How Young Zephyr McLeod Got His Name.
A Shaggy Dog Story
"Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it" – Roald Dahl.
Zephyr's first name was easy, the name just came to him, floated in on a westerly wind. Our little Zeph is sweet and warm as spring breeze, a breath of joy in our 2020 quarantine home.
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| Grace O'Malley and Zephyr McLeod |
But our dogs all have two names (two that we are aware of anyway – who knows what Grace calls Zephyr in Doggish, but I strongly suspect isn’t always polite).
Alice Springs: She was a very happy energetic Australian Shepherd: her name is self-explanatory.
Tango Hombre: A name with two meanings: I have hunger (Tengo Hambre, very appropriate as he is a Labrador), but also named for his wonderful dancing – Tango Man -- he is the Tango King of our kitchen.
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| Zephyr, Tango, and Grace |
But Zephyr was without a 2nd name, until about week ago. I noted, “Zeph is soft as a cloud”, because he is, and Sky pointed out he also looks a bit like a cloud (well, a smallish black cloud), and then Sky discovered his name: “We could call him Zephyr McLeod.”
But there are layers and layers in that name. I’m about 99% scientist, about 1% believer in mysteries and magic. The 1% bit of me has _much_ more fun, and usually only stirs awake in a full moon, by a river at sunrise, or when I’m conversing with a raven. JT endures the 1% as well as he can.
I’m just going to give you the verifiable facts here, you might interpret them as you like, but I’ll admit upfront it is the 1% of me that really enjoys the full story of young Zephyr McLeod’s full name.
My family stepped into this story in year 2011. My husband James, and sons, Max and Sky, were on a trip to the Hebrides. I love Celtic music, and I love history. Three times I’ve planned a vacation with a peculiar goal in mind: visiting a place in Scotland or Ireland where a melody that I particularly love first entered the world, to play that old tune in its own place. For each of these trips, the tune of my heart was born hundreds of years before. I bring my whistle and play where the composer who created the tune surely once stood. I read what I can about the people and the place, their context in history, and the music serves as a conduit in time for me, and I can imagine the people who felt touched by the tune and their lives with an emotional bond, through their music, by closing my eyes and playing. My family puts up with this because they get to go on wonderful vacations to Ireland and Scotland. In this particular case, I was chasing the tune, “St. Kilda’s Wedding”, and Sky kindly brought along his fiddle as well.
St. Kilda’s is an archipelago, remote and wild. The people who lived there -- it had been inhabited for 2000 years -- were finally brought to their knees by epidemics. By the beginning of the last century only a handful remained. The last wedding to take place in St. Kilda’s was in 1926, and the last people to live in St. Kilda’s were starving, and so evacuated, in 1930. The place is now left to the birds, to the hardy soay sheep whose ancestors the people of St. Kilda’s kept, and to the sea.
The people who lived in St. Kilda’s in the Long Ago were very isolated, but they seem to have had a vibrant and happy community. They loved music, and they shared a fiddle between them, quick to bring it out when they had a visitor. Circa 1695, Martin Martin (gent), went to visit St. Kilda, and he wrote:
"The inhabitants of St Kilda, are much happier than the generality of mankind, as being almost the only people in the world who feel the sweetness of true liberty, simplicity, mutual love and cordial friendship, free from solicitous cares, and anxious covetousness; and the consequences that attend them."
And this:
“They observe the festivals of Christmas, Easter, Good Friday, and that of All Saints. Upon the latter they bake a large cake, in form of a triangle, furrowed round, and it must be all eaten that night. They are hospitable, and charitable to strangers, as well as the poor belonging to themselves, for whom all the families contribute a proportion monthly, and at every festival each family sends them a piece of mutton or beef.”
We can still visit them up close and personal through their sweet music. You are invited to a wedding. I’m guessing a nice mutton stew is on the menu. Welcome! Close your eyes, and listen deep, with your heart. Here is a grand version of St. Kilda’s Wedding, played by Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas.
St. Kilda’s is now a World Heritage Site and a bird sanctuary. You can hire a boat from the Isle of Harris and visit, but on many days of the summer the sea is too wild to make the journey, so it is the wind and the sea that decides on any given day if the journey is possible. Hoping we would be lucky, I had hired a sailboat, and we traveled 4,469 miles to reach the dock, Sky with his fiddle, me with my sweetest whistle in my pocket, intending to play St. Kilda’s wedding on St. Kilda’s landing. But the sea was raising a ruckus, a storm was up, and it was truly not a day for the last leg of our journey. St Kilda lay forever just beyond the horizon. As Rabbie Burns once wrote, “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley”.
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| Cross on the Kirk |
So, there we were, ganged a-gley, in the beautiful Isle of Harris, with a day free before us, a wild chill wind, a fiddle, and a whistle.
We decided to head south, to the southern-most bit of Harris, and play our tune for the sea. As it turns out, though we didn’t know it at the time, we were on was McLeod lands. We wound up in a lonely, beautiful place, at the ruins of an ancient Kirk, Tùr Chliamhainn (St Clements of Rodel) built for the Chiefs of the McLeods some 500 years ago.
When we got to the Kirk, only the wind, a misty rain, and a very sweet old Dog were there to greet us. We decided The Dog must be the official tour guide of the McLeod clan, as she seemed to take this responsibility very seriously.
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| The Dog |
The Dog gave us a complete tour of the property: we hiked up to see the scenic sheep on the hillside with her, she waited while we admired the stones in the old graveyard.
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| Headstone |
The Dog even joined us inside for a tour of the exquisite old Kirk. Part of the roof was in ill repair, and the rain had also let itself in, and joined us in cold pools in the old Kirk floor.
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| Max and Sheep |
The Dog then took us around the proper vantage point, and we gazed up with her at the Sheela Na Gig set into the Kirk Wall. Sheela Na Gigs are wanton wild women carved in stone, whose images are often set into the walls of ancient churches in Scotland, Ireland, and sometimes found in England and Europe. Nobody knows for sure what the Sheela Na Gigs meant to the people who built them into their churches. But they are sexy and Earthy and wonderful, and often the carvings are thought to be far older than the Church wall that holds them. Generally, they have a look of a hag, but the Sheela of Tùr Chliamhainn is a rare beauty. AND she is holding a dog. A couple of days ago I wrote to the “Sheela Na Gig” project (an effort in the UK to track and record them all) and inquired about her dog, and learned she is the only Sheela with a dog. Some have suggested it’s a sheep she is holding, but I’m quite sure its a dog. Not only did it look a dog, it never occurred to my family as we gazed up at her that could be holding anything else, but our guide The Dog seemed particularly proud when she showed the Sheela and her little companion to us.
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| Sheela Na Gig and her dog. |
The Dog, Official Guide to the McLeod’s ancient Kirk, and our pup, young Zephyr McLeod, have something of the same look to them (although The Dog could have used a good brushing). They also share the same sweet spirits, as if they might share a bloodline not too far back. Both are black and white sheepdogs. Both are gentle, playful, ridiculously and utterly happy, and very perceptive.
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