The Winged Destiny: Studies in the Spiritual History of the Gael

THE WINGED DESTINY: STUDIES IN THE SPIRITUAL HISTORY OF THE GAEL
By Fiona MacLeod


CONTENTS

DEDICATORY INTRODUCTION

THE SUNSET OF OLD TALES
The Sunset of Old Tales
The Treud Nan Ron
The Man on the Moor
The Woman at the Cross-ways
The Lords of Wisdom
The Wayfarer
Queens of Beauty
Orpheus and Oisin
The Awakening of Angus Og

CHILDREN OF WATER
Children of Water
Cuilidh Mhoire
Sea-Magic
Fara-Ghaol
Sorrow on the Wind
The Lynn of Dreams
Maya

FOR THE BEAUTY OF AN IDEA
Prelude
Celtic
The Gaelic Heart

ANIMA CELTICA
The Gael and His Heritage
Seumas: A Memory
Aileen: A Memory
The Four Winds Of Eirinn
Two Old Songs Of May
"The Shadowy Waters"
A Triad
The Ancient Beauty

THE WINGED DESTINY


CHAPTER 1 EXCERPT

I do not know if in anything I have a keener pleasure than in the hearing . . . by the hearthside, or looking down into green water, or on the upland road that strings glen upon glen along its white swaying neck . . . of the old tales and poems of beauty and wonder, retold sometimes in an untarnished excellence, sometimes crudely, sometimes so disguised in the savour of the place and hour that not then and perhaps not for long, are they recognized in accent or discerned in feature. Perhaps this pleasure is the greater because it is the pleasure of the tale-lover, for the tale?s sake, rather than of the tale-collector, for the quest?s sake. I do not know how many tales and fragments of tales and broken legends I have heard, now here, now there; or what proportion of these was old, or what proportion of them was of the fantasy or dreaming mind of to-day, or how many retained the phrase and accent of the past in taking on the phrase of to-day and the accent of the narrator?s mind. It is the light, the lift, the charm, the sigh, the cadence I want. I care less for the hill-tale in a book than told by the firelight, and a song is better in the wash of the running wave than in crowded rooms. Every sad tale and every beautiful tale should have a fit background for its setting; and I have perhaps grown so used to the shaken leaf, or the lifted water, or the peat-glow in small rooms filled with warm shadow and the suspense of dreams, as the background of sgeul and ran and oran, that I am become unwisely impatient of the common conditions. Yet even in these much lies with ourselves. I have a friend who says he can be happy with a gas-jet in a room in a street-house. He opens a window by the edge of an inch, if there is no wind crying in the chimney, so that a thin air may be heard rising and falling: and turns his back to the gas-jet: and keeps his eyes on the...

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