“How many loved your moments of glad grace,
       And loved your beauty with love false or true;
       But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
     And loved the sorrows of your changing face.”

That there is much paganism in all this must be obvious to any one who has given any attention to the subject.  The tale of The Annir-Choille confesses it frankly enough, where the young Christian prince is brought back by the forest maiden from his new faith to the ancient pagan world.  Old gods are strewn everywhere upon the waysides down which Fiona leads us, and there are many times when we cannot disentangle the spiritual from the material, nor indeed the good from the evil influences.  Dr. John Brown used to tell the story of a shepherd boy near Biggar, who one day was caught out on the hill in a thunder-storm.  The boy could not remember whether thunder-storms were sent by God or Satan, and so to be quite safe, he kept alternately repeating the ejaculations, “Eh, guid God,” and “Eh, bonny deil.”  One often thinks of Fiona in connection with that story.  You are seldom quite sure whether it is a Christian or a pagan deity whom you are invoking, but there is no question as to the paganism of the atmosphere which you often breathe.

As a matter of fact, William Sharp began in frank and avowed paganism, and passed from that through various phases into a high spirituality.  His early utterances in regard to Art, in which he deprecated any connection between Art and a message, and insisted upon its being mere expression, were of course sheer paganism.  In 1892, before Fiona was born, he published one of those delightful magazines which run through a short and daring career and then vanish as suddenly as they arose.  In fact his magazine, The Pagan Review, from first to last had only one number.  It was edited by Mr. Brooks and William Sharp, and its articles were contributed by seven other people.  But these seven, and Mr. Brooks as well, turned out eventually all to be William Sharp himself.  It was “frankly pagan; pagan in sentiment, pagan in convictions, pagan in outlook....  The religion of our forefathers has not only ceased for us personally, but is no longer in any vital and general sense a sovereign power in the realm.”  He finished up with the interesting phrase, “Sic transit gloria Grundi,” and he quotes Gautier:  “’Frankly I am in earnest this time.  Order me a dove-coloured vest, apple-green trousers, a pouch, a crook; in short, the entire outfit of a Lignon shepherd.  I shall have a lamb washed to complete the pastoral....’  This is the lamb.”

The magazine was an extraordinarily clever production, and the fact that he was its author is significant.  For to the end of her days Fiona was a pagan still, albeit sometimes a more or less converted pagan.  In The Annir-Choille, The Sin-Eater, The Washer of the Ford, and the others, you never get away from the ancient rites, and there is one story which may be taken as typical of all the rest, The Walker in the Night:—­