creatures of the deep, and are nameless as the The 

 winds, as homeless as they, as silent, furtive, Tides, 

 as formless, as incalculable almost, as variable. 

 The old islander knew how to turn into service 

 their comings and goings, how to meet them 

 when friendly, how to evade them when hostile, 

 how to wonder continually at their strange 

 beauty, how to reverence the terrible order of 

 their rhythmic flow and ebb. What matter if, 

 also, his old-world Gaelic imagination imaged 

 to him these dark forces of the sea as living 

 creatures ; not of flesh and blood as the slim 

 brown seals who, too, can glide not less swiftly 

 and secretly through dusky green water-ways ; 

 not even of such consistency as the tide- wrack 

 floating on the wave, or the dim, wandering 

 medusae which drift like pale, quenchless fires 

 in the untroubled stillness of the twilit under- 

 world ; but at least of the company of 

 lightning, of fire, of the wind, of dew, of 

 shadow . . . creatures without form as we 

 know form, but animate with a terrible and 

 mysterious life of their own a secret brother- 

 hood among the visible and invisible clans of 

 the world. What matter if, remembering songs 

 and old tales and incalculable traditions, he 

 thought of them with names, as the 'fleet- 

 brown-one/ as * swift-darkness,' as ' the dark- 

 courser/ as 'the untameable,' as 'the hound 



" 



