Legend of the Celtic Stone

by Michael Phillips

  The accommodations of the chief and his two small families, by the standards of the day, were reasonably comfortable. But though the thick peat kept the weather outside at bay, the living arrangement inside was a stormy one. Not because Taran had two wives. Many men had more than one, and his own father Cuthred had had three. But in the case of his parents, the line of succession had always been distinct. There had been no dispute, therefore no rivalry, for Gabran’s line was clear. Neither of his two stepmothers, Brecc or Coelwine, mistook their position in the family. From his earliest memory, Taran had known that his uncle Eanwinall would succeed the chief Pendwallon and that he would himself succeed Eanwinall.

  But under his own roof, life had been anything but harmonious, despite the conciliatory efforts of Aethilnon and the close friendship between the two boys. Eormen scarcely spoke to either Aethilnon or Fidach and was increasingly possessed by the chiefly ambitions she cherished for her son.

  As Cruithne squinted in the low light from the fading fire, he heard her light voice from the other end of the room. “Is that you, my son?”

  “Yes, Mother,” answered Cruithne.

  “Are you alone?” queried Eormen.

  “Yes. Fidach and Aethilnon went down the hill to see Coelthryth.”

  “Ah, that is good! Come . . . come, my son, we must talk.”

  Cruithne approached and sat down on a reindeer hide next to his mother.

  “Your father sleeps.”

  “Is he . . . ?” Cruithne paused.

  “He is no worse. He sleeps fitfully, calling out first for you, then Fidach, then sleeping again. He will not get better. You know that, Cruithne. That scheming mother of him you call your brother knows it too! She—”

  “Aethilnon is no schemer, Mother. She is a kind woman. As for Fidach, he is my brother . . . and my friend.”

  “You and your dull-witted notions of friendship! Have you no desire to be chief?”

  “Not at the expense of Fidach. He is not only my brother, he is my elder brother.”

  “Elder, ha! By a few days . . . a week or two!”

  “Three and a half months, Mother. You of all people should not be able to forget fifteen weeks of carrying your own son in your womb while the infant cries of another filled the very walls wherein you lay.”

  “Stop, I will not hear such insults from you! It matters not!”

  “It may matter a great deal. He is indeed the firstborn, and I will do nothing to dispute his claim.”

  “He has no claim, I tell you! His mother is no better than the old women she so tirelessly serves. It is I who bear the blood of old Cowall in my veins.”

  “Which you have been trying to prove your whole life without success.”

  “I shall prove it! It may be but a distant relation, but the line passes through me! It shall be known . . . and you shall be the chief one day.”

  “Is it really so important, Mother?” said Cruithne softly. “I would be happy just to—”

  “Important! How dare you question the only thing that has ever mattered to me? Do you not know that I live for you, that I would die for your sake?”

  “Then for my sake, why will you not leave this relentless chase in which I have no interest?”

  Silence fell for a moment. The low flames of the dying fire now and then sent out a stream of light which reflected the avaricious gleam in the woman’s eyes. Cruithne did not like what he observed. Sometimes he wondered if this were really his mother. She seemed inhabited by a sinister spirit he did not know.

  “Do you see him, Cruithne, my son?” she said at length. Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper as she pointed across the room to where Taran still slept. “Look closely, Cruithne. See how he labors for breath. Death lingers close. It comes. I can feel its presence stalking round about the hill, approaching the walls, coming nigh this place.”

  Cruithne did not reply.

  He glanced over at his father, then back to Eormen. Though her voice remained calm, on her face glowed the insidious passion of lust—greed to hold power in her grasp. He could not look upon it without a wrenching ache seizing him. The look was one of consuming hate. He could not witness it without a sickening revulsion filling his stomach. How could he have come from this woman?

  “The time is not far off, Cruithne,” she went on, smiling now, but with a grin of diabolic intent. “The moment approaches when we must seize the mantle of the chieftainship.”

  “Such does not lie with me,” said Cruithne, looking away and sighing deeply.

  “Who else, then?”

  “It is not mine to determine.”

  “Are you a coward?” she challenged, the blood in her voice rising again. “Are you not willing to fight your rival, to put an end to his claim?”

  “He is not my rival, Mother,” replied Cruithne. “How can you speak so? I will not fight Fidach. I will never fight him! And Fidach will be the next chief, Mother. Do you not understand? It is his destiny, not mine.”

  “He will never be chief!” she growled in a low passion of rage.

  “He will be, Mother,” replied Cruithne. “And I tell you, I will serve him with humble and joyful heart.”

  “Such are the words of a swine! My own son a coward!”

  She rose and stalked to where lay the weak form of her husband. She eyed him for a long moment, then turned back and thrust her fist in her son’s face.

  “He will not be the chief,” she said, in a tone of yet deeper determination. “That woman he calls his mother will never look with pride at the leader of our clan and know him to be her son. That is—that has always been my right! It is I who will look upon the face of the chief and know him to have come from my womb. Do you hear me—it is my right! I ask you again, if you would be my son—will you take upon you the cloak that is yours?”

  “If you mean will I attempt to steal from my brother what rightfully belongs to him—no, Mother, I will not!”

  “Then you leave me no choice! What I do, I do for you, my son!”

  She stormed over to her personal cache of belongings, gathered up some bits and pieces of food and clothing, and stalked toward the door.

  Cruithne rose and attempted to stop her. She shoved him back with a strength he had rarely encountered.

  “Mother,” he implored. “Come back!”

  “He will never be chief!” she hissed back over her shoulder. She continued her enraged course out of the walled compound and down the hill to the southwest into the night.

  She did not return for three days.

  Seven

  Meanwhile, with the fire attended, two or three nights’ fuel stored nearby, and his mother softly comforting the old woman Coelthryth, Fidach walked back up the hill. He did not hear the argument between his brother and stepmother, nor did he observe her shadowy figure descending the opposite side of the hill.

  On his return he stopped at the bard’s house, the largest in the clachan other than his own father’s. He entered to find Pendalpin sitting with his son before a warm fire.

  “Come in!” cried the old bard pleasantly. “A hearty welcome, son of my friend!”

  “Thank you,” replied Fidach, giving the man the grip of his hand. He turned to Domnall and attempted to tousle his hair. The boy shot out an arm to fend off the playful attack.

  “Domnall, you grow too rapidly for me!” laughed Fidach. “You are nearly a man yourself!”

  “Soon I will go with you and Cruithne to hunt the wild boar!”

  “Perhaps sooner than you think.”

  “Why?” said the boy, eyes widening.

  “Surely you know of the stag?”

  “My father tells me many stories, Fidach.”

  “You must know all the tales, Domnall, for you must pass them on to our children, and teach them to tell their children.”

  “So Father has instructed me since before I can remember.”

  “The bard’s is a sacred calling. And your father is the best teacher of the past we have known.”
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  Fidach turned toward Domnall’s father.

  “The stag has returned to Caldohnuill, Pendalpin,” he said. “I dreamed of him.”

  “I have learned to heed your dreams, son of Taran. If he becomes chief—” he added, speaking to his son, “—you must learn to trust them too, Domnall. We may call ourselves the bard and the bard’s son, but Fidach possesses the second sight. You must listen to what he tells you.”

  “I do not know,” laughed Fidach. “I only know that you tell me my heart sees what no man’s eyes are able to.”

  “A bard can learn stories and songs. But no one can predict within whom the prophetic eye will be implanted. It is a gift to be guarded.”

  “Why does it not fall to the bard of the clan?”

  “I have indeed heard of bards with the gift, but only a few in any generation of men possess it. Who can tell why certain men are chosen? But tell me of the stag, Fidach.”

  “I do believe he has returned,” replied the chief’s son. “The dream was no ordinary one. Cruithne and I will soon go search for him. Perhaps Domnall can join us.”

  “May I, Father?” asked the bard’s son excitedly.

  “We will decide when the time is at hand,” replied the bard. “Your first duty is to learn what I teach you while I yet live. The bard’s is no lesser trust among our people than the chief’s.”

  “Your father speaks wisdom, son of Pendalpin,” said Fidach.

  Domnall nodded.

  “Yet there is much Cruithne and Fidach can show you as well,” the old minstrel went on. “One of them will be your own chief. The other will be your friend. They will teach you what even I cannot, for new times will come to our people. Sometimes old men like Taran and myself do not observe the coming changes in time to do what is needed. The eyes of the old become fixed and unable to see the new. Therefore, it is good for you to learn from those who will lead our people of a new generation.”

  Pendalpin reached behind him for his small harp, which he brought to his lap. He himself had helped his father choose the willow from which they had fashioned the frame, waiting until the angle of the sturdy branch was of the perfect shape and strength. They had then cut it and hollowed out the heavier bottom portion, stretched it over with skins, and attached it top and bottom to a column of heavy oak. He now began softly to pluck at its strings.

  “Neglect nothing your father has for you, Domnall, Son of Pendalpin,” said Fidach. “Within the heart that beats in his breast has been placed a huge storehouse, containing more fragments of wisdom than all the pieces of grain we keep in our granaries. It is more than merely the tales and legends. It is the man he has become, the knowledge that resides within him. All that wisdom from the reservoir of his years and his experience and his thoughts—you must seek to discover it all, so that you can implant it from his storehouse into your own. You must not merely memorize what he teaches. You must watch him, observing the wise judgment that displays itself not only in words but in the stature of his manhood. Do you understand how important this is, Domnall?”

  Domnall nodded seriously.

  “There are tales of peoples across the waters,” Fidach continued, “where the past is preserved on great sheets with marks and pictures, perhaps like the drawings we make on our stones and pots and ornaments. I do not know—I cannot understand how stories can be told without sound of human tongue. But I do know that what the bard preserves for us through his memory and his voice is a treasure greater than any our people possess. The bard tells not only of feats and happenings, but of meaning, for all is housed within the storehouse of his mind and heart. It falls to every bard’s son to preserve the same treasure and add to it. The bard’s duty is greater than the chief’s.”

  Fidach paused.

  Pendalpin strummed his harp tenderly, his thoughts now far away. Both Fidach and Domnall remained silent. They sensed what was coming. Both had sat thus around this very fire late into the night many times, listening to the honored poet and musician sing and recount tales from the ancient past, tales he had learned from his own father and grandfather, as they had learned them from theirs, back further into time than any man was capable of remembering.

  “We revere the bull and raven and boar, the wolf and bear and ram,” said the bard softly. “We dance to the gods of the sky and sea and oak. But none is greater to our own people than the white stag, for it is said he actually comes to visit our kind.”

  “Does he speak to man, Father?”

  “All the creatures speak, my son. One must learn to listen how to hear their voices. It is said the stag speaks with his eyes, with a look that is full of knowing.”

  “Yes!” said Fidach. “Yes, that is how it was in my dream. He spoke with his eyes!”

  The old bard nodded thoughtfully. “It is said the white stag first came to this land before man’s foot trod these regions,” added Pendalpin softly. “That was when the snow and ice covered the land. When the great winter went away from the land, the white stag was left behind with its whiteness upon him. He remained in Kildonanoid and Caldohnuill, wandering the hills to remind the men who came that they were not the first inhabitants of this place.”

  The bard paused. All was silent.

  Tongues of flame from the fire licked out into the air as if trying to snare invisible specters from the night. A faint popping and crackling from its hot coals was the only sound.

  “The white stag has returned,” Pendalpin went on. “He has come no doubt as a sign.”

  “What does it mean, Father?”

  “It is not for me to know, my son,” answered the bard. “My vision of such things comes and goes. Perhaps you should ask your friend, the chief’s son.”

  But Fidach remained silent, staring deeply into the fire, lost in his own thoughts.

  “Our chief is not well,” Pendalpin went on. “I too am old. I know not what the stag portends. But perhaps it is a sign that death approaches. Perhaps it is a reminder that our heritage rests not in the lives of individual men, but in the generations of our people, an enduring heritage like the land.”

  He began again to strum the instrument in his lap. On its stretched-skin soundboard was drawn, surrounded by ornate and colorful designs, an image of the very stag about which he sang. After a few moments, in melancholy tones, the voice of the bard began to sing:

  An old man stirs the fire to a blaze

  In the house of a child, of a friend, of a brother.

  He has overspent his welcome.

  Night draws down over Caldohnuill.

  He is beckoned to rise, to journey

  To a new place he has never seen.

  It is a land of light, he is told,

  But in his heart resides fear;

  It is a land he knows not.

  The days, grown desolate, whisper and sigh;

  Hearing the storm through the roof above,

  He bends to the warmth and shakes with cold,

  While his heart still dreams of battles and loves

  And friendships, and the vigor of youth,

  Mingled with cries of the hunt from the hills as of old.

  The fire burns low.

  The old man kindles it once more, but there rises no flame.

  Life ebbs from the coals, and from the man.

  A land of light and warmth and youth awaits him.

  The white stag beckons him come

  To a land where all is at rest and where all are One.

  Yet his soul fears, for he sees only with his eyes,

  And they cannot behold what lies beyond the darkness.

  “Have you seen the stag, Father?” asked Domnall after several minutes of silence.

  “Only once, when I was a young man of twenty.”

  “What was he like?”

  “A majestic creature! He stood on a distant peak. I caught but a momentary glimpse of his giant form. My father had taken me northward over Aethbran lon a Sgeulachd. We journeyed for some days toward Kildonanoid. My father had much to te
ll me.”

  “What did he tell you?” asked Fidach.

  “You have heard the stories of old many times, son of my friend.”

  “I choose to hear them again, Pendalpin,” replied Fidach. “Tell me of the first men who came here after the stag.”

  “It is said the first man to lay eyes on the stag,” began Pendalpin, “was himself old and covered with hair nearly as white as the stag’s. I do not know if tales of this man are myth or fact, but I trust the legend as my father learned it from my grandfather. He said the man was already advanced in years when he journeyed far into the region of the stag. He met the animal one afternoon when he was hunting to feed his family. When the grizzled face of the man met that of the stag, the thought of harming it never occurred to him. They stared at each other for long moments, in an awe of respect, for neither had seen the likes of the other before. At length they turned, and each walked quietly away through the forest from the direction he had come.

  “The hunter returned to his family without food. He told his three sons of the beautiful creature, adjuring them, if they ever laid eyes on the beast, not to harm it. The old man, says the legend, lay as one dead for three days, and thereafter for many weeks could not speak at all.

  “Each of the three sons is said to have journeyed to different regions. The youngest was the first bard, so the tales say. He taught his own son of the things past—taught him to pass along to his sons and daughters and all those who would follow the story of what his father had seen. Thus it comes to me, after generations too numerous to number, to pass along to my son as well.

  “The sons of the old white-haired man were but the first of many to come. As the men moved north from the lands below and came from across the Dark Waters, the stag moved ever deeper into the mountains and forests. For it was not every man’s destiny to lay eyes upon the white stag, but only those chosen to receive his message.”

  “What is his message, Father?” asked Domnall.

  “Ah, my son, only those who are chosen to look into his eyes can know such things. But the tales that are spoken tell of love for this land. They speak of peace between man and man, brother and brother, man and beast, and between man and the land that feeds him. The tales speak of brotherhood. They speak of respect for man and creature, respect for the earth and forest and moor and lake and stream and sea, which feed all living things. But sadly, most often the legends are but tales sung by old bards, while men of youth continue to fight and grasp and seek to dominate one another.