William Sharp wrote several books adopting the persona of Fiona Macleod. While more collections of loosely linked tales than novels, two worth considering include The Washer of the Ford and The Sin Eater and Other Tales, both published in 1895. They strongly represent stories of place, where setting becomes a work’s crucial element.

Macleod dedicates The Sin Eater and Other Tales to George Meredith, noting, “because he is Prince of Celtdom.” He goes on to explain in a lengthy introductory letter to Meredith “from Iona,” name of the community around which the tales congregate, the importance of retaining Celtic traditions, his Romance collection being a prime example of such attempts. He notes that the “Cornishman has lost his language,” leaving no link between himself and his predecessors; “the Manxman has ever been the mere yeoman of the Celtic chivalry,” and his “rude dialect” is fading; the Welsh preserve their traditions, while in Ireland, “a supreme tradition fades through sunset-hued horizons to the edge o’ dark”; and in Celtic Scotland, “a despairing love and longing narrows yearly before a bastard utilitarianism,” which he blames partly on an invasion of the “curse” of Calvinism.

What follows are a series of folktales presenting a mix of religion and superstition. Readers understand that as romances, the stories will contain various references to mysticism and also journeys and change, both physical and emotional. For example, in the title story, “The Sin Eater,” locals believe that the living can ingest the sins of the dead, in order that the deceased may seek some comfort in the afterlife. When Adam Blair dies, his son convinces a tramp named Neil Ross to participate for money in the ceremony that will allow him to take on Blair’s sins.

Later, Ross learns that Blair showed signs of life while being carried to his grave, but the local wise woman and “deid watcher,” Maisie Macdonald, poured salt into his eyes and made sure the coffin tipped enough to severely rattle the body. Ross begins to feel he had actually become the “Scapegoat” that others label him and eventually believes he has become Judas, lashing himself to a cross and allowing the sea to carry him out. The overriding imagery for all the tales is that of the sea, and Macleod sprinkles throughout a good deal of the local dialect, which he translates for readers.

The Washer of the Ford continues the approach of The Sin Eater, with an even more pronounced emphasis on religion in tales listed in its table of contents under the heading “Legendary Moralities” with titles such as “The Fisher of Men,” and “The Last Supper.” In the title story, a harpist named Torcall Dall has been struck blind as he awaits death. When his sight returns the narrative relates a mystical moment, one of many that might interest feminist critics, as it features a powerful female figure: “at the ford he saw a woman stooping and washing shroud after shroud of woven moonbeams; washing them there in the flowing water.” The moon as a symbol of woman and water as a symbol of baptism/new life are two of multiple references allowing formalist critics access to the text’s meaning.

The works are little read, due to a heavy-handed sentimentality and simplistic consideration of death. They do include some provocative imagery, including “the breath of the Death-Weaver at the Pole,” and death’s description in metaphors: “it is more than a reed, it is more than a wild doe on the hills, it is more than a swallow lifting her wing against the coming of the shadow, it is more than a swan drunken with the savour of the blue wine of the waves.” However, little is original, and the stories remain most appealing to scholars of Macleod/Sharp.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

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