Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/70

 64 The Washer of the Ford ing, washing clothes of battle. By placing oneself between her and the stream one may obtain answers to questions. 14 The bean nigheachain, bean-nigh (washer), nigheag (little washer), or nigheag na h-ath (little washer of the ford) 15 is easily confused with the caoineag (weeping woman) 16 and the banshee, since all forewarn of death. The Washer of the Ford is some- times described as singing a dirge at her grisly task. William Sharp has chosen just such a man to meet the Washer of the Ford as fits the Gaelic tradition. Torcall the Blind Harper is a lover of strife. "His song was ... of the sword and the war-galley, of the red blood and the white breast, of Odin and Thor and Freya ... of sudden death in battle, and of Valhalla." He stirs up strife, for the sheer love of strife, among the boatmen who are taking him to the mainland. He can say of himself, "Is it death I am fearing now, I who have washed my hands in blood, and had love, and known all that is given to man? " As we might expect, there is a sense of sin in William Sharp's legendary morali- ties which is not emphasized in the old versions, but to Torcall as to the older pagan heroes, the sequel of death is oblivion: Each red soul was seized and thrown into the water of the ford, and when white as a sheep-bone on the hill, was taken in one hand by the Washer of the Ford and flung into the air, where no wind was and where sound was dead, and was then severed this way and that in four whirling blows of the sword from the four quarters of the world. Then it was that the Washer of the Ford trampled upon what fell to the ground, till under the feet of her was only a white sand, white as powder, light as the dust of the yellow flowers that grow in the grass. 17 But blind Torcall has known love, and by that love, still in his heart, he is redeemed. When at last he comes himself bloodstained to the Ford he has sung of, there are two waiting for him beyond, the woman he had loved, and the child she had borne him. It is not the terrible figure of his song that he finds, but a gentle figure with long black hair, and the song that she sings is this: " Glory to God on high, and to Mary, Mother of Jesus, Here am I washing away the sins of the shriven, 14 Folk Lore IX, 91-2; XIV, 380, XXV, 87-88. 15 A. Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica II, 226. 1(1 A. Carmichael, II, 240. Unlike nigheag, caoineag cannot be approached or questioned. She is seldom seen but often heard by hill, glen, lake, stream or waterfall. Cf. Folk Lore IX, 91-2; XXV, 84-91. 17 Fiona Macleod, The Sin Eater, etc., p. 169-170.