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          THE
   WASHER OF THE FORD

  LEGENDARY MORALITIES
   AND BARBARIC TALES

    BY FIONA MACLEOD


      [Decoration]


        NEW YORK
    STONE & KIMBALL
      M DCCC XCVI




    BY THE SAME AUTHOR

    Pharais: _A Romance of the Isles_
    The Mountain Lovers: _A Romance_
    The Sin-Eater


    IN PREPARATION:

    Green Fire: _A Romance_
    Lyric Rimes and Founsheen




CONTENTS


                                                        PAGE
    Prologue                                               3

    The Washer of the Ford                                25

    St. Bride of the Isles                                51

    The Fisher of Men                                     97

    The Last Supper                                      117

    The Dark Nameless One                                135

    The Three Marvels of Hy                              149

        I. The Festival of the Birds                     151

       II. The Sabbath of the Fishes and the Flies       161

      III. The Moon-Child                                170

    The Annir-Choille                                    183

    The Shadow-Seers                                     237

        I. The Sight                                     239

       II. The Dark Hour of Fergus                       244

      III. The White Fever                               254

       IV. The Smoothing of the Hand                     260

    Seanachas                                            267

    The Song of the Sword                                271

    The Flight of the Culdees                            289

    Mircath                                              301

    The Laughter of Scathach the Queen                   309

    Ula and Urla                                         321


"Here are told the stories of these pictures of the imagination, of
magic and romance. Yet they were gravely chosen withal, and for
reasons manifold.... What if they be but dreams? 'We are such stuff as
dreams are made of.' What if they be but magic and romance? These
things are not ancient and dead, but modern and increasing. For
wherever a man learns power over Nature, there is Magic; wherever he
carries out an ideal into Life there is Romance."

          Patrick Geddes:

              "_The Interpreter_."




PROLOGUE

(TO KATHIA)

    _I find, under the boughs of love and hate,
    Eternal Beauty wandering on her way._

          The Rose upon the Rood of Time.


To you, in your far-away home in Provence, I send these tales out of
the remote North you love so well, and so well understand. The same
blood is in our veins, a deep current somewhere beneath the tide that
sustains us. We have meeting-places that none knows of; we understand
what few can understand; and we share in common a strange and
inexplicable heritage. It is because you, who are called Kathia of the
Sunway, are also Kathia nan Ciar, Kathia of the Shadow, it is because
you are what you are that I inscribe this book to you. In it you will
find much that is familiar to you, though you may never have read or
heard anything of the kind; for there is a reality, beneath the
unfamiliar accident, which may be recognised in a moment as native to
the secret life that lives behind the brain and the wise nerves with
their dim ancestral knowledge.

The greater portion of this book deals with the remote life of a
remote past. "The Shadow-Seers," however, though of to-day, may
equally be of yesterday or to-morrow; and as for "The Last Supper" or
"The Fisher of Men," they are of no time or date, for they are founded
upon elemental facts which are modified but not transformed by the
changing years.

It may be the last of its kind I shall write--at any rate, for a time.
I would like it to be associated with you, to whom not only the
mystery but the pagan sentiment and the old barbaric emotion are so
near. With the second sight of the imagination we can often see more
clearly in the perspectives of the past than in the maze of the
present; and most clearly when we recognise that, below the accidents
of time and