---

The auguries known across each airth

Thus the Observants observe

Great noticers of the pyots

Foretokeners of strangers

As they cry about the houses of the sick folk

Bringing tidings of murder

And immune to their charms

Their tokens of death

A congress or unkindness

Mayhap conspiracy

Foretell it be the second sight

From Father to Son

His word spoken

In ages afore

As He fought by the side of blood

Calling from beyond

The word will be so written

But thyselves they cannot save

For the spirits are the great lovers of flesh

Tasting not for by communion nor poison

Nor compact with Him say thee

One may pass from life to death

But in the taking of the place prove so fatal

Would-be seer know through vessel be

Barbarous methods of divination sought

taighghoirm na'n Caht

And passing again I reveal

A chronicle of rogues assembly

Who gave crye in life and after

The headless rider

Claimant of the living

In forewarnment of death

Left to beat the earth

Until dawn imparts the light

And the blackened wizard of the north

Conjuring hypnotics upon

Telepathic abominations

A crye from forebear to aft

Just as the baleful prophecies of the Brahan seer

And not from father's blood but blindness

As the raven drinks his three fulls

The blood of the Gael now dry

He wins the day that gives the first wound

Pressed 'gainst the punishment stones

Then lost in your cups

Banishment sought to extraction met

The crooked word

Flame licked and burned away

Reveal a tired hunting

Seek false covens as they

Pick at empty stakes

Pyots in congress

Following into the fire

Where they find

Naught but salt and ashes

Ask of me

If the black dog's day will come

If men can refrain

From calling out in weakness

Lest the beak-mawed harpies

Claim them in the darkness

As eagles to easy prey

Skulls of ravens bare to the wind

A nation unknown and unknowing

Step forth into penetrating fires

The vast enquiry

Outlasting Pictish blood

Preserved in the fading words of dying tales

The blood was let

And it quenched their kin

The black pebbled burns did run as red

And they called and called

Through a bitter air

Up to a black boiling cosmos

All is pure in fire

But in the after

Salt and ashes

Douse the flames in bitter frost

Cast the stones of auld

Lay the cairn

Be I Ossian or horned god

Or a final breath

In a storm

Out of the night became

Into the night begone