(graced with the bleeding heads of his enemies...)

You could be swimming in pressing heat on one side of the Atlantic but on the other side, on the island home of the once king, Brian Boru, a walk in the northwestern mountains could be downright bracing. Life is rugged and simple there. It is a good place to get lost. It's a long and energetic walk, on the Casan na Naomh between Brandon Mountain and Kilmachedor church. This path of the saints was certainly well trodden by druids over the horizon of history. Hercules, in the course of his labors, walked this route, according to oral tradition, through the very same bogs and over these very same hills.

Jupiter's son - conceived in godly lust of his mother, the beautiful Alcmena - must have felt a close presence of his Jove-pater whose heavenly seat was so intoxicatingly observed from this rise. The heavens were framed below, then as now ever unchanging in magnificence, by the lower great wet dominion of Neptune who, too, was in his glory here. It is an enchanted place encircled by misted fairy lands with sprites and pixies whose presences are palpable, even if, by some, unseen. This is a land of mystery, beauty and debts. Seafaring raiders from the north way and Jutland once were here to sack monasteries, another we versus them. Yet, some of their own self was consumed here, payment of their debt to history, as an ever lingering mix of bloodlines. No mere hit and run, they are still here, trapped in the lineage of the local inhabitants. An ancient church owes some of its elegance to twelfth century Roman masons whose craft carved and lifted brawny stone into tall triangular peaks seeking a new God, the one God, the only God, the Creator. In one place, so many echoes of ancient cravings for spiritual assurances, beyond the human realm. Pilgrims behold here, too, distant shadows of the handiwork familiar to churches of Cashel and Glendalough. Debts are everywhere, on such grand scale. Debts of spirituality. Debts of craft. Debts of lineage. Debts of art.

There are so, so many, debts and not all can be repaid. Do people in their comings and goings ever consider the trails of debt which they generate? What is consequence, really? Just a bill to be paid. Action - reaction. Force - momentum. Momentum - inevitability. In the weight of the earth, every grain of sand tallies. In mass madness, every voice lends to the deafening cry. The only question is whether someone somewhere has the tab. Someone always does, always. On the way to this rise, the land of still unclaimed promise, one debt, long thought forgotten, is nonetheless, called by the hound.

In a small stone building, of medieval vintage, just off the main flow of pilgrimage, a man of about thirty years, stood up from bending over a wooden yoke that he was repairing. He startled, not hearing his company arrive, a towering brawny man in scruff hunting kilt, dirked in sock and belt, appearing to be a woodsman. "May I help you? I didn't hear anybody.. you, you've been here long?"

Ignoring the question, the pilgrim spoke ominously. "Rent. I'm here to collect." As the proprietor politely laughed to correct an obvious mistake, that he owned this parcel of land along with the building on it, he was again ignored and overspoken in a tone that freezes fire, "Rent!" He was looking into a face from hell. Silence of chill and desperate quaking expectation was melted in a flare of condemnation. "A young lassie was kept for four years, on your account, in a lodging she did not elect, sir. I am come, begging God's pardon, for your portion of that reckoning."

Recognition and terror were immediate, with a weakening of the bladder. Wavering bodily tensions communicated indecision. Drop the yoke? Use the yoke? Plead? Would it matter? "Look.. look.. listen.. I.. I.. I.. never.." a sentence never finished as a now silenced head rolled the floor, past the severed hand that tried to guard the blow.

".. ta' tu' ag glagaireacht , but you pay your bills," the headsman growled with his bloodied axe dropped comfortably to his side, like an old well trained companion dog healing. With just a brief look left and right, the grim pilgrim brightened, turned and resumed his journey, "My heart's in the Highlands. My heart is not here. My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasin the deer.."