To-day it is in the Berlin Museum, and according to the new fashion in archaeology it is labelled "Minoan," and kept in the Cretan Section.But any one who looks carefully will see behind the rim a neat little carving of a dolphin; and I happen to know that that was the private badge of Atta's house.
ATTA'S SONG
(Roughly translated.)
I will sing of thee, Great Sea-Mother, Whose white arms gather Thy sons in the ending:
And draw them homeward From far sad marches--Wild lands in the sunset, Bitter shores of the morning--Soothe them and guide them By shining pathways Homeward to thee.
All day I have striven in dark glens With parched throat and dim eyes, Where the red crags choke the stream And dank thickets hide the spear.
I have spilled the blood of my foes And their wolves have torn my flanks.
I am faint, O Mother, Faint and aweary.
I have longed for thy cool winds And thy kind grey eyes And thy lover's arms.
At the even I came To a land of terrors, Of hot swamps where the feet mired And waters that flowerd red with blood There I strove with thousands, Wild-eyed and lost, As a lion among serpents.
--But sudden before me I saw the flash Of the sweet wide waters That wash my homeland And mirror the stars of home.
Then sang I for joy, For I knew the Preserver, Thee, the Uniter, The great Sea-Mother.
Soon will the sweet light come, And the salt winds and the tides Will bear me home.
Far in the sunrise, Nestled in thy bosom, Lies my own green isle.
Thither wilt thou bear me.
To where, above the sea-cliffs, Stretch mild meadows, flower-decked, thyme-scented, Crisp with sea breezes.
There my flocks feed On sunny uplands, Looking over thy waters To where the mount Saos Raises purl snows to God.
Hermes, guide of souls, I made thee a shrine in my orchard, And round thy olive-wood limbs The maidens twined Spring blossoms-Violet and helichryse And the pale wind flowers.
Keep thou watch for me, For I am coming.
Tell to my lady And to all my kinsfolk That I who have gone from them Tarry not long, but come swift o'er the sea-path, My feet light with joy, My eyes bright with longing.
For little it matters Where a man may fall, If he fall by the sea-shore;The kind waters await him, The white arms are around him, And the wise Mother of Men Will carry him home.
I who sing Wait joyfully on the morning.
Ten thousand beset me And their spears ache for my heart.
They will crush me and grind me to mire, So that none will know the man that once was me.
But at the first light I shall be gone, Singing, flitting, o'er the grey waters, Outward, homeward, To thee, the Preserver, Thee, the Uniter, Mother the Sea.
SPACE
IV
"Est impossibile? Certum est."
-TERTULLIAN.
Leithen told me this story one evening in early September as we sat beside the pony track which gropes its way from Glenvalin up the Correi na Sidhe.I had arrived that afternoon from the south, while he had been taking an off-day from a week's stalking, so we had walked up the glen together after tea to get the news of the forest.A rifle was out on the Correi na Sidhe beat, and a thin spire of smoke had risen from the top of Sgurr Dearg to show that a stag had been killed at the burnhead.The lumpish hill pony with its deer-saddle had gone up the Correi in a gillie's charge while we followed at leisure, picking our way among the loose granite rocks and the patches of wet bogland.
The track climbed high on one of the ridges of Sgurr Dearg, till it hung over a caldron of green glen with the Alt-na-Sidhe churning in its linn a thousand feet below.It was a breathless evening, I remember, with a pale-blue sky just clearing from the haze of the day.West-wind weather may make the North, even in September, no bad imitation of the Tropics, and I sincerely pitied the man who all these stifling hours had been toiling on the screes of Sgurr Dearg.By-and-by we sat down on a bank of heather, and idly watched the trough swimming at our feet.The clatter of the pony's hoofs grew fainter, the drone of bees had gone, even the midges seemed to have forgotten their calling.No place on earth can be so deathly still as a deer-forest early in the season before the stags have begun roaring, for there are no sheep with their homely noises, and only the rare croak of a raven breaks the silence.The hillside was far from sheer-one could have walked down with a little care-but something in the shape of the hollow and the remote gleam of white water gave it an extraordinary depth and space.There was a shimmer left from the day's heat, which invested bracken and rock and scree with a curious airy unreality.One could almost have believed that the eye had tricked the mind, that all was mirage, that five yards from the path the solid earth fell away into nothingness.I have a bad head, and instinctively I drew farther back into the heather.Leithen's eyes were looking vacantly before him.
"Did you ever know Hollond?" he asked.
Then he laughed shortly."I don't know why I asked that, but somehow this place reminded me of Hollond.That glimmering hollow looks as if it were the beginning of eternity.It must be eerie to live with the feeling always on one."Leithen seemed disinclined for further exercise.He lit a pipe and smoked quietly for a little."Odd that you didn't know Hollond.You must have heard his name.I thought you amused yourself with metaphysics."Then I remembered.There had been an erratic genius who had written some articles in Mind on that dreary subject, the mathematical conception of infinity.Men had praised them to me, but I confess I never quite understood their argument."Wasn't he some sort of mathematical professor?" I asked.
"He was, and, in his own way, a tremendous swell.He wrote a book on Number which has translations in every European language.
He is dead now, and the Royal Society founded a medal in his honour.But I wasn't thinking of that side of him."It was the time and place for a story, for the pony would not be back for an hour.So I asked Leithen about the other side of Hollond which was recalled to him by Correi na Sidhe.He seemed a little unwilling to speak...
