For the wonder of Ireland is, that it is the West Pole of things; there is no place else nearer the Unseen; its next-door neighbor-land westward is this Great Plain, whither sail the Happy Dead in their night-dark coracles,—to return, of course, in due season; and all the peoplings of Ireland were from this Great Plain. So you see why the Crest-Wave, passing from dying Europe, "went west" by way of Ireland.
I will tell you about that Great Plain: it is
"A marvelous land, full of music, where primrose blossoms on the hair, and the body is white as snow.
"There none speaks of mine and thine; white are the teeth and black the brows; eyes flash with many-colored lights, and the hue of the fox-glove is on every cheek. . . .
"Though fair are the plains of Ireland, few of them are so fair as the Great Plain. The ale of Ireland is heady, but headier far the ale of the Great Country. What a wonder of a land it is! No youth there grows to old age. Warm streams flow through it; the choicest mead and wine. Men there are always comely and blemishless."
Well; Ith set sail from the Great Plain, with three times thirty warriors, and landed at Corcaguiney in the south-west of Ireland; and at that time the island inhabited less by men than by Gods; it was the Tuatha De Danaan, the Race of the Danaan Gods, that held the kingship there. Little wonder, then, that the first name of Ireland we get in the Greek writings is "Sacred Ierne, populous with the Hibernians."
Well now, he found MacCuill, MacCecht, and MacGrene the Son of the Sun, arranging to divide the kingdom between them; and they called on him to settle how the division should be.—"Act," said he, "according to the laws of justice, for the country you dwell in is a good one; it is rich in fruit and honey, in wheat and in fish; and in heat and cold it is temperate." From that they thought he would be designing to conquer it from them, and so forestalled his designs by killing him; but his companions escaped, and sailed back to the Great Plain. That was why the Milesians came to conquer Ireland. The chiefs of them were Eber Finn, and Eber Donn, and Eremon, and Amargin the Druid: the sons of Mile, the son of Bile the son of Bregon; thus their grandfather was the brother of that Ith whom the Gods of Ireland slew.
It was on a Thursday, the first of May, and the seventeenth day of the moon, that the Milesians arrived in Ireland; and as he set his right foot on the soil of it, Amargin chanted this poem:
I am the wave of the Ocean;
I am the murmur of the billow;
I am the ox of the seven combats;
I am the vuture upon the rock;
I am a tear of the sun;
I am the fairest of plants;
I am a wild boar in valor;
I am a salmon in the water;
I am a lake in the plain;
I am a word of science;
I am the spear-point that gives battle;
I am the god who creates in the head the fire of thought.
Who is it that enlightens the assembly upon the mountain,
if not I?
Who telleth the ages of the moon, if not I?
Who showeth the place where the sun goes to rest?
They went forward to Tara, and summoned the kings of the Danaan Gods to give up the island to them; who asked three days to consider whether they would give battle, or surrender, or quit Ireland. On that request Amargin gave judgment: that it would be wrong for the Milesians to take the Gods unprepared that way; and that they should go to their ships again, and sail out the distance of nine waves from the shore, and then return; then if they could conquer Ireland fairly in battle, it should be theirs.