We saw a man on a knoll winnowing grain in a gentle wind. This age-old picture so affected us that Eoin without a word drew up the car to light a cigarette.

From the rhythmic motion of the riddle, we watched the good grain fall to the earth and the chaff blow on the wind. The man on the knoll stood against the sky.

In the northland, the generation before mine used to winnow thus in their little barns, the winds blowing in at the small window and out at the door. As they used to do it in the country of the Loire away back in that sixteenth century when Joachim du Bellay wrote, D’un Vanneur de Blé aux Vents. ‘It is a song’, says Pater, ‘which the winnowers are supposed to sing as they winnow the corn, and they invoke the winds to lie lightly on the grain.’ The song that begins:

A vows troupe légère
Qui d’aile passagère
Par le monde volez . . .

and ends:

Cependant qui j’abanne
A mon blé qui je vanne
A la chaleur du jour.

‘One seems to hear the measured motion of the fans, with a child’s pleasure on coming across the incident for the first time, in one of those great barns of Du Bellay’s own country, La Beauce, the granary of France.’

Older than the barns of La Beauce, this figure on the hill—in a land, too, that had songs for all its labours. Yet the virtue of the picture lay in its gathering together in human kinship all men who have winnowed grain across all the fields of time.

As we went on, the Black Cuillin rose up white before us in an impressiveness, a massive symmetry, that on this sunny afternoon would have been incredible, did I not know that the imagination in its utmost reach for fantasy could hardly achieve so towering a spectacle. Some perfect angle of approach, some trick of light on the snowfields, some grouping of lines and planes and perspectives towards aspiring pinnacles, achieved for a moment this unearthly effect. There was silence for a long time, then Eoin said quietly:

‘When sleep takes you, where does it take you first? Is it in the eyes?’

It was a matter that had to be weighed thoughtfully. ‘No,’ I decided; ‘it takes me in the head.’

‘Do you know where it takes me?’

‘Where?’

‘In the hands. My arms and hands go jerky and queer. You see the turn there in front.’ It was a fairly sharp turn to the left. ‘My hands will want to turn to the right.’ If his hands had their way, the only craft that would thereafter interest us would be old Charon’s ferry-boat. We waited calmly to see what would happen at the turn. The car was a 30 h.p. V-8 Ford, and when the sole of the foot fell with the lightest negligence on the throttle, the whole mechanism charged like a Spanish bull. After flawlessly negotiating a few more bends, we drew up and got out. Eoin stretched himself on a hillock—just to ease his legs for one minute, he said.