forever. Their feet fell silently on the soft earth. Each knew the peril ahead. Such only heightened the blood-tingling anticipation racing through limbs and brains.
Suddenly the Wanderer’s son held up his right hand. His father and sons froze.
With noses bent into the slight breeze, as if in one accord they sucked in deep drafts of the morning air.
There was no doubt. The odor of animal flesh carried in the wind. Faintly accompanying it drifted into their ears the sounds of heavy tramping through the brush of a small forest ahead.
Wanderer’s son lowered his hand and signaled them to follow. Once more they marched forward, quieter if such were possible, fingers clutching yet more firmly the implements of death they carried. Into the wood they walked, peering ahead with eyes alert. Glancing this way and that, each silently hoped to be the first to spot their prey.
Providence fittingly chose the eldest.
The old man, his white hair fairly bristling with expectancy, stopped suddenly. Eyes aglow as from a lifetime’s dream realized, he raised a hoary arm and pointed through the trees with bent finger.
There stood the magnificent beast!
Never had their eyes beheld such a creature! Yet they knew the giant mammoth in an instant, for no behemoth on earth could rival it.
The furry flanks shone reddish brown, covered sparsely with coarse long black hair. The hulking shoulders loomed higher than two men. The skin from a single such beast, erected on poles, could house an entire family for ten winters! Its flesh might feed fifty families!
Such thoughts raced through the son’s brain. His father, however, had eyes only for the prized tusks of white ivory, strongly curved outward then back toward the center. He had lusted after their beauty and sharp tips for more years than his son had lived.
The two older men looked at each other, formulating even in their silence the plan with which they would make their attack. A few gestures, questioning glances, shakes of the head, pointings and nods, were sufficient.
The beast’s eyes offered the only logical target. In no other part of its frame did a vulnerability exist that would enable such as they, mere ants of men, to overpower the beast. Clubs and stones and anything else they might throw would only bounce off the thick, hulking carcass with no more potency than a leaf falling from one of the surrounding trees. But a flint-tipped spear striking deep into the massive head through the doorway of the eye would bring the animal down eventually, even if they had to track it for days. Once it fell, its strength at last given out, they could follow the first attack by finding soft flesh underneath its belly in which to drive more spears. Finally they could club it to death between the tusks with the stone heads of their axes.
The plan was daring, but the objective so enormous as to be worth the risk. It would require that the father of the three youngest put his life into the very path of what by then might be a charging demon of Herculean size, hold his ground until the final moment, and then launch his spear with perfect accuracy.
There would come no second opportunity. If he missed, he would be dead.
The Wanderer’s son now signaled his eldest boy to follow. Slowly they crept leftward, to begin a wide detour through the trees, out of sight, and around toward the front of the beast. The grandfather and the two younger boys waited some minutes, then began inching their way in the opposite direction. The five would stalk their quarry in a slowly tightening circle, silently, with stealthy step, surrounding it until there was but one direction open—toward the waiting, powerful arm that would send a sharpened spear-point into one of the only openings in its skull.
The mammoth had stopped its heavy-footed tramp and was now sending its trunk about the ground and tree foliage, foraging for edibles. So silent was the approach against him that it was the sensitive tip of its snout that first signaled an enemy was at hand.
The blowing, sniffing, noisy quest for food suddenly halted.
The animal lifted his massive head, the great fleshy ears widening in search of sound. The huge trunk rose into the air, its smaller end probing to and fro with breathy inquiry, like some strange finger of an other-worldly abnormality, seeking from what direction came this odor that dared interrupt his privacy.
A snort of challenge issued from a mouth rendered nearly invisible by tusks and trunk. Fear was no component in the makeup of a monster such as this. But he did not like what he could not see, and the unknown contained a certain element of inherent angst. Slowly he lifted one of his giant forefeet and plodded again into motion.
Two steps only he took. Suddenly some moving creature stood before him, barring his path. Another snort followed.
Glancing around, trunk flailing with seeming disregard for order, his eyes took in other minuscule forms closing toward him. Throwing his tusks upward and his trunk high, he opened his mouth. A great roar of anger echoed through the forest. The steps that followed did not plod, but tramped through the brush with the recklessness of urgency and defiance.
In its very path, the mighty warrior stood his ground—a mere nothing before this giant!
The human knew that to discharge his weapon prematurely would only enrage the beast and perhaps turn it toward father and sons. His heart pounded within him. Unconsciously he let the club fall from his left hand so that his entire strength could be amassed into the single motion required of his right.
Onward the colossus came, in a full charge now, issuing another great roar of intimidation against this tiny erect two-legged creature who had the effrontery to bar his way.
Still Wanderer’s son held his stance. Slowly he raised the spear above his shoulder, fingers tightly gripping the slender stalk of wood. Even should he succeed, how could he avoid being trampled to death? He drew in a deep breath.
The beast was nearly upon him now.
He pulled the spear back to the full extent of his reach, gathered himself for the supreme effort, then hurled it forward with the power and momentum of one mighty thrust.
The shaft released from his hand.
He lunged sideways to escape the animal’s enormous charging feet.
His spear flew through the air without a sound, finding its target with deadly precision, striking the left eye of the beast just above center, slashing through the surface and lodging its stone tip deeply at the outer extremity of the mammoth’s brain.
A great shrill explosion of pain and fury rent the forest.
Red squirted from the wound, spilling in grea
t splotches over trunk and tusks and forest floor, while a thick black oil oozed out of the blinded eye and down toward the creature’s mouth.
One of his feet stumbled momentarily. The falling man tumbled sideways, out of the way of the treacherous feet and to safety. Another screaming bellow silenced the five human voices now shouting triumphantly. The great mammal lumbered off through the forest with the spear dangling and whacking back and forth against the two ivory tusks.
In great excitement, the Wanderer ran to his son and pulled him off the ground with shouts of victorious exuberance. His three grandsons ran to join in the celebration.
A moment more and all five were off after the wounded ogre. The slashing, crashing, breaking sounds of its feet trampling through the forest were easy enough to follow, amplified by thunderous bellowing and braying roars. Energized by their apparent success, they followed on foot, barely managing to keep the wobbling monstrosity within range of their sight.
For two hours the chase ensued.
Occasionally the mammoth stumbled to one knee, but always recovered itself. That the wound was mortal there could be little doubt. The spear had penetrated deeper than any dared hope. Blood continued to spill before their steps, and however far the chase led them, their ultimate triumph was only a matter of time.
At last the creature lurched, then tripped again, this time to two knees, and did not rise.
The five pursuers approached warily from behind, then stood some yards off. They well knew an enraged beast near death was most dangerous of all. They would wait.
Silently they watched, listening to the mammoth’s lingering cries of anger and anguish. At length one of the two knees upon which it supported itself gave way, and the huge form toppled awkwardly onto the side of its head. Exhausted from both the run and the loss of blood, the beast rolled over on the great bulk of its whalelike right flank.
Legend of the Celtic Stone Page 17