This is a poem extolling the cyclic and elastic strength of barbarism over the contrasting lineal and hard-shelled impetus of civilization. It is of six verses of four lines each, with verses 1, 4 and 6 reproduced here from Bran Mak Morn: The Last King, Del Ray, 2005.
“There’s a bell that hangs in a hidden cave
Under the heathered hills
That knew the tramp of Roman feet
And the clash of the Pictish bills.*
“It did not glow in an earthly fire,
Or clang to a mortal’s sledge;
The hands that cast it grope in the night
Through the reeds at the fen-pool’s edge.
“And it waits the Hand that shall wake its voice,
When the hills shall break with fright,
To call the dead men into the day,
And the living into the Night.”
*Basically a cleaver on the end of a spear haft, sometimes hooked, sometimes pointed, a utilitarian weapon mainly used against more expensive but shorter ranged mechanical weapons systems such as the swordsmen, mounted or on foot. The naganata of Japan is closer to a crude bill of the Pictish sort imagined by Howard than to a halberd. In imaging Howard’s Pictish bill consider the less complex designs via the link below.
