Where the Forest Murmurs

Part 1

Where the Forest Murmurs

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

PHARAIS: A Romance of the Isles. THE MOUNTAIN LOVERS: A Romance. THE SIN-EATER, and other Tales. THE WASHER OF THE FORD. REISSUE SHORTER TALES, with others. I. Spiritual Tales. II. Barbaric Tales. III. Tragic Romances. (Reissued by David Nutt.)

THE LAUGHTER OF PETERKIN: Old Celtic Tales Retold. FROM THE HILLS OF DREAM: Poems. THE DOMINION OF DREAMS. THE DIVINE ADVENTURE. THE WINGED DESTINY.

To appear Shortly.

TORCHES OF LOVE AND DEATH: Poems Old and New. THE IMMORTAL HOUR: Two Dramas and a Fragment.

WHERE THE FOREST MURMURS. NATURE ESSAYS. BY FIONA MACLEOD

‘There through the branches go the ravens of unresting thought.’--W. B. YEATS.

LONDON: PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICES OF ‘COUNTRY LIFE,’ LTD. TAVISTOCK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C., & BY GEORGE NEWNES, LTD. SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNERS’ SONS MCMVI

Fiona Macleod.]

But today I saw one, on these still garths of shadow and silence, who put a hollow reed to his lips and played a white spell of beauty. Then I knew Love and Sorrow to be one, as in the old myth of Oengus of the White Birds and The Grey Shadows.

(F. M.)]

Indian Saying]

MR. P. ANDERSON GRAHAM

DEAR MR. GRAHAM--To whom so fittingly as to you could I inscribe this book? It was you who suggested it; you who in Country Life published at intervals, longer or shorter as the errant spirit of composition moved me, the several papers which make it one book; you without whose encouragement and good counsel this volume would probably not have been written. Then, perchance, it might have gone to that Y-Brasil Press in the Country of the Young wherefrom are issued all the delightful books which, though possible and welcome in Tir-na-n’ Og, are unachieved in this more difficult world, except in dreams and hopes. It would be good to have readers among the kindly Shee ... do not the poets there know an easy time, having only to breathe their thought on to a leaf and to whisper their music to a reed, and lo the poem is public from the caverns of Tir-fo-tuinn to the hills of Flatheanas! ... but, till one gets behind the foam yonder, the desire of the heart is for comrades here. These hours of beauty have meant so much to me, somewhat in the writing, but much more in the long, incalculable hours and days out of which the writing has risen like the blue smoke out of woods, that I want to share them with others, who may care for the things written of as you and I care for them, and among whom may be a few who, likewise, will be moved to garner from each day of the eternal pageant one hour of unforgettable beauty.

FIONA MACLEOD.

“The Divine Adventure.” F. M.]

CONTENTS

PAGE WHERE THE FOREST MURMURS 1

THE MOUNTAIN CHARM 13

THE CLANS OF THE GRASS 26

THE TIDES 37

THE HILL-TARN 47

AT THE TURN OF THE YEAR 56

THE SONS OF THE NORTH WIND 66

ST. BRIDGET OF THE SHORES 76

THE HERALDS OF MARCH 87

THE TRIBE OF THE PLOVER 99

Part 2

THE AWAKENER OF THE WOODS 112

THE WILD APPLE 124

RUNNING WATERS 136

THE SUMMER HERALDS 146

THE SEA-SPELL 158

SUMMER CLOUDS 168

THE CUCKOO’S SILENCE 178

THE COMING OF DUSK 188

AT THE RISING OF THE MOON 200

THE GARDENS OF THE SEA 211

THE MILKY WAY 221

SEPTEMBER 232

THE CHILDREN OF WIND AND THE CLAN OF PEACE 242

STILL WATERS 255

THE PLEIAD-MONTH 265

THE RAINY HYADES 277

WINTER STARS. I 290

WINTER STARS. II 301

BEYOND THE BLUE SEPTENTRIONS. TWO LEGENDS OF THE POLAR STARS 312

WHITE WEATHER: A MOUNTAIN REVERIE 327

ROSA MYSTICA (AND ROSES OF AUTUMN) 337

THE STAR OF REST: A FRAGMENT 349

Many runes the cold has taught me, Many lays the rain has brought me, Other songs the winds have sung me; Many birds from many forests Oft have sung me lays in concord; Waves of sea, and ocean billows, Music from the many waters, Music from the whole creation, Oft have been my guide and master.

The Kalevala.

F. M.]

WHERE THE FOREST MURMURS

It is when the trees are leafless, or when the last withered leaves rustle in the wintry air, creeping along the bare boughs like tremulous mice, or fluttering from the branches like the tired and starving swallows left behind in the ebbing tides of migration, that the secret of the forest is most likely to be surprised. Mystery is always there. Silence and whispers, still glooms, sudden radiances, the passage of wind and idle airs, all these inhabit the forest at every season. But it is not in their amplitude that great woodlands reveal their secret life. In the first vernal weeks the wave of green creates a mist or shimmering veil of delicate beauty, through which the missel-thrush calls, and the loud screech of the jay is heard like a savage trumpet-cry. The woods then are full of a virginal beauty. There is intoxication in the light air. The cold azure among the beech-spaces or where the tall elms sway in the east wind, is, like the sea, exquisitely desirable, exquisitely unfamiliar, inhuman, of another world. Then follow the days when the violets creep through the mosses at the base of great oaks, when the dust of snowbloom on the blackthorn gives way to the trailing dog-rose, when myriads of bees among the chestnut-blossoms fill the air with a continuous drowsy unrest, when the cushat calls from the heart of the fir, when beyond the green billowy roof of elm and hornbeam, of oak and beach, of sycamore and lime and tardy ash, the mysterious bells of the South fall through leagues of warm air, as the unseen cuckoo sails on the long tides of the wind. Then, in truth, is there magic in the woods. The forest is alive in its divine youth. Every bough is a vast plume of joy: on every branch a sunray falls, or a thrush sways in song, or the gauzy ephemeridæ dance in rising and falling aerial cones. The wind moves with the feet of a fawn, with the wings of a dove, with the passing breath of the white owl at dusk. There is not a spot where is neither fragrance nor beauty nor life. From the tiniest arch of grass and twig the shrewmouse will peep: above the shallowest rain-pool the dragon-fly will hang in miraculous suspense, like one of the faery javelins of Midir which in a moment could be withheld in mid-flight. The squirrel swings from branch to branch: the leveret shakes the dew from the shadowed grass: the rabbits flitter to and fro like brown beams of life: the robin, the chaffinch, the ousel, call through the warm green-glooms: on the bramble-spray and from the fern-garth the yellow-hammer reiterates his gladsome single song: in the cloudless blue fields of the sky the swifts weave a maze of shadow, the rooks rise and fall in giddy ascents and descents like black galleys surmounting measureless waves and sinking into incalculable gulfs.

Then the forest wearies of this interminable exuberance, this daily and nightly charm of exultant life. It desires another spell, the enchantment of silence, of dreams. One day the songs cease: the nests are cold. In the lush meadows the hare sleeps, the corncrake calls. By the brook the cattle stand, motionless, or with long tails rhythmically a-swing and ears a-twitch above the moist amber-violet dreamless eyes. The columnar trees are like phantom-smoke of secret invisible fires. In the green-glooms of the forest a sigh is heard. A troubled and furtive moan is audible in waste indiscoverable places. The thunder-time is come. Now in the woods may be seen and heard and felt that secret presence which in the spring months hid behind songs and blossom, and later clothed itself in dense veils of green and all the magic of June. Something is now evident, that was not evident: somewhat is entered into the forest. The leaves know it: the bracken knows it: the secret is in every copse, in every thicket, is palpable in every glade, is abroad in every shadow-thridden avenue, is common to the spreading bough and the leaning branch. It is not a rumour; for that might be the wind stealthily lifting his long wings from glade to glade. It is not a whisper; for that might be the secret passage of unquiet airs, furtive heralds of the unloosening thunder. It is not a sigh; for that might be the breath of branch and bough, of fern-frond and grass, obvious in the great suspense. It is an ineffable communication. It comes along the ways of silence; along the ways of sound: its light feet are on sunrays and on shadows. Like dew, one knows not whether it is mysteriously gathered from below or secretly come from on high: simply it is there, above, around, beneath.

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