Pàdraig of Cruden

By Eugen Scheschyn

I still treasure in my memory the Paddie's sketch of Arbella made on that sunny day of our scouting journey through the countryside. On it she had a quite certain outward aspect of the White Goddess, sharply jarring not only with all these both country and city girls I had ever seen before but also with all general truths ascertained by me until then from the very first days of a terminal and incurable illness named self-consciousness and giving way to something in me that was engendered before the stars and saw from afar the sun assuming its form being communed with the Absolute. Through the dark haze of my present existence, as a clad gown's train, not seen but scarcely heard, I drag this past that saw All-that-might-be like a crepuscle growing pale on the verge of an ebbing night — forever sunk before it into the mute and vast ocean of Ages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eugen Scheschyn
• Release date: Jun 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463942192

Book preview

To Alan Judge

Be the day never so long, at Length cometh Even-song

English Proverb

Adieu! my loue, … My hope, my hape, my joy, my all, adieu

Sir William Mure of Rowallan

Pàdraig of Cruden

Copyright 2020 Eugen Scheschyn

Published by Eugen Scheschyn at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Chapter One The Old Manuscripts, Letters and Finds

Chapter Two Young Lady

Chapter Three Me growing older. Insinuated nose of a new bosom friend

Chapter Four The greener grass, the Cuckoo louder

Chapter Five Methought I saw the grave

Chapter Six In its auld lerroch yet the deas remains

Eugen Scheschyn's Biography

Connect with Eugen Scheschyn

Chapter One

Old Manuscripts, Letters and Finds

My Grandfather, whom I grew up with and whom everyman dragging around the neighbourhood knew under the character of Pàdraig (Paddie) of Cruden, alias Delineator of Destinies, alias Dolmen of Druids, was, from his infancy, taught to read and write, with a proficient knowledge of, the Greek, Roman and Aramaic languages. Likewise, since his youth, got he used to considering his fixed and immutable surround, natively Scottish, as a mere barbarian, its parochial dying language as an articulated jargon, or gibbers, as he was wont to say. As to the classic page, he seemed to be struck blind with its lasting beauty, murmuring pensively, in front of his elegant fireplace:

—It wyl ne'er goe darklin'... ne'er goe darklin'.

That fireplace, a thing of beauty by itself, with inlays, golden but gone a little darkling though still representing quite readable letters of some forgotten alphabet, jewish or even more ancient...the fireplace was said to be there since the beginning of time, belonging to the primordial living environment, or patriarchal residence, blatantly lost in mystery.

Born in the Granite City, which also occured in his speech as 'our braif auld farrent toun' [1], my Grandfather was educated at one of a dozen or something of local grammar schools and at Marischal College, having with time left his name indelibly inscribed on the annals of this remarkable University, the motto of which — Initium sapientiae timor Domini [2] — he repeated, saying it over and over again, more times than I was then able to count.

His adoration toward latin antiquity was thus so great that he even felt himself emboldened to derive the very name of locality, i.e. Cruden Bay, from Cruor Danorum, referring, with an oracular shake of the head, to some old manuscript which he supposedly had in possession in the old days.

Pàdraig of Cruden seemed ageless. Upon the verge of his centenary he was surpassingly tall and strong, and incomparably attractive. He had fair complexion and still thick head of hair. His cerulean eyes, warm, deep and kind, were perpetually blazing. Only his nose, thin, slightly hooked and rather high-set, seemed to be out of keeping with his handsome face. He deserved the epithet 'eminent' more than anybody else in the country, so often leaving his neighbours to gaze, as if spell-bound, at him as he was standing, at evenings, upon the balustraded balcony, Commendator if not a King to a greatest novelty bodied forth, with his arms raised to the sky so that one could have even believed that there were prows, aflamed with gold or shining with silver, of outlandish ships shaped in various manners—the lions of the foe, trumpets and horn— an ill-omened expedition, warned of failure and pregnant with disappointment, sailing onto the mouth of some wide and smoothly flowing river from a perilous terrain of Highlanders, or misty Aughtygall, his abode of hewn granite, with its diamond-like feldspar and schorl reflections under the cold northern sun.

—My gudschyrs,— as he loved to put it