eard of her. When any man met this woman his fate
depended on whether he saw her before she caught sight of him. If she
saw him first, she had but to sing her wild strange song, and he would
go to her; and when he was before her, two flames would come out of her
eyes, and one flame would burn up his life as though it were dry tinder,
and the other would wrap round his soul like a scarlet shawl, and she
would take it and live with it in a cavern underground for a year and a
day. And on that last day she would let it go, as a hare is let go a
furlong beyond a greyhound. Then it would fly like a windy shadow
from glade to glade, or from dune to dune, in the vain hope to reach a
wayside Calvary: but ever in vain. Sometimes the Holy Tree would almost
be reached; then, with a gliding swiftness, like a flood racing down a
valley, the Walker in the Night would be alongside the fugitive. Now and
again unhappy nightfarers--unhappy they, for sure, for never does weal
remain with any one who hears what no human ear should hearken--would be
startled by a sudden laughing in the darkness. This was when some such
terrible chase had happened, and when the creature of the night had
taken the captive soul, in the last moments of the last hour of the last
day of its possible redemption, and rent it this way and that, as a hawk
scatters the feathered fragments of its mutilated quarry."

We have said that nature may be either an intoxication or a sacrament,
and paganism might be defined as the view of nature in the former of
these two lights. But where you have a growing spirituality like that of
William Sharp, you are constantly made aware of the hieratic or
sacramental quality in nature also. It is this which gives its peculiar
charm and spell to Celtic folklore in general. The Saxon song of Beowulf
is a rare song, and its story is the swinging tale of a "pagan gentleman
very much in the rough," but for the most part it is quite destitute of
spiritual significance. It may be doubted if this could be said truly of
any Celtic tale that was ever told. Fiona Macleod describes _The Three
Marvels_ as "studies in old religious Celtic sentiment, so far as that
can be recreated in a modern heart that feels the same beauty and
simplicity in the early Christian faith"; and there is a constant sense
that however wild and even wicked the tale may be, yet it has its
Christian counterpart, and is in some true sense a strayed idealism.

At this point we b