Legend of the Celtic Stone

by Michael Phillips

  “The usurpers think we are savages,” he went on. “But we will use cunning to prevail against their numbers and their swords and the metal in which they dress themselves. If we unite, they can be turned back.”

  “You speak with boldness, son of Gatheon,” remarked Ainbach.

  “And in boldness we shall defeat them!” rejoined Coel. “If the others will heed my Foltlaig’s plan.”

  “You have taken the first steps?” asked Ainbach, now turning toward Coel’s trusted general.

  “We have already sent messengers to the Borestii in the north,” replied Foltlaig. “They too await vengeance for hostages taken twenty years ago. Messengers have also gone out to the tribes of the Damnonii, your neighbors. All that remains is for you to gather the chiefs of the Maeatae and for us to convince our Caledonii brothers. That accomplished, we will entreat the Selgovae, the Novantae, and the Votadini also to join our cause.”

  The Maeatae chieftain cast a long, appraising look at Foltlaig. “I will do what I am able,” he said at length.

  “The snows of winter will soon be upon us. We will await word from the other tribes and then reconvene with the first spring thaw. If we rouse our people as one and swoop down upon them before the winter’s sleep is gone from their eyes, victory will be ours!”

  “I shall return in the spring, then.”

  “A summons will be sent,” added Foltlaig. “Bring others of your people who can help us.”

  Coel and Ainbach rose and clasped hands, an occurrence that had not been seen between chieftains of the Caledonii and Maeatae within generations of memory. Foltlaig sat where he was, his heart full as he quietly observed the handclasp. Not until this moment had he dared dream they would go along with his plan. Now suddenly success seemed possible.

  If these two peoples, he thought, enemies from beyond memory, could henceforth begin to behave as the brothers they indeed were, their mutual Celtic blood would unify them against the common enemy to their shared inheritance, the land of their ancient ancestry.

  Two

  On the mainland continent of Europe, which the Wanderer and those like him had left behind longer ago than men remembered, those of their shared Celtic blood had by this time risen into a great civilization and waned.

  These people who had originated in the valleys of the Rhone, the Rhine, and the Danube under the northern shadow of the Alps were by any standards an amazing race—a stalwart breed of warriors and wanderers whose collective personality could perhaps most accurately be described by the archaic word “puissant.” The Celts were a puissant people—strong, mighty, virile, zealous, fervent, forceful—full of intensity, energy, drive, emotion, inventiveness, and creativity.

  They worshiped nature, and honored as many gods as there were mysteries about the world they did not understand. The creation of idols to their deities—as well as accouterments of battle and everyday life—was aided by an artistic sensitivity and advanced skill in metal and enamel work. Their priests, called druids, were given to barbaric ritual, gathering yearly for solemn assembly at holy sites where they left altars stained with human blood. Yet these druids were also learned in advance of their time, adept at plant and animal lore, astrology, and music, and would be largely responsible for Celtism’s enduring influence.

  As recently as the time of Cruithne’s father, Taran—around 300 BC—the Celts had held sway from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, from the European Atlantic coast to the Black Sea, which looked eastward toward Asia, from the north of what would soon become known as Britannia to the south of the peninsula where the city-state of Rome was slowly growing in might. They had occupied the very center stage of Europe’s development. The cities of London, Geneva, Lyon, Strasbourg, Bonn, Budapest, Vienna, and Belgrade were all Celtic settlements. Celtic tribal names left their mark across the entire European map: the Parisii in Paris, the Remi in Rheims, the Helvetii in Helvetia, later called Switzerland, the Belgae in Belgium, the Boii in Bologna and Bohemia. From their Latin name Galli came the name for the Galatians in Asia Minor, as well as the Gaelic tongue.

  In one aspect of advancing modernity, however, the Celts did not excel. They lacked centralized organization. No cohesive form of government held their empire together. No single head nor king nor capital rose preeminent. Theirs was a fierce individualism that prevented organizational unity. Their culture, therefore, remained tribal and heterogeneous.

  Though the Celts at their height sacked Rome and pillaged Greece, the civilizations of Athens and Rome possessed features that would enable them ultimately to outshine Celtic influence—centralized government, a preserved and documented language which contributed to the development of literature and libraries, a sophisticated tradition of engineering and architecture, and a uniform economy upon which to base business and trade.

  But in the fragmentation of the Celtic civilization . . . in its proclivity toward individuality and separateness . . . in its preference of loyalty to family and clan rather than to region and nation . . . in the divisiveness of its rival factions . . . can be descried the factors that centuries later would draw history’s curtain down upon Celtic culture.

  Romans were loyal to Rome. Where lay their pride? In being Roman citizens. The independent Celts, however, were loyal only to tribe and family. This individualism was both the pride and the doom of the Celt. The very strength of Celtic heritage was the Achilles’ heel of potential nationhood.

  The might of Rome eventually reached its zenith in the first century called anno Domini and continued its spread outward across the globe. Fragmented and disunited, the waning Celtic confederation was by then unable to stop Caesar’s mighty legions. As their civilization gave way to the Romans, the Celts migrated in droves throughout the western world—to the west in the direction of England, France, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Belgium, Holland, and also east to the steppes of Hungary, Bulgaria, and Russia. The trickle of previous millennia became a migratory flood.

  Year by year, the Celts found themselves pressed farther and farther from the central regions of the European continent they once dominated, pushed ever more toward its outward extremities—toward the north, toward the west, toward the waters and across them . . . to escape the Latin advance.

  In the far north of the land the Romans called Britannia, however, unmolested by the turbulent changes sweeping through Europe, and unseen by those continental races of Celts to whom they owed their heritage, another scion of tribes had through the centuries been growing on the worldwide Celtic ancestral tree.

  They were a people rising into prominence even while their continental Celtic cousins were being overrun—a people still strong, still energetic, still puissant with the hot blood of Celtic passion.

  Three

  Foltlaig, son of Gatheon, left the stone enclosure of his chief and walked slowly outside the camp.

  His steps took him to the shoreline of Loch Rannoch, from whose waters his people drew much of their sustenance, and on, upward along a steep path sloping ruggedly away from the lake. He arrived, after a lengthy climb of more than thirty minutes, at a high overlook from which he could see the long outline of Loch Rannoch spreading out in front of him, with the Caledonii settlement led by Coel on its banks.

  The day was cold. Foltlaig pulled the animal pelt more tightly about his shoulders and chest, then sat down on a great stone and gazed upon the buildings below. Smoke rose from most of the stone and turf dwellings of the fortress and wafted toward him on the light wind. He found the aroma a pleasant one. It spoke to him of comfort and protection against the elements, of his people’s capacity to subdue nature and even to put it to use against itself—making fire from the earth’s treasure house to keep out one of its most lethal perils, the cold of winter’s snows.

  This was a good land, he thought, and it gave his people a good life. It provided fish and many four-legged and winged creatures to eat—as well as food for the sheep they raised in their fields. From the soil, rocky and boggy though it was in many pla
ces, they were able to coax grains and vegetables. The skins of the beasts who roamed the earth and the peat from under the earth kept them warm.

  He drew in a deep sigh and stretched his gaze around in all directions—beyond the loch and the settlement below and toward the great mountains in the distance, some already capped with snow.

  Yes, it was good land, and he loved it with every fiber of his being.

  If only . . .

  The sigh of pleasure turned melancholy.

  If only the men who inhabited it were as compatible with one another as the land and its creatures were with themselves, as its elements were with those who found ways to use them.

  For it was man—not the beasts, not the elements, not the snows nor the hail nor the freezing colds nor the poor soil—who was enemy to survival in this place. And it was the enmity of his own people against themselves—one tribe against another—that threatened them more than the encroachment of the soldiers from the south.

  It had warmed his heart more than any peat fire to see the clasp of hands between Coel and Ainbach. The rare show of unity and brotherhood had touched him so deeply that he had hurried to be alone on this beloved outlook overspreading the valley of his home.

  He knew it probably couldn’t last. Conflict between the rival tribes was bound to be renewed, breaking out again as through the generations. It saddened him to think of it.

  Complex stirrings swirled within the breast of the Celtic paladin, vibrations of race and ancestry pulling at him from opposite directions, setting the diverse natures of the two ancient brothers against each other in the bowels of his soul. He was by nature a man of both pragmatism and poetry, of peace and war, of thought and action.

  It was an inner warfare with which he had struggled most of his days. For he was a paradoxical man, this reflective Caledonian warrior. Those of his kind who were driven by more primal instincts said he thought too much. Perhaps they were right. Yet he would become a progenitor of his race as surely as the two brothers of old. The turmoil of his broodings would lay foundations for much of the future history of the realms upon which his eyes now gazed.

  The meeting with the two chiefs and the thought of the approaching conflict could not help drive his memory back twenty years, for the tension within his soul stemmed from his personal experience as well as the intrinsic paradox of his nature. How much of his contradictory emotions grew from what he had heard and seen on that fateful afternoon when his whole personal history had been altered forever?

  Moisture filled his eyes. He did not try to prevent it.

  Four

  Foltlaig recalled little of what happened on that day after the moment he realized his father was dead. He only remembered lifting his face to the sky and shrieking in mournful agony.

  He was left fatherless in the heat of battle. Yet he could neither pause to mourn, nor even move the warm corpse of the man from whose loins he had come. Charging Roman horses and infantrymen ran about in a frenzy of arrows, lances, and flailing swords.

  How the day passed, Foltlaig could not remember. When it was over, blood covered every inch of his body, though he was not himself wounded. Whether it was Roman in origin or came from his own people, he did not know. He may have killed, he may have struck down a dozen soldiers in the fury of his grief—he remembered nothing. He had seen only the blood.

  He returned at the end of the day, searching through the carnage for the only body that mattered to him. He found it mostly unchanged, though the flesh had grown cold, stiff, and unfriendly. He picked up what remained of his father and carried it to a nearby wood. There, weeping without shame, he buried the man he had always considered the bravest and most invincible of all the Caledonii.

  His people had been slaughtered that day, his father and countless others. Throughout the sleepless night that followed—and many sleepless nights and days as he returned to Rannoch—the words he had uttered to his father came back to him again. They were all he could recall of what he said that day, but he remembered them with a vividness that would never leave him.

  I will fight the strangers until they are gone, the words from his own mouth rang in his brain.

  I promise, Father. I will not let them take the land.

  In the lonely despair of those nights, however, Foltlaig also made another vow—this one to himself. If he ever had a son, he would keep the boy from facing the horrible loss he had just experienced. He would live a long and full life with his son, and they would grow old together.

  That same year, Foltlaig’s wife gave birth to his son, Maelchon.

  Foltlaig never forgot his vow. As the boy grew, no father and son among all the Caledonii were as inseparable as Foltlaig and Maelchon. They loved each other not only as father and son, but as bosom friends.

  Neither did Foltlaig forget his promise to his own dying father. His vow was not to avenge that death by spilling Roman blood, but to prevent such from coming upon them again—by driving the encroachers from the land.

  The two promises seemed set at odds against each other. But he could ignore neither. He was both a son and a father, a warrior and a man of peace. Thus within his bosom grew the conflict between his promise to his father and the vow he had made within himself to live a long and peaceable life with his son.

  As the years passed, Foltlaig could not escape destiny’s call. He knew he would ultimately be forced to make a choice he was loath to contemplate. It was the dread feeling that it would one day rest with him to take up the sword of Gaelbhan . . . and face the same foe in battle.

  Again had risen up two distinct persons within his breast, battling for supremacy. It was the inner battle between the warrior and the father.

  Which Foltlaig was highest—the son of Gatheon, or the father of Maelchon? To whom did he owe greatest allegiance—his clan and its land . . . or his family?

  Such destiny was unsought. Foltlaig desired to be no hero of his people. He was an unwilling warrior, one who would gladly live out his life without lifting his sword again. He remained determined that no war would take from his son what had been so cruelly snatched from him at the height of his youth—a father.

  But he was Coel’s greatest strategist, after all. He could not show himself coward before eyes of chief or son or clan. Thus he occupied his position as tribal leader, and kept his fears and personal dreams hidden away in the secret places of his own heart.

  Five

  Foltlaig smiled. His melancholy faded as memories of his conflicting promises gave way to thoughts of the daring scheme those very promises had caused to unfold.

  By and by a plan had taken shape in Foltlaig’s mind—a way to defeat the intruders without the shedding of Caledonian blood.

  Perhaps they could make this land so inhospitable to the Romans that they would leave—if not of their own accord, at least with some unpleasant encouragement.

  He would outwit the Romans rather than amassing an army against them!

  Such an objective lay at the core of the plan he had eventually shared with his chief—a plan not of cowardice, but of cunning. Coel hated the Romans, but he was not eager to go to his death in another battle such as that of Mons Graupius. The chief, therefore, heartily agreed.

  Foltlaig gave himself to working out every conceivable detail, bringing Maelchon into the planning with him. As he became more and more convinced of success, his inner anxiety diminished. He would accomplish both purposes to which he was dedicated—he would fulfill his promise to his father by driving the Romans away, and he would enjoy long life with his son.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a footstep approaching along the rocky path he himself had followed a short while earlier.

  He glanced up. As if in response to his thoughts, there stood his son.

  “Maelchon! How did you know where to find me?”

  “I saw you leave the camp, Father,” replied the youth, a lean but muscular twenty-year-old.

  “You knew I would be here?”

  “Wh
ere else? I know where you go to think, and from your slow step I knew your mind was full. Is all well, Father? Did the two chiefs agree to your plan?”

  “Yes, Maelchon, they did.”

  “Then we will be victorious!” said his son with the enthusiasm of youth.

  Foltlaig nodded.

  “I only regret that it is always through battle that such matters as these must be solved.”

  “The intruders are our enemies,” said Maelchon. “They must be stopped. I have heard you say it yourself many times.”

  Again Foltlaig nodded.

  “Perhaps you should take my place as Coel’s commander.”

  “Not so long as you live, Father.”

  The young man sat down and gazed over the blue-green water below. Even Maelchon, as well as he knew his father, did not fully comprehend the sympathetic, thoughtful, and tender side of Foltlaig’s being . . . nor the price his father paid in attempting to reconcile the diverse natures within him.

  The two remained silent for some time, then gradually resumed their conversation, discussing the new developments in the plan they had devised together.

  Fidach’s haunting sensitivities had been temporarily subdued in the heart of Foltlaig. They had spent themselves remembering the past. Now within the bearing of the man who was Coel’s trusted commander, the warrior Cruithne had emerged dominant again over the present.

  When the two descended the hill together an hour later, arm of father over shoulder of son, they spoke excitedly about what lay ahead, eager to implement their designs on behalf of the Caledonians and their Celtic brethren.

  Six

  Three centuries had passed since the two Pritenae brothers had first practiced the ideal of unity that would one day be the hope for their land. The conquering Romans who discovered their descendants did not know they were the distant offspring of the same Celts their Roman forebears had battled on the European continent. Taking them for a new, previously unknown race of people, they had therefore given these fiercely independent northern tribes a new name.