Fire Out of the Ages - I
A Scottish Gaelic folk horror story set in rural Nova Scotia
Fire in the Gaelic world view is a cleansing force, used to drive away evil spirits, disease, and ill-luck. A common practice for protecting or cleansing a household is to walk around its perimeter carrying a torch and moving deiseil (sunwise or clockwise). This movement, going with the sun, invites good blessings that ward off maladies. Conversely, the movement of tuathal (counter [or anti]-sunwise/clockwise) invites bad luck to enter a household. Although consciously inviting good energy into one’s household may provide benefits in the long-term, it makes one wonder what could happen if someone who moved against the sun could gain anything from the evil that follows.
In May’s short story, we follow an undergraduate student at St. Francis Xavier University studying the Gaelic folklore of the region. His chance encounter with a young tradition-bearer leads him to an uncomfortable, searing truth that he never anticipated he would find.
Readers may be wondering why I’m releasing this month’s short story (at least this first part) on a Wednesday slot. Well, quite simply I had plenty of trouble and not enough time to properly come up with a final Gaelic-themed post for the end of May. I had planned to release the next part of my Hound review, but again, I haven’t had the proper time to research and I wanted to put in as much effort as I have with every previous installment. Lastly, this story ended up being longer than I had planned so I figured I’d go easy on my readers’ eyes by dividing it into two parts!
Also, as I mentioned in my post featuring this story’s sneak peak, readers will notice this story contains Gaelic dialogue that I have not bothered to translate or indicate how it’s pronounced. That’s because, I wanted to challenge everyone who has been following along this month to brush up on some basic Gaelic! If you refer to my post on Gaelic resources, you’ll find everything you need to translate what the characters are saying and how to say them yourself!
Even months after the incident it hurts to do anything except lay still, but I need to write this all down, if only in short bursts. I don’t care if this statement goes against CSIS’ confidentiality or whatever. The trash they’re passing off to the media about what happened at Caledonia Mills between July 31st and August 1st of 2015 is only the bare bones of the story—I should know since I was actually there.
I thought my studies into marginalized and fading Gaelic traditions would bring me and others great joy at preserving such an ancient culture. For all the happiness it brought me along the way, one step into lost knowledge was all it took to suck all my passion out of it. All that’s left now is regret and fear.
I came to St. Francis Xavier University in 2012 to major in Celtic Studies. I grew up in the suburbs of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia and in grade eight I had the opportunity to take an elective in Gaelic. It was my first time genuinely being exposed to the language outside of a few sparse phrases I’d see on signs or Celtic gift shops in Halifax. I took to it well and when school was over that year, I begged my parents to take me to whatever lessons were available in the city or elsewhere. For the most part, however, I had to learn it alone. Over high school, I gathered as many books on learning Gaelic, stories from Ireland and Scotland, songbooks, and miscellanea on the language and culture as I could. My grade twelve project was based on collecting some stories from what few tradition-bearers were left in the greater Halifax area. Granted, I only ended up finding three but it was enough to catch the Celtic Studies department’s attention at StFX and they gave me a scholarship for my work. Things only seemed to be looking up from there as I went to Antigonish, the smallish town that proudly claimed StFX as its university, further north from the city and closer to traditionally Gaelic-speaking areas. I made new friends, took classes in subjects of Gaelic and Celtic history that had eluded me for most of my life, partied hard, and most importantly, made connections with tradition-bearers. Many of my peers, whether they acknowledge it or not, were tradition-bearers themselves as they had grown up in places like Cape Breton, some having grandparents who didn’t know a lick of English (Beurla as it’s called in Gaelic). They carried songs, stories, crafts, and even simple anecdotes in their heads and hearts that had likely been passed down for centuries. Often, they’d hold cèilidhean (visits) and kitchen parties in their little townhouses and apartments where Oland’s flowed like water and square-dancing was managed in those cramped spaces. I never passed up an opportunity to hit these up if I could manage it between obligations for school. When I was learning by myself and in a few odd classrooms in Halifax, I felt so distant from the language. That all changed when I made friends who grew up with Gaelic and got to live with the language, even if it was just in short bursts of day-to-day interactions or chatting at visits.
Although most of Antigonish and the surrounding areas spoke English, its Gaelic roots ran deeper than even many folks who lived there realized. For as much as I cherish my time there even now, maybe there are some things best left forgotten by all tradition-bearers.
At the close of my third year at StFX, my advisor called me into his office to discuss my undergraduate thesis. Since the summer following my first year, I’d lived in Antigonish and knew I’d want my last summer in school to be there as well. Even with all my success in classes and social life that doubled as a fast track to learning another language, I had little clue as to what I’d research. On the spot, I blurted that I’d “Study the Gaelic folk traditions of Antigonish.” Naturally, there was already substantial research on it from former students, but there had yet to be any records from the 21st century; my advisor and I readily agreed there needed to be some preservation efforts for the shrinking population of Gaelic-speakers especially in North America. With that, he gave me some recommended reading, contacts I could reach out to, and suggestions on where to acquire some nice stipends. I took the list of resources he had hastily scrawled on the back of an old syllabus and deciphered it on my way to the Angus MacDonald Library, host of the best Celtic collection in North America. In addition to some folklore collections, I requested copies of local newspapers in Gaelic and English, making note of family names that I could investigate for current contacts.
After the Celtic Collection closed in the early afternoon, I migrated to the Hall of Clans directly outside. It was a wing on the third floor of the library, its large windows facing the northwest. Artefacts of Highland clans and oil paintings of chieftains lined the walls. During exam season, students most often flocked there for the relative solitude and quiet—even when it became rather crowded. In early May, however, I sat all by myself, stack of books from the Collection next to my laptop and journal.
Some way into my research, I was startled by soft footsteps approaching from the adjoining aisle of bookshelves. A young brunette woman strode into the Hall, the skirt of her orange sundress fluttering behind her. She carried an old book under one slim, freckled arm. Her soft brown gaze slid towards me as she approached a table opposite where I sat; I realized then I was staring and gave her a curt nod and smile, looking back to my own books before I saw her response.
Soon after she sat down and opened her book—I heard the telltale scraping of a chair across carpet and the shuffling of clothes and pages—she started humming. It was smooth and pleasant, and didn’t disturb my work at all, instead it coaxed the muscles in my shoulders and neck to relax. My eyelids grew heavy and my breathing slowed. I hadn’t heard the song before but I could tell by the melody that it must have been a sean nós song, a genre of music sung without accompaniment by one person. The lyrics of the songs are always in Gaelic and are usually melancholy or tragic. Whatever song it was it had a hold on me; I wanted to turn and ask the woman what the name of it was, but at the same time I felt content to just let my head drift towards the table. The weight of the day’s work hung heavy on me in that moment as the song lulled me into a shallow, warm sleep.
I woke suddenly to a gentle shake on my shoulder. Looking up, I met the brown eyes of the young woman. She smiled slightly down at me and said, in a low voice, “The library’s closing, security just wanted me to let you know.”
“Okay.” I nodded, returning her smile and gathering up my books.
She laughed as I stacked them in two heavy piles. “Somebody has a big project.”
“My thesis.” My grin broadened as I smacked the top of one pile. “This is just the start.”
“What’s your topic?” she asked as I slid my laptop and journal into my satchel, then slung it over my shoulder.
“Currently, Antigonish’s Gaelic folk traditions.” I picked up the books and nodded towards the exit.
As we started walking that way, the woman’s smile sunk. “Uill, gun tèid leat. There aren’t as many tradition-bearers as there used to be.”
“A bheil Gàidhlig agad?” I shot back instinctively.
She nodded. “I grew up speaking it.”
“Around here?”
“Close, Caledonia Mills.”
That name would ring a bell with not just students of folklore, but most people in Antigonish or Pictou county. “Mary-Ellen Spook,” I blurted.
She laughed again, but it sounded more forced. “Yes, I’m not so far from the house where it happened, or what’s left of it, at least.”
“I’ve never actually been there, I feel like I should since I study folklore.” By now, we neared the front desk.
“You’re not afraid of the curse?”
I smiled and shrugged. “Don’t people only get cursed if they take stuff? I wouldn’t want to mess with anything.” I set the books in front of the student librarian on duty and wished him a good day.
“Well,” said the woman as we stepped through the vestibule, “maybe I can show you around there sometime.”
Her offer surprised me a little, but I just nodded and played it cool. “Sure! I wouldn’t say no to that.” I held the doors open for her as we stepped outside into the setting May sunlight.
“Great!” for the first time since I saw her, she smiled with her teeth, a full, glistening white smile. “I’ll show you soon then. Oh, Dè an t-ainmn a th' ort?”
“′S mise Donnchadh.”
“Duncan,” she repeated in English. “Is your family also Gaelic?”
I laughed, shaking my head. “Not really, my dad is just a huge fan of Dune.”
“Dune?”
“Ah, classic sci-fi book, David Lynch made a movie of it. Anyway, doesn’t matter. Dè an t-ainmn a th' ort fhèin?”
“Flòraidh.”
After we said our goodbyes, Flòraidh turned and headed down the ramp and road behind the campus meal hall. I headed on the long walk towards my apartment on Highland Drive. With most of the students at StFX gone for the summer, walking across campus and through the residential streets felt peaceful, yet eerie in the dimming spring sunset. Everything had this gold aura around it, the sky was perfectly blue, and even the spots in the shade felt warm. When I got home, the weight of the day hung so heavily I me that I just went to bed. The apartment’s A/C, however, wasn’t the best so the heat from outside crept in through the walls of the house. I managed to drift off into a hazy half-sleep; I could feel the warmth sticking to my skin as sweat pooled on it. I had dreams, flashes of fields dried yellow by the sun; people staring up at the cloudless sky, their reddened skin peeling off in flakes; and a fire, the same angry red hue as an infected wound wreathed open land, cities, and seas—everything burned.
I woke up in the wee hours of the morning, the air finally having cooled down, conversely making my sweat-soaked self shiver. Stumbling out of bed with no strong desire to go back to sleep, I paced around the apartment and watched TV until dawn broke.
In the following weeks, I would see Flòraidh at the library about every other day. She would came in several hours before closing time and sat down across from me at whatever table I had chosen that day, usually the one by the window. Always, she had some old book or knitting project that she plugged away at when we weren’t talking. I learnt later that she wasn’t actually a student at StFX but liked to use the library to read some of the old stories from tradition-bearers in Nova Scotia and from the old country.
I made steady headway on my thesis, visiting what few Gaelic-speakers in town the university and local Highland Society could put me in touch with. Near the end of June, I made an excursion up to Mabou to interview an older, second cousin of someone from Antigonish. This person I’ll leave anonymous for the sake of their family’s protection, but when I asked about folk traditions from Antigonish, I received the following response, which I since translated from Gaelic for my thesis and copied over into this testimony:
“There was witchery that happened near there even as late as that Mary-Ellen Spook business. The fires weren’t her fault; they had been springing up even before the Gaels got there. The Mi’kmaq had stories about phantom flames and the like, but they aren’t here to tell them anymore. The worst thing that happened there was not long after a few families who escaped the [Highland] Clearances settled there. It [Caledonia Mills] was a little cluster of houses with a chapel nearby. The old priest there went away one winter and never came back, then another showed up. He was dressed all in red, so some call him An t-Sagart Dearg [the Red Priest]…”
[The speaker grins suddenly, points at me, then asks,] “They talk about a red priest spook at your school, don’t they? Pairing him with the Blue Nun, eh? Well, he was in Antigonish and he did cause some trouble in life—maybe in death too—but he had nothing to do with the Nun. The university and the families that have been living there for ages did well to try and forget him. But there’s a problem with my family and that’s that we don’t like forgetting things. My great grandfather told me a story about him that I’ve never forgotten, never heard, and never told since he sat me town as a little boy on his knee and told it to me on May Eve.”
[The speaker is hesitant to share the story, but after gentle prompting from myself, begins:] “The Red Priest came with word of a face of God. He said it was an ancient one, unique to the Gaels, that had shown itself to us even before Christ’s coming. It was a face of fire, and whoever was worthy to look into it would lose their worldly sight, yet gain vision of a new world; it was prophesied that the sun would burn away this one, so rife with sorrow and tyrants, and only the blessed could dwell there. His words were looked regarded with scorn by most folk. ‘Pagan! Mouthpiece of the Devil’ the declared him as they drove him out of their churches and settlements. He roved for a while, passing through what would become Antigonish in the dead of winter. He came to the little cluster of homes that’s Caledonia Mills today and stayed there.
“Spring came and on the first of May that year, after the sun set, a great ball of fire rose up from the Mills. You could see it from where St. Ninian’s Cathedral is now, I’d reckon. It boomed like thunder and a blast of heat like the worst day of summer washed over everything. A few brave men went on foot—the horses were too frightened—and didn’t come back until morning. They carried with them, on a stretcher made with branches and the shirts off their backs, the body of a man burnt to a cinder, save a single strip of red cloth dangling off his arm. They buried it in an unmarked grave near the cathedral. Anyone who went there saw no signs of a fire, and no other bodies. The plants were all withered, the houses all empty, and no clouds passed over that place.
“It all seemed to go back to normal by Lughnasa [Aug. 1st], but even today, wise men know that the fire burns there still.”
I drove back to Antigonish late that night listening to the recording the whole way, making sure I wasn’t misunderstanding anything the tradition-bearer was saying. For the first time, I felt as though my knowledge in Gaelic revealed to me something I shouldn’t have heard. My instincts as someone who studied folklore were not to judge its authenticity—especially since it came from the mouth of a tradition-bearer—but my personal opinions tossed and turned between wishing to brush it off as a tall tale and wanting to verify it.
The only day off I gave for myself after that was Canada Day, otherwise I spent every hour I could in the library, revisiting contacts in town, and scouring articles online. I saw less of Flòraidh as her visits to StFX tapered off. On the days she did come to the library, I was too absorbed in my work to say anything to her beyond basic pleasantries. That is until one day when I scoured scans of the Father Cameron’s journal for any mention of a “Red Priest” or incident at Caledonia Mills. I ran straight into a big wall of nothing.
Exhausted, I pushed my laptop away with a defeated sigh and slumped in my chair, craving my head up at the high vaulted ceiling. I heard Flòraidh close her book softly, but I kept my eyes fixed upwards.
“Dè tha ceàrr?” she asked.
Too frustrated to reply in Gaelic, I answered tersely, “Nothing. Just running into dead ends on this story I found.”
“Maybe I could help.”
I swiveled my gaze back down to her. She smiled shyly with her lips fixed shut. “I wouldn’t want to impose,” I said.
“Cha bhiodh e idir! My family knows a lot of stories.”
Smirking, I sat up straight and asked, “Do you know anything about An t-Sagart Dearg?”
Flòraidh's smile slipped away, her soft brown eyes seeming to grow darker. “Where…Where did you hear about that?”
“I mean, they talk about him around here with the Blue Nun, don’t they?” I chuckled but Flòraidh held her stare, unblinking. “I heard it from someone in Mabou.”
Flòraidh's eyes flicked away for a moment, then back to me. “I can’t tell you more about…him, but my family can. Meet me outside here before sundown at the end of the month.”
“All right.” I furrowed my brow. “Sorry, did I say—”
I paused as Flòraidh stood up, gathering her book against her chest. She shook her head. “Feumaidh mi a' dol dhachaigh.”
She strode out of the Hall of Clans, stretching her long dancer’s legs quickly. I rose, opening my mouth to call after her but stopped myself and sat back down.
The next day I called the tradition-bearer’s family—I had originally set up our meeting through them. I figured a follow-up was in order so I could get some more information about An t-Sagart Dearg and Caledonia Mills. A rough, shaky voice answered, just barely mustering out the word “Hello.”
“Hi, is — available to speak?” It was only after the words left my mouth that I felt stupid for the cheery tone I put on.
“I’m sorry but there’s been a…” the speaker's voice cracked. “No, I’m sorry, but — is dead.”
“What?” I blurted, cursing myself internally for sounding insensitive. “Gosh, I’m so sorry. What, ah, what happened if I might—”
“We’re still processing everything so we’d like our privacy at this time.” The answerer hung up before I could apologize again. I sat stunned, replaying the brief conversation over and over until my brain could accept I wouldn’t get any more information from that tradition-bearer. In fact, no one would hear the stories they had carried ever again. A heavy, gnawing feeling wormed its way into my guts as that realization crossed my mind. The Gaels lost another pillar of lore and culture. I took a walk through town to settle myself, even though the sun bore down mercilessly. I walked all the way to the end of the Landing trail, waited for the sun to set, then walked back.
Thanks for reading part one of “Fire Out of the Ages”! Part two is linked below! Leave your comments on this part below and where you think Duncan’s inquiries will lead him next!
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“Fire Out of the Ages” © Ethan Sabatella 2024 – Current Year, All Rights Reserved. Reprinting or replication of this work in its entirety in any form (written, audiovisual, etc.) without express permission of the author is prohibited. Excerpts may be used for review or promotional purposes with credit and acknowledgement of the author. This piece cannot be used for training of Artificial Intelligence programs.
My prediction is that Flòraidh killed the tradition-bearer, and is in a large part going to be responsible for the incident that left the narrator hospitalized.
You’ve got me wondering! Can’t wait for Friday!