XVI

Glen Etive, where she ‘builded her bridal hold’

We left Oban at 8.20 a.m., round about high water, having been informed by a man on the slipway of the yard in Ardentrive Bay (where we filled up with petrol and oil from the yard’s launch) that high water at Connel Bridge was about an hour and a half after Oban. Though we could hardly be eight miles from Connel, we were not astonished. In the Sound of Iona, the ferryman told us that between the centre of the Sound and inshore by the Bull Hole, a matter of yards, the difference could run to an hour and a half. But it was easy enough to check the information received. In the Sailing Directions: ‘CONST. for finding time of High Slack Water at Connel Falls — 3hr. 6m. L’pool.’ Turning up Brown’s Nautical Almanac, we noted the time of high tide at Liverpool on this particular morning, deducted the 3hr. 6m., and found that the tide should be high and slack under the bridge at 9.41 a.m. We should thus probably enter with the last of the flood and certainly, all going well, were in time for the slack water.

On paper it looked the most intricate piece of navigation we had yet tackled, for we had heard in our time the roar of the flowing or ebbing tide over the rock ledges in the narrow channel spanned by the railway bridge at Connel Ferry. I hesitate to confess that it was the difficulty that attracted us, but I am afraid it must have exerted the major pull, for all our knowledge of the Loch Etive country was pretty well summed up in a few uncertain words of the song of farewell Deirdre sang—the most beautiful of all the women of the Gaels—on leaving Alba (or Albyn, as Scotland was then known). ‘Glen Etive, O Glen Etive, where I builded my bridal hold,’ as the modern translator interprets the simple words of the lovely one herself. Together with other vague historical odds and ends, but certainly with no idea of the astonishing past and present of the whole region.

It was raining slightly when we left Oban and the sky was heavy. There was no flag on the ivied ruin—that ancient centre of the Macdougalls (of whom I have never met a bad one). Passing Maiden Island to port, we opened out the coast and saw Oban’s bathing suburb of sands—it looked attractive even in the rain. There was a real good roll to enliven us and remind us of the open sea. We gave the shore no more than a fair berth and were confused somewhat by our small scale chart, as, on this course, the entrance to Loch Etive is by no means obvious from any distance. We had made up our minds to go inside the island at the mouth, but having been misled by what looked like the channel and turned out to be the disappearing arm of a little bay, we stood off and finally passed the island to starboard and so opened out the entrance properly. To port now was the wide sweep of Lochnell Bay, with its legendary background to the Stone of Destiny. In the leaden-surfaced sea-roll and the rain and the gloom, it would not have been difficult to conjure strange figures out of a dim past. Dunstaffnage itself should be showing soon. So thoughtfully we asked the Crew to read a chapter.

‘The Island of Dunstaffnage’, she read, ‘and a small islet, Eil. Beg. N.E. of it, lie at the mouth, and the detail chart, 2814a, should be carefully consulted if going up, to avoid the shoal water off Ledaig Pt. and Ru ard nan leum, the N. and S. points of the actual entrance.’

‘Get out detail chart 2814a.’

‘Aye, aye, sir,’ sang the Mate.

‘About 1 mile farther up’, the Crew continued, ‘the channel narrows suddenly at Connel Railway Bridge, and the navigation becomes very difficult for sailing craft. . . . See sketch for passing through bridge.’

It was both an artist’s sketch and a draughtsman’s sketch, with an arrow descending from the second upright of the bridge on the south side. Admirable indeed.

‘Close above the bridge, which spans the narrows, there is a ledge of rocks forming a submarine causeway. . . . There is 3 to 5 faths. at L.W. between the centre rock and the S. shore, the clear passage being straight and about cable wide. Owing to . . . there are many and various eddies along the S. shore, both on flood and ebb tides. There is also on that shore . . . ’

‘That’s our shore.’

‘Aye, aye,’ said the Mate.

‘. . . a ledge running out 3 or 4 yards from the rocks at the E. end of the channel, which only uncovers at L. W., dangerous because . . . ’

‘You take the helm.’

‘Capital,’ said the Mate.

I toured the engine, thinking she was a bit sluggish, but decided she was merely bored with the leaden day.

The Mate had now her head on the second upright of the bridge on the south side, going straight for the channel. We could no more than just see the dark ripple that denoted the submarine causeway. It was slack water. The books had worked their magic again.

Up under the bridge we went, with the assurance of a coastal tramp, and then—for the first and the last time—our Sailing Directions (now called the Book) failed us.

‘A mark’, read the Crew, ‘which will indicate when clear, E. of the “submarine causeway”, is when the west garden of the second villa E. of the bridge, on the S. shore, is in line, end on. The wall is conspicuous, and starts from the road, up the hillside. When clear, keep to the N. shore until. . . ’

As we came from under the bridge, the south shore was a rash of villas, and three pairs of eyes, keenly concentrated, could not pick up that conspicuous wall, however the villas were counted or discounted. (We failed, too, on the return journey. Though I should hesitate to suggest that the Book in this particular needs revision.)

However, there was no difficulty in seeing when we were beyond the sunken rocks of the famous Falls of Lora and so we went over towards the north shore and faced into Loch Etive.

 

It was now raining very heavily and the clouds hung low on the mountains. The scene, stupendous and deep, held us to silence, until the Mate said:

‘I feel we are sailing west.’

The remark seemed more apt then than I can hope to explain now. Actually we were going due east, but it felt as if we were sailing into the very heart of the west in its most arresting Ossianism. What fitful wind there was could no more than slowly curl upward and reform the mists on the mountains. Wild duck passed away from us, and on dim shores we saw swans of an incredible whiteness. The rain trickled down our faces, soft to the lips, and in the air around was, sudden as a memory, an immemorial fragrance. I dislike vagueness, but it is not always easy to be precise, to be able to separate with certainty the imaginary from the real. And even in the most elusive experience of this kind there may be something so overwhelmingly real that it transcends the personal and becomes old as history, the history of a whole folk, linking the historic process with a potency greater than may be found in its tongue or its music. Some folk music does search this out, but what it is in the music that makes the appeal I do not know.

We decided all at once that until the Mate returned a week hence, we should make this loch our home; and, rain or no rain, the prospect made us happy. For we were due a carefree rest, after what had been to us strenuous and anxious days.

‘That sounds pretty good to me,’ said the Crew.

‘I’ll come back,’ said the Mate.

‘More cheers,’ said the Crew.

So what ho! for an anchorage. It would have to be a good one, sheltered, peaceful, and away from all human interference. The Book nobly rose to the occasion. Indeed it had obviously been keeping up its severe sleeve ever since we left Portnalong the word splendid. So we headed for ‘a small bay which affords splendid shelter in 2 to 3 fathoms . . . ’.

‘I think’, said the Mate, ‘you should make a special donation to the publishers.’

‘We may yet’, said the Crew, ‘be invited to become members of the Clyde Cruising Club itself.’

‘You certainly’, said the Mate, ‘have won your—uh—trousers.’

Which was a complicated point, because having worn out her grey trousers fore and aft through walking on her knees, etc., in the cabin, she had complained of a slight cramp amidships brought on by refusing to walk on her knees in the only remaining (and nicely creased) blue ones.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘But there is an opening for you too. We could write to the Club and suggest that, excellent as their Book is, it might be made still more useful if to each anchorage was added a short note explaining where and how to catch fish.’

‘It would do no harm’, I suggested to the Mate, ‘if you kept her straight on Airds Point—for that’s it ahead.’

The little bay where we were to anchor turned out to be all that we could desire. Nicely wooded, with bracken and grass and a little burn entering its inmost reach, it looked remote from all the world. By the weed on the shore, we felt sure of the holding ground. The Crew took the sounding, the engine stuck in reverse, and the Mate towed her head to the perfect spot, while three oyster-catchers, two herons and a whole string of curlew told a silent world that we had arrived.

The rain increased until it was coming down in torrents. We tried to gather from the chart our general direction from Taynuilt, but the chart misled us, for which you couldn’t blame it, as the village itself is not on the coast. In the afternoon the Mate and I set off inland, heavily oilskinned, through cataracts of woods, over low hills, and across swamps. Once, lifting my head, I saw what appeared to be the Mate surrounded by a dark aura violently in motion. It was the perfect illustration of the scientific conception of atoms or molecules hurtling around one another to compose matter, with the extra conception of electrons hurtling round nuclei thrown in. But when I opened my mouth to laugh, some of my own buzzing aura entered, and I had to spit the brutes from my throat. They were house flies mostly, and if they had stayed still for a moment, we could have sliced them. By the time we struck the railway line we had had two Turkish baths each, but when we stood for a moment to let the steam moderate, the flies were upon us again.

But the rain was taking off, and indeed if we could not have located the sun we should not have known which way to turn. After two or three miles of the line, our oilskins, wetter inside than out but swinging behind us now in a gentle breeze, we saw Taynuilt ahead, with the great Ben Cruachan behind. The station-master hunted up all sorts of travelling information for the Mate and then directed us to the hotel. We entered and groped down a dark passage, where a bar window was slammed down against our faces. ‘I thought you said this was the way?’

‘It’s all right. Ssh!’ said our informant.

But there was no conspiracy about the beer, when it came in pewter pots.

 

Taynuilt is an airy scattered place, with reasonable shops, an obliging postmaster, and agreeable folk. As we returned to the station, we heard one or two explosions from a great scar on the mountain across the loch. We sat beside a workman on the platform, who told us that the scar was Bonawe Quarries, ‘the finest granite in the world’, and he pointed to a house close by of bright grey stone.

‘Where do they send it to?’ I asked.

‘All over the universe,’ he replied.

He was quite clear on the subject of the weather, too, being certain that the summers had deteriorated since the Great War. Before then splendid sunny summers—now rain, rain. ‘When I came nrst—’

‘When was that?’

‘In 1887. The summers were long and sunny then. . . .’

Granite must have agreed with him, for he did not look old enough even to have been born in 1887. He had a lined humoursome face, with hair the exact colour of grey granite dust, and chuckled when we told him the way we had taken into Taynuilt. He pointed out a pathway over the wooded hill that could be seen even from the railway station. I thanked him as the train came in and he and the Mate went away together.

 

That evening, as I took the path over the Point, by birch and hazel and oak, with Loch Etive down below and more freshness and beauty around than the brain had the energy to think on, the refrain of the song Deirdre’s Farewell to Albyn entered and took control. For there are old Gaelic tunes that in the right atmosphere do take control, and subjugate and tyrannise over and hypnotise, until the mind itself falls in love with the drug and the emotion or harmony it engenders. And though this particular air may be neither old nor traditional (rather, in fact, like Clementine), yet the subject matter so influenced the cadences that the fume from the drug arose in its soft tide and floated the mind.

 

For the subject matter was clear enough, as clear as the story about Helen of Troy at least. To English classical men the story of Helen of Troy is the great story of the world.

Hers was

The face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topmost towers of Ilium

and when English lips mouth the familiar words gently, you see the fume being created.

Yet with the air always of ‘classical’ legend, of something half-intellectually conceived and poetically remote, with the glimmering outline of Greek statuary, inducing a nostalgia behind the port, but ever so delicate and even well bred; a nostalgia, perhaps, not for Helen so much after all as for something that oneself has lost, like youth.

But to the Gael, Deirdre is not a lovely woman of another race: she is flesh of the same flesh and bone of the same bone, and at the words ‘Deirdre the Beautiful is dead’, the head is bowed and the mind blinded.

What befell Deirdre and the Sons of Uisneach is one of the Three Sorrows of Gaelic story-telling and the best known of the three. There are many versions of the story, the oldest being found in the Book of Leinster, a twelfth-century MS. It tells of individual and social life, of taboos, of love, of escape, of a woman’s intuition of treachery, of man’s obtuseness, of journeys by land and sea, and of final tragedy.

It starts in Ulster, with Conchobar, the king of that land, at a great feast given by his story-teller, Feidhlim. Everyone of importance was there. Such a feast lasted weeks or months and while this one was in progress, news was brought that Feidhlim’s wife had given birth to a daughter. Whereupon the Druid had one of his moments of vision and told the terrible evils that were to afflict the realm of Ulster on account of this new arrival. So impressive was he (they knew with what accuracy his ‘second sight’ worked), that there and then they seriously discussed the wisdom of taking away the young life. But Conchobar said no, leave her to be reared by me, and I’ll make her my wife.

So he put her into one of his forts, with a nurse to rear her and a tutor to teach her, and orders were issued that no one must go near her except Lebarcham, who was the king’s ‘conversation woman’. And no one went, until she had grown up and was ‘in beauty above the women of her time’.

One winter’s day the tutor killed a calf, and when Deirdre saw a raven on the red and the white snow, she said to Lebarcham that she would like to have a husband with these colours; raven hair, and red cheeks, and white skin. And in the idle way that women have of precipitating the destiny that is their undoing, Lebarcham answered, ‘I know a man in Conchobar’s following who is just like that. His name is Naesi.’ ‘O Lebarcham,’ said Deirdre, ‘get him to come privately, so that I may see what he’s like.’

Lebarcham did this, and in a little while Deirdre was telling Naesi how thrilled she was by all the wonderful stories she had heard about him—and would he take her away by stealth? In the end Naesi agreed, ‘yet reluctantly, for fear of Conchobar’. So he got his two brothers and other heroes to help him, and together they abducted Deirdre and fled to Albyn or Alba. They navigated the Falls of Lora (without aid from railway bridge or villa garden; possibly they had a pilot) and came up past Taynuilt (the wood the Mate and I went through is still mapped as Coillenaish or Naesi’s Wood) and went on past the spit opposite Bonawe Quarries and so up the loch until they reached that spot where she built her first house. They had many adventures and once went as far as Inverness, where the high king of Alba lived, for Naesi and his brothers were mighty warriors and were prepared to give service for their new land. A great feast was held at Inverness, whereat, it is related, there was a considerable amount of drinking, for even in those days they drank out of glasses in the northern capital. (As, indeed, they do to this day, and the distillate is still the best.) Well, from one drink to more, the high king could not keep his stricken eyes off Deirdre, and so she and Naesi had to fold their tent and steal away. Thus, with one thing and another, the happiest days of Deirdre’s life were spent in Alba.

Meantime, old Conchobar was at another lengthy feast (for they believed in making the happiest use of their time long ago). The musicians and poets did their best, and fine songs were sung, and all the people were merry and in the highest spirits. And then, like a great actor, Conchobar stilled the throng. ‘Young men and heroes of Ulster’, cried he, ‘is there here any fault or blemish or want?’

‘Not any, O king!’

‘I know of a great want,’ said the king: ‘the three torches of valour of the Gael, Naesi and his two brothers.’

Whereupon the joy of all rose to a pinnacle, for this very want had been in their thoughts, though they had been afraid to confess it.

‘I shall have messengers sent,’ said Conchobar.

But whom? For Naesi was under a geasa or vow not to return to Erin except in the company of Fergus, or Conell Cearnach, or Cuchulain.

So in due course Conchobar got hold of Conell privately, and flattered him, and suggested, ‘What would you do to me if I should send for the sons of Uisneach, and they should be destroyed for me—a thing I do not propose to do?’

‘I’d kill every Ulsterman I met—without exception.’

‘Now I understand that the sons of Uisneach are dearer to you than I am.’

And so he sent for Cuchulain and that warrior replied without hesitation:

‘I pledge my word that if you had that done, though you fled eastward to Western India, it would not save you from falling by my hand.’

Fergus, the third, said he might spare Conchobar himself, but no other Ulsterman.

So Fergus was sent, and we hear no more of him until he arrived in ‘the fastnesses of the sons of Uisneach, namely Loch Etive in Alba’.

At the time of his arrival, Deirdre and Naesi were playing chess.

‘That was the cry of a man of Erin,’ said Naesi.

‘Nonsense,’ said Deirdre.

‘There it is againl’

‘That’s the cry of a man of Alba,’ said Deirdre.

But when the cry came the third time, and Naesi’s brother went out to meet Fergus, Deirdre confessed she had known all along it was Fergus’s cry.

‘Why did you conceal it, then?’

‘I dreamt’, said Deirdre, ‘that three birds came from Emain Macha with three ships of honey; they left the ships of honey but took away three sips of our blood.’

‘And the meaning?’

‘Fergus has come to offer peace from Conchobar, who has a design against you; for sweeter than honey is the peace message of a false man.’

When Fergus and those with him came in, there were happy greetings, and Fergus said that he brought Conchobar’s peace and pledged himself upon it.

Deirdre argued against Fergus, but Fergus said, ‘The sight of one’s own country is better than vain fears, and what is prosperity to the exile?’ And Naesi heartily agreed with him.

Nor could Deirdre change her husband’s mind, for he had a man’s simple belief in goodness and brotherhood, particularly when his own desire led him that way. She forbade him to go but he could see no reason in her woman’s fears. For a little time the struggle went on between them. Then Deirdre saw that nothing would persuade her husband to stay, so she bowed to his will and prepared to go with him, though she knew they were going to their doom.

As they sailed away Deirdre looked back at that eastern land of Alba, and said, ‘My love to you, O eastern land. Grieved am I to leave you; delightful are thy harbours and thy bays, and thy clear beauteous plains of soft grass, and thy cheerful green-sided hills; little did we think that we should leave you.’

And then she made her great song of Farewell to Alba (or Albyn), mentioning in it all the places she specially loved:

Glen Etive, O Glen Etive,
There I built my first houses,
Beautiful its woods on rising,
When the sun fell on Glen Etive.

or

Glendaruadh, O Glendaruadh,
I love each man of its inheritance,
Sweet the sound of the cuckoo on bended bough
On the bill above Glendaruadh.

So they went back to Erin, and from the moment they landed there things went wrong with them. Deirdre foresaw each treachery, but Naesi being a warrior would not see it, and in any case was not now disposed to turn his back. So at last they came to Emain Macha and Deirdre gave them a last sign: if they were asked to go to Conchobar’s own house, all would yet be well; if they were sent to the knightly Red Branch, all would be over. They went and knocked on Conchobar’s door, and they were sent to the Red Branch.

All this time the king was wondering about Deirdre’s beauty, for if she had lost it he would be sorry to sacrifice a good fighter like Naesi. So he sent Lebarcham to the Red Branch to find out. And Lebarcham went and greeted her darling, and told them, in tears, to barricade the windows. Then she returned to the king, sad that all Deirdre’s beauty was gone, including her shape, and lamented, blaming the rough life in Alba and the weather. Which pleased the king, until his jealousy made him doubt, and he sent a young man who had no reason to love Naesi. And this young man saw Deirdre, in beauty greater than she had been in Erin, before Naesi threw a chessman that smashed his prying eye. Then the Red Branch was surrounded and war was on.

There were such deeds performed that night, that Conchobar in the end had to call on the aid of the Druid, who put Naesi and his brothers under a delusion, so that they were captured. Then did Conchobar break also his word to the Druid and the three great sons of Uisneach were slain.

Moving distractedly about the bloody green of Emain, Deirdre met the hurrying Cuchulain face to face, and told him of the treachery and the tragedy of that night, and when they came to where the sons of Uisneach lay, Deirdre spread out her hair and drank Naesi’s blood, and made her great widow’s lament for the dead, and killed herself upon his body, and was buried with him.

 

In the fume of the old immortal tale, I arrived back at the boat, where I tried out a minnow, and was astonished at the behaviour of a swan which came towards me at great speed. Though full grown, she looked young and slim and was clearly very frightened, for she crossed over my line near at hand without apparently seeing me. Greatly wondering at this, I turned round and saw a male swan also coming towards me, but with his wings lifted to an Elizabethan ruff about a head curved back in angry dignity. He came also at great speed, but without permitting the strong slow alternate sweep of each paddle to degenerate into haste. His reptilian eye never even glanced at me, and when the female swan struck the shore, she turned away making now for the Point. My rowing course led me naturally to intercept her, but she feared the dignified terror far more than she feared me, and in her terrified haste almost paddled herself out of the water.

When she had disappeared the male tyrant lowered his ruff, and even stood up a little in the water to flap his wings, as a man might dust his palms. That was that.

Deigning at last to give me a glance with his round black eye, he paddled slowly back towards a second female swan, which had been following him at a distance, lingeringly, uncertain. Was this the mother of the daughter that was being driven from home? There was certainly something of that in her attitude, of holding aloof, of regret, following yet not following.

Meantime the ruffian himself must have had suspicions, for presently he deliberately paddled to see what was going on round the point. All at once up went the ruff, and off he set, the mother following more uncertainly than ever. Finally, all three passed from view.

Two days later, the tyrant and his wife reappeared, but without the daughter. Sometimes the Crew would wonder about her, and about the lonely anchorages she would make at night. ‘For it is different—daughter leaving a mother—from a son.’ (Unless, of course, it was ‘the eternal triangle’!)

In the deep dusk that night, between ten and eleven, an uncertain wind flawing the surface of the loch, there came across the water the slow notes of a pibroch played on the pipes. I knew the theme but could not name it. The wind brought it and bore it away, in the doubling, the trebling . . . and finally the slow profound statement of the theme again. It affected us like a spell, and when it had ended all the night was quiet.