‘It couldn’t be fishing, anyhow.’
‘Why couldn’t it?’
‘No one who was going five or six hundred miles to fish would be without tackle of some kind. If he was as keen as that he would at least have his own pet lures with him, even if he was going to be lent a rod.’
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps his Paradise was Tir nan Og. You know: the Gaelic one. That would fit.’
‘How would it fit?’
‘Tir nan Og is supposed to be away out to the west, beyond the outermost islands. The Land of the Young. The land of eternal youth, that’s the Gaelic Paradise. And what “guards the way” to it? Islands with singing sands, it seems. Islands with stones that stand up like men walking.’
‘And beasts that talk? Do you find them too in the Outer Isles?’
‘You do.’
‘You do? What are they?’