A child of the mist? Everything but that—except to the nostalgic or cynical modern, or to the chief who cunningly provided himself with a charter—and acted on its imported ‘feudal rights’.

As we drove along in the half-light, Eoin and I had an orgy of such talk. It is like the talk that comes out of drink or a terrible sobriety. The old values are seen with a profound clarity. They belong to the mountains and glens, to the curve and flow of the land, to the gleam of the sea, to that which exists static and eternal, yet flowing, before our eyes. The silence is inspired with the far sound of it. It is closely akin to the vision of the modern young communist poet, except that he is moved by a sort of intellect whereas we were moved by a sort of memory.

And the memory provided us with actual stuff to go upon. And individuals, too—very tangible indeed. Like Mary Macleod, who liked snuff and whisky. Or Mary Macpherson whom the folk called Mary of the Songs; their hearts went beating with pleasure when her face showed round the doorjamb of the céilidhe-house. She was welcomed by the common folk as, farther south, Burns, of the same stock, was welcomed when he followed his greeting into kitchen or tavern. But little of the real stuff that enchanted her listeners has come through in writing: only enough to assure us of her original force: the rest is with traditional memory.

There was, then, most certainly this life of the folk, full of the warm human hungers, of fun and laughter, of labour-songs and pipe-playing and story-telling, a life that seems now almost dark and secretive, well hidden behind the clan pomp of feudalised chiefs, with their vanities and bloody little warfares, behind the history or ‘romantic glamour’ of Bonnie Prince Charlies.

The more solemn snatches of it we find gathered into Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica. Little of the same kind in modern poetry can equal in intensity of utterance and perfection of form some of these short hymns or invocations recorded by Carmichael direct from the lips of old men and women towards the end of last century (published 1900). The evidence is there—and, in the Introduction, evidence of much else. ‘If not late, proverbs, riddles, conundrums, and songs follow. Some of the tales, however, are long, occupying a night or even several nights in recital. Sgeul Coise Cein, the story of the foot of Cian, for example, was in twenty-four parts, each part occupying a night in telling.’ Against which, Shaw’s Methuselah is a slight affair!

Possibly all this talk had some effect on Eoin, for when we arrived quite safely at his destination, which was an inn, I followed him down the passageway as if we were entering the old dark secret life of the folk.

And this, in a measure, we did.

There were young folk and fun everywhere, and good drink. As we had eaten little that day, a craving came on Eoin for salt herring and potatoes. The sharpness of salt herring affects the palate as satire the mind: both live on what they consume with a hunger for more. Too many potatoes induce in some the flatulence of boasting. And a bit of boasting is needed when visiting legs are being pulled. The number of herring seemed large, but they were small and sweet behind the salt, and anyway we refused a second dish. It is said that the Celtic people, for all that they were the first to distil whisky, had only beer in the beginning. And after salt herring, beer still comes first.