"I saw it, and it dancing in the sun. From Slievenambanderg I saw it, and it over the waters of Moyle."
The Rathliner sat on a mooring bitt on the quay and filled his pipe.
"I ken that island," he said. "I ken it well."
"And what name is on it, Raghery man?"
"The name that's on it is Fiddlers' Green."
"Were you ever there, Raghery man?" There was a sinking in wee Shane's heart.
"I was never there, laddie, never there. Oftentimes I thought I'd raised it, but it was never there, wee laddie, never there. There's men as says they've been there, but I could hardly believe them, though there's queer things past belief on the sea. There's a sea called Sargasso, and if I told you half the things about it, you'd think me daft. And there's the ghost of ships at sea, and that's past thinking. And there's the great serpent, that I've seen with my own eyes....
"Aye, Fiddlers' Green! Where is it, and how do you get there? The sailormen would give all their years to know."
"Why for do they call it Fiddlers' Green?"
"It's Fiddlers' Green, laddie, because it's the place you come to at the cool of the day, when the bats are out, and the cummers put by their spinning. And there's nou't there but sport and music. A lawn like a golf green, drink that is not ugly, women would wander with you on to the heather when the moon's rising, and never a thought in their mind of the money in your pocket, but their eyes melting at you, and they thinking you're the champion hero of the world.... And all the fiddlers fiddling the finest of dance music: hornpipes like 'The Birds among the Trees' and 'The Green Fields of America'; reels like 'The Swallow-tail Coat' and 'The Wind that Shakes the Barley'; slip-jigs would make a cripple agile as a hare.... And you go asleep with no mate to wake you in a blow, but the sound of an old piper crooning to you as a cummer croons. And the birds will wake you with their douce singing.... Aye, Fiddlers' Green...."