Bard The Odyssey of the Irish

1 See a tall man pacing alone on the twilight beach, caught between the dying day and the incoming tide. Smell the moist air, heavy with salt. Hear the lapping of waves slapping the shore, the hiss of their withdrawal, their rushing return. Tide flirting with sand, seducing, inviting, whispering tales from beyond the dark sea. Dark sea, fading light, and an old familiar restlessness combined to haunt Amergin the bard. All his life he had suffered an itch in his soul, a formless yearning that blew toward him on the north wind. The green wind, he named it to himself, for to Amergin it seemed laden with verdant aromas from some fair otherworld existing only in his imagination. Yet the north wind persisted in torturing him with hints of that achingly beautiful and unreal land, his heart's home. Amergin had never felt truly at home anywhere, even inside his own skin. Tonight the mood was particularly strong, driving him to stalk the beach and endure his melancholy with gritted teeth. For once Clarsah did not ride his shoulder. Evening wind off the sea could damage the voice of a harp. But in a way Clarsah was always with him, for she was an intimate part of the man, her music constantly in his thoughts. In the gradually deepening twilight he began trying to capture the essence of the songs he heard on the wind and shape them to fit the harp's capabilities. But tonight the ocean seemed to be a sentient presence, willfully intruding on his efforts at composition. He found himself gazing toward the horizon again and again, as if he expected to see...what? Some goddess shaped from waves and foam to dispel his loneliness? Lust flickered through Amergin, random as heat lightning. He shook his head, wryly amused at himself. Even a druid's vision could not see a goddess where none existed, or summon the spirit of the ocean herself and clothe her in flesh for his pleasure. Druid vision, like druid talent, was a sometime thing, not under a man's control. Its occurrence and usage were chosen by the spirits for their own communication. Amergin, bard and druid, understood this all too well. Yet Amergin the man still longed to grasp his elusive gift firmly and use it, somehow, to shape something better... He paused and bent to strip off his sandals, knotting their thongs together so he could sling them over his shoulder. He had an urge to walk barefoot and let the damp, sunwarmed sand ooze between his toes. He watched a lace of foam run up the beach and skitter back, glowing with hoarded luminosity. What was the source of such light and how was it held? he wondered. The tide painted serpentines on the sand and he bent to study them, curious to know what artisan had designed such graceful patterns and taught the sea to reproduce them. Amergin felt the glamour of a mystery beyond even druid knowledge and wished there were someone to whom he could express his thoughts. But he was singularly alone. When he was a small child, enthusiasm had bubbled up in him like a wellspring and he reached out to everyone, trying to touch, eager to share. Each new discovery of beauty or wonder delighted the young Amergin almost beyond bearing. But when he tugged at the nearest arm"Look, oh,look!"his clanspeople pulled away impatiently, or offered him the polite patronization adults substitute for interest. The assumed the little boy's excitement would fade when the spirit newly housed in his body grew accustomed to the world around it. But for Amergin that never happened. The rebuff of busy adults drove him back behind a shield of shyness, hiding his vulnerability. He learned the lesson early: if you cared too much, if you opened yourself too far, you got hurt. Among the garrulous Gaelicians he became notable for his quietness. His brothers teased him unmercifully for a time, acLlywelyn, Morgan is the author of 'Bard The Odyssey of the Irish' with ISBN 9780812585155 and ISBN 0812585151.