The Hills Of Dream.

By Mary Ann Benbow

When a Scottish Writer at the turn of the 19 century started receiving ancient and long-forgotten faery lore, there was only one source of this incredible information . A real fairy. For nearly fifteen years she spoke of things long forgotten or possibly never known. Her memories stretched back over one thousand years much of her information flew in the face of what modern-day academics and folklorists believed. Her knowledge will astound you. This book is a must-read for any serious faery truth seeker. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed putting it together. So if you are a faery lover or just enjoy Celtic folklore. This book is for you .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mary Ann Benbow
• Release date: Apr 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215882818

Mary Ann Benbow

My real name is not Mary Ann Benbow, these are taken from both my maternal and paternal grandmothers. Two wonderful Celtic ladies gave me my roots and a sense of belonging to an ancient race. From them, I inherited my love of Celtic spirituality, and the ability to see and communicate with the gentry or the good people. During my lessons at school, a teacher would often accuse me of being away with the fairies, if only they had known that I often was.

Book preview

From the years 1893-1905, the Victorian public were held enthralled by the beautiful High Celtic writings of a lady called Fiona McLoud. Fiona alas did not exist, at least not as a real person. At least not in a flesh-and-blood sense.

William Sharp was himself an acclaimed author and scholar who counted W B Yeats and Dante Gabriele Rossetti as his friends. When Sharp suddenly started writing with a very feminine style, he knew that his writing was from a very superior and deeply knowledgeable entity.

He called this entity Fiona McLoud.Her writings were mostly about life and love from the Highlands. Her knowledge was so profound that she divulged to him faery lore that was ancient, so ancient in fact that much of it had been forgotten. So great was her popularity that the echelons of Victorian artistic society devoured everything she spoke of.This put William under great pressure to introduce her to her adoring public.

So now not only did William give her a name, but he had to give her a personality as well.

He began to write letters to her, engaging his sister to write back as Fiona.( "What a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive). However Fiona was created, a genteel but impoverished lady from the Highlands of Scotland. A Gaelic speaker who was shy and reluctant to leave her home.

She published her first book in 1894, her biography stated that she came from an old Highland Catholic family, with a great deal of her childhood spent in the Southern Hebrides. Her bookThe Island of Inniron  brought her acclaim.Other writings of hers include,’ from the Hills of Dream,’ The Dominion of Dreams’ The Divine Adventure, and the Immortal Hour. But it is her poetry that truly shows that she is faery. It shows her deep understanding of the problems between humans and fey

She was without doubt a consciousness and personality of her own. She revealed herself as in Iona when Columba and his monks sailed into its tiny harbour and built its first Christian church In many of her accounts she reveals knowledge that predates Christianity. She also reveals that the behaviour of St Columba and his monks was not what people might expect from a saint and his followers. Often murderous and overzealous with the communities that lived there. These islands have always been home to the people of peace, people were only living in accordance with their own faery nature and they suffered terribly for it.

William Sharp was never physically robust since having scarlet fever as a child, and Fiona was relentless in her demands of him. Filling his mind constantly with her musings and insights.

On December 12th, 1905 William Sharp died while visiting friends on the island of Sicily, he was buried there. With William gone, Fiona went also, but her writings live on.

The Faery being that went by the name of Fiona McLoud and who worked through the Scottish writer William Sharp, had one intention, her desire to reveal to the human world as much as possible about her native Realm of Faery,

To this end, she spent thirteen years attempting to re-learn humanity about another race, another realm, and other people.

It is through her writings that we can come to know not only her but her race as well

What follows is an excerpt from a letter written to an American follower.

There are some writers who are forced to live apart, in every sense of the word;And I am one of them, My wishes and tastes as well as certain  exigencies in my personal circumstances incline me to privacy and isolation If I were to tell them that I am merely a survivor of an ancient race and a distant past. The ensuing furor would be offensive to me and detestable.I believe in one intensity of emotion above all others, namely

, the intensity of this brief flame of life in the heart and the brain, an intensity no one can have who does not account for the hours of every day as vanishing pawns in the tragic game of chess forever being played out between time and eternity.I seek solace in the hills and mountains of the wilderness. My nourishment comes from the streams that flow directly from the earth

In the maelstrom of the cities, the old race dies or moves away. How foolish are those who consider the old was nothing but superstition,

I think that ancient wisdom is not such a bad heritage and if to believe in the power of spirit is to be superstitious, then I am happy to be of the company that is now forsaken.

And I- do I believe in that ? At least it will be admitted that it is worth a belief; it is a pleasant dream; it is a vortex or dreams to a pleasant world, a secret garden, where old sweet echoes; it is a world of poetry and delight and I yes a thousand thousand times will take this realm of superstition than live in their cold, barren loveless domain of reality, the boorish ill-managed people, desperate to believe lies. For so-called superstition will stay and their boorish reality will go. It will sink into oblivion and the stream will become purified and again by its banks will be seen the faery women of health and beauty and all the noble and dignified things will return. Then those of you who willingly chose so-called superstition will live beside us once again in peace and joy.

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Mar a bha

Mar a tha,

Mar a bhitheas

Gu brath.

Ri tragadh,

Sri Lionadh"

"As it was,

As it is,

As it ever shall be

Evermore.

With the ebb,

With the flow

The Hills Of Dream

Across the silent stream

Where the slumber shadows go,

From the dim blue hills od dream

I have heard the west wind blow.

Who has seen that fragrant land?

Who has seen the unscanned west,

Only the listless hand

And the unpulsating breast

But when the west wind blows,

I see moon lancers gleam,

Where the host of faery flows,

Towards the hills of the dream

And a strange song, I have heard,

By a shadowy stream

And the singing of a snow-white bird,

On the hills of dream.

Fiona Mcloud.

Deep Peace, Pure White of the Moon

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Deep peace, pure white of the moon to you;

Deep peace, pure green of the grass to you;

Deep peace of the pure brown earth to you;

Deep peace, pure grey of the dew to you:

Deep peace, pure blue of the sky to you;

Deep peace of the running wave to you;

Deep peace of the flowing air to you;

Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.

Shule Agrah

His face was glad as dawn to me,

His breath as sweet as dusk to me,

His eyes as burning flames to me,

Shule Shule Shule Agrah

The broad noonday was night to me,

The full moon night was dark dark to me,

The stars whirled and the poles span,

The hour God took him from me,

Perhaps he dreams in heaven now,

Perhaps he doth in worship bow,

A white flame round his snow-white brow,

Shule Shule Shule Agrah,

I laugh to think of him like this,

Who once found all his joy and bliss,

Against my heart, against my kiss,

Shule Shule Shule Agrah

Star of my joy, art still the same

Now thou has gotten a new name,

Pulse of my heart, my blood, my flame,

Shule Shule Shule Agrah,

He laid his dear face next to mine,

His eyes aflame burned close to mine,

His heart to mine, his lips to mine,

Oh, he was mine, all mine, all mine.

Drunk with old wine of love I was,

Drunk as the wild be in the grass,

Singing his honey mad sweet bass,

Drunk Drunk with the wine of love I was.

His lips of life to me were fief,

Before him,I was but a leaf,

Blown by the wind, a shaken leaf,

Yea as the sickle reaps the sheaf,

My Grief!

His to be gathered, to his bliss,

But not a greater bliss than this!

All of the empty world to miss,

For wild redemption of his kiss!

My Grief

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The Mystic’s Prayer

Lay me to sleep in sheltering flame,

Oh, Master of the Hidden Fire!

Wash pure my heart, and cleanse for me,

My Soul’s desire.

In flame of sunrise bath my mins,

O Master of the hidden fire,

That when I wake, clear-

Maybe, my soul's desire.

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On A Nightingale in April.

The yellow moon is a dancing phantom,

Down secret ways of the flowing shade:

And the waveless stream has a murmuring

Whisper,

Where the alders wave.

Not a breath, not a sigh, save the slow streams whisper,

Only the moon is a dancing blade

That leads a host of the crescent warriors

To a phantom raid.

Out of the lands of Faerie a summons,

A long, strange cry that thrills through the glade,

The grey-green glooms of the elm are stirring,

Newly afraid .

Last heard, white music, under the olives,

Where once Theocritus sang and played,

Thy Thracian song is new wonder,

O moon white maid.

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Joy and Sorrow

I have gone out and found the realms of Faery

And have found sorrow and peace there,

And not known one from another,

But found each

Lovely and gracious alike, delicate and fair.

"They are children of one mother, she that is called longing,

Desire, Love" one told me:

And another,

"Her secret name is Wisdom: and another,

Not three but one:

And another, touch them not and seek them not,

For they are called wind and flame.

The Four Stars of Destiny

Reul Near(Star of the East ) Give us kindly birth:

Reul Deas ( Star of the South( Give us great love:

ReulSiar(  ( Star of the West) , Give us great age : 

Reul Tuath( Star of the North), Give us Death:.

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Angus of the Four Keys

The East; Birth: The key of Music

The South:War: The key of passion

The West: Dreams The key of Sorrow

The North: Life The key of Death.

Finally, Fiona's close friend WB Yeats and her magic collaborator also came up with another association concerning the four directions as well as the four magical trees.

Apple in the East

Rowan in the South

Oak in the North

Mater Consoatrix

Heart’s joy must fade, though it borrow

Heaven’s azure for its clay:

But the joy that is one with sorrow,

Treads an immortal way,

For each is born tomorrow,

Yet each is yesterday.

Joy that is clothed with shadow

Shall arise from the dead:

But the joy that is clothed in rainbow

Shall with the bow be sped:Where the sun spends his fires

Is she,

And where the stars are led.

Fiona's first book was a novel called Pharais, it is based on a series of happy and tragic events. Time and time again she returns to the theme of the importance of recognising and understanding the deeper energies that not only surround us but run through us. The topic of joy going hand in hand with joy. She also shows strong feminist streaks with a lot of women, this is something she tackled many times across her writing.

The prayer of Women

O spirit that flows across the earth

And moves across the deep,

And is heard in the wind

Save us from the lusts of men

Save us from the springing of their seed

Save us oh lord from the desire of men's eyes.

Save us from the cruel seed and the house that becomes

A grave.

From the darkness that women must carry with them, the shame and the pain

From the laughter of man's hearts and the triumph that lies within.

For sport, he mocks us and plays with us.

He tramples upon us, we who bore him,

We who fed him in the womb and then at the breast and

At the knee.

But when he sees our hair turn grey, our eyes that grow dim and breasts that sag and fall like a barren hill, and our hands broken with toil.

And seeing us old and broken, all but the violated womb that hateth him

He who held the bridle but can not guide, He who held the whip yet was driven by desire, He a shepherd who neglected all, and becomes a lost sheep crying in the hills.

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Hazel in the West .

A final group of four comes from Fiona’s children's book, The laughter of Peterkin. This was the only book that she wrote for children. In the prologue to this tale there is a section concerning the child Peterkin which is in fact autobiographical and taken from the early life of William Sharp, we are told that one moonlit night Peterkin sneaked out of his bedroom to watch the faeries playing around a great white poplar tree, and the section concludes with

"In those fragments of Peterkin’s experience, all of his life was foreshadowed,Wonder, delight, longing, laughter the four winds of childhood. These blew for him throughout his first years, they blew through childhood, and boyhood and continued through his youth. Now he is a man: the laughter is much rarer, the longing is deeper, there still blows through the dark glens and wild moorlands of his rich mind the four winds of Laughter, Longing, Wonder, and Delight.

From the silence of Time, Time’s patience borrows:

This is the ancient wisdom of patience

Patience, Silence stars of the dusk of the spirit,

To the heart of today comes the word of tomorrow,

As twilight sleeps in the noon and rises at even,

As the wave of midnight uplifted the star of the morning,

The Builders of joy are the children of sorrow

Bitter the waters of grief: but sweet is the wellspring,

Stoop and be fearless: drink all you builders of joy.

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Holy Holy Holy

Christ upon the cross

My little nest was near,

Hidden in the moss.

Holy Holy Holy,

Christ was pale and wan,

His eyes beheld me singing

Brom, Brom, Brom!

Holy, Holy , Holy,

Come near o sweet brown bird,

Christ spake; a Lo I lighted,

On the living word,

Holy, Holy, Holy,

I heard the mocking scorn,

Holy, Holy, Holy

I sang against a thorn.

Holy, Holy Holy,

All is brow was bloody:

Holy Holy, Holy,

Holy, Holy, Holy,

Christs bird now tho shall be,

Thus said Mary Virgin,

There on Calvary,

Holy, Holy, Holy,

A wee brown bird am I;

But my breast is ruddy,

For I saw Christ die.

Holly, Holly, Holly,

By this ruddy feather,

Colum, call thy monks and,

All the birds together,

Come, all ye birds, he called, and the birds came, The golden eagle came from the Cuchullins (mountains ) of Sky, the Osprey came from the wild lochs of Mull, the gannet from the sea cliffs came, then came the petrel from the waves came, The cormorant and the bittern. The kestrel arrived from the Machars, Then the cuckoo and the woodland birds . The lark from the sky, the crane from the swamp. Peace called Collum, Peace cried the birds

I will say Mass, cried Collum,  after Mass Collum blessed the birds, and they took to the air, only the Bru -heard remained Come sweet red breast and sing for us of Christ, and the redbreast sang full of joy.Then Threar Ardan, he of the Picts bowed his head, in a loud voice he called out,Sith(shee)! An ainm Athar, an mhic an Spioraid Naoimh! Peace in the name of Christ.

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The Hills of Ruel

Over the hills and far away

That is the tune I heard one day

When heather drowsy I lay and listened

And watched where the stealthy

Sea tide glistened.

Beside me there on the hills of Ruel

An old man stopped to gather fuel

And I asked him this: if his son were dead,

As the folk in Glendaruel said,

How could he still believe that he never,

Duncan had crossed the shadowy river.

From his breast, the old man drew,

A lute that once a Rowan tree grew,

Speaking no words he began to play

Over the hills, and far away.

But how do you know, I said thereafter,

That Duncan heard the faery laughter?

How do you know that he followed the cruel

Honey sweet folk of the hills of Ruel?

" How do I know?

The old man said,

I know well that my boys are not dead

For late on the morrow, they hid him there,

Where the black soil wets his yellow hair,

I saw him alone on the moor close by,

I watched him low on the hillside lie,

An’I heard him laughing"  wild up there,

An’talk talk talkin’ beneath his hair,

For down his face, his long hair lay

But I saw it was cold and ashen grey.

Aye, laughing and talking wild he was,

An’ that to a shadow on the grass,

A shadow that made my blood grow chill,

For never its like, have I seen on the hill,

An’ the moon came up and the stars grew white,

An the hills grew black in the bloom of night,

And I watched till the death star sank the moon,

And the moon maid fled with her fluttering shoon,

Then the shadow