The Far Islands

When Bran the Blessed, as the story goes, followed the W white bird on
the Last. Questing, knowing that return was not for him, he gave gifts to
his followers. To Heliodorus he gave the gift of winning speech, and
straightway the man went south to the Italian seas, and, becoming a
scholar, left many descendants who sat in the high places of the Church.
To Raymond he gave his steel battle-axe, and bade him go out to the
warrior's path and, hew his way to a throne; which the man forthwith
accomplished, and became an ancestor in the fourth degree of the first
king of Scots. But to Colin, the youngest and the dearest, he gave no
gift, whispering only a word in his ear and laying a finger on his
eyelids. Yet Colin was satisfied, and he alone of the three, after their
master's going, remained on that coast of rock and heather.

In the third generation from Colin, as our elders counted years, came one
Colin the Red, who built his keep on the cliffs of Acharra and was a
mighty sea-rover in his day. Five times he sailed to the rich parts of
France, and a good score of times he carried his flag of three stars
against the easterly vikings. A mere name in story, but a sounding piece
of nomenclature well garnished with tales. A master-mind by all accounts,
but cursed with a habit of fantasy; for, hearing in his old age of a land
to the westward, he forthwith sailed into the sunset, and three days
later was washed up, a twisted body, on one of the outer isles.

So far it is but legend, but with his grandson, Colin the Red, we fall
into the safer hands of the chroniclers. To him God gave the unnumbered
sorrows of story-telling, for he was a bard, cursed with a bard's
fervours, and none the less a mighty warrior among his own folk. He it
was who wrote the lament called "The White Waters of Usna," and the
exquisite chain of romances, "Glede-red Gold and Grey Silver." His tales
were told by many fires, down to our grandfathers' time, and you will
find them still pounded at by the folklorists. But his airs--they are
eternal. On harp and pipe they have lived through the centuries; twisted
and tortured, they survive in many songbooks; and I declare that the
other day I heard the most beautiful of them all murdered by a band at a
German watering-place. This Colin led the wanderer's life, for he
disappeared at middle-age, no one knew whither, and his return was long
looked for by his people. Some thought that he became a Christian monk,
the holy man living in the sea-girt isle of Cuna, who was found dead in
extreme old age, kneeling on the beach, with his arms, contrary to the
fashion of the Church, stretched to the westward.

As history narrowed into bonds and forms die descendants of Colin took
Raden for their surname, and settled more firmly on their lands in the
long peninsula of crag and inlets which runs west to the Atlantic. Under
Donald of the Isles they harried the Kings of Scots, or, on their own
authority, made war on Macleans and Macranalds, till their flag of the
three stars, their badge of the grey-goose feather, and their on-cry of
"Cuna" were feared from Lochalsh to Can-tire. Later they made a truce
with the King, and entered into the royal councils. For years they warded
the western coast, and as king's lieutenants smoked out the inferior
pirates of Eigg and Toronsay. A Raden was made a Lord of Sleat, another
was given lands in the low country and the name Baron of Strathyre, but
their honours were transitory and short as their lives. Rarely one of the
house saw middle age. A bold, handsome, and stirring race, it was their
fate to be cut off in the rude warfare of the times, or, if peace had
them in its clutches, to man vessel and set off once more on those mad
western voyages which were the weird of the family. Three of the name
were found drowned on the far shore of Cana; more than one sailed
straight out of the ken of mortals, One rode with the Good Lord James on
the pilgrimage of the Heart of Bruce, and died by his leader's side in
the Saracen battle. Long afterwards a Raden led the western men against
the Cheshire archers at Flodden, and was slain himself in the steel
circle around the king.