Truth deals largely with us.
—James Joyce (1882–1941), "The Day of the Rabblement" (1901)
He is now in the way of Truth.
Tha e nis air slighe na fùinne.
(Gaelic proverb. He is dying.)
He is now on the sod of truth.
Tha e nis air fòid na fìrinne.
(He is dead.)
Photo by Mark Hillary.
It is one of the lessons of fairy-stories (if we can speak of the lessons of things that do not lecture) that on callow, lumpish, and selfish youth peril, sorrow, and the shadow of death can bestow dignity, and even sometimes wisdom.
–J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), from lecture On Fairy Stories
Photo of a young Afghan refugee by Franz, fsHH on Pixabay
In the midst of life we are in death
of whom may we seek for succour,
but of thee, O Lord,
who for our sins
art justly displeased?
Yet, O Lord God most holy,
O Lord most mighty,
O holy and most merciful Saviour,
deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death.
—An anonymous Latin poem from Gregorian chant, later in The Book of Common Prayer. The English version seems to be by Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556)
Tha e nis air slighe na fùinne.
He is now in the way of truth. [He is dying.]
Tha e nis air fòid na fìrinne.
He is now on the sod of truth. [He is dead.]
–Gaelic proverbs
[The poet Alasdair Maclean's parents were the last crofters in Sanna, a seacoast hamlet in the west highlands. It is one of the most beautiful places on earth, but it was a hard place to make a living from farming. After many hardships, their life got a bit easier in 1970 when they began to receive an old-age pension from the British government. They died a few months apart, in March and August, 1973.]
"Don't grieve for me," Father had said when he was carried from the house on a stretcher, after his first coronary and before his last one. "I'll be with your mother."
My younger brother had been greatly struck by this anecdote almost in spite of himself. "Do you think there's an after-life?" he asked me now.
I gave the question the serious consideration it deserved. "Who knows?" I said eventually.
"I don't believe it," my brother continued. "Never have done. It's a fairy-story. Yet I like to picture them meeting again. Up there, you know. They've earned that if anybody ever earned it. I like to think of flower-strewn meadows, all that stuff. Father a young man once more, running across the grass. Mother waiting for him. What do you think they would say? How would they greet one another?"
I thought of Mother, her exclamation "My!" when anything impressed her and how much had impressed her despite her unimpressive surroundings. I could not at first get words past the sob in my throat. "O that's easy," I replied when at last I could contort my voice into something resembling normality. "He wouldn't say anything at all. She'd just say, "My! Ian! You weren't long!"
--Alasdair Maclean (1926-1994) in his reminiscence of his parents and the life of a crofter in Sanna, Night Falls on Ardnamurchan (1984). Sanna is now a tourist destination.
Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul …it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature… literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear.
--Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) in her essay On Being Ill (1926)
Grief be unto one who must long for the beloved.
--"The Wife's Lament" from The Exeter Book (960-990).
Wa bið þam þe sceal of langoþe leofes abidan.
