The Eye of Callanish

IntroductionThis story is set at the beginning of the twelfth century on the Island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland. A young girl, persecuted for being in league with the Devil, believes herself to be psychically in touch with the ancient people who built the temple of Tall Stones at Callanish. There is a suggestion in the story that these people might have come from the West, the legendary land Saint Brendan had sailed to in the sixth century, the Vinland of the Vikings, and North America of the present day. Amerindian legends of ancient migrations and recent archaeological excavations of earth works, quoits and underground chambers in North America give support to this suggestion, as does the similarity in concept between the Amerindian Medicine Wheel and the ancient Stone Circles of Britain. Yachtsmen have told me that it is easier to sail across the northern Atlantic ocean from west to east than it is from east to west. I am not suggesting however that the American Indians as we know them today emigrated to Britain, but that some ancient people — the forerunners of us both — may have. Callanish itself has a legend of people coming from over the sea in ships, landing, building the temple, the priests wearing tall feathered head dresses and feathered cloaks with wrens and sacred birds circling above their heads. This theme however is only one thread in a story that is mostly concerned with the strange human phenomenon of being at once fascinated by the search for Truth... and terrified of it... The story also follows the further adventures of Neil, who was the hero of Weapons of the Wolfhound, and the hermit Durston, who, it was suggested in that book, carved the magnificent walrus ivory chess pieces known as the Lewis chess set now in the British Museum, London. ‘O God, k****e in my heart A glimmer of the sun's warmth towards my neighbour, Towards my enemy, towards my kindred, towards my friend, Towards the free, towards the slave, towards the bondsman - O Sons of the Earth soft and fair, From the lowest created thing Up to the Circle Most High.’ Ancient Gaelic prayer offered at the time of the lighting of the Bealltuinn fires on May Day. Quoted on p.154 of The Islands of Western Scotland by W.H.Murray, Eyre Methuen, 1973, from History of Skye by A. Nicolson, 1930.