Fairies and Folk of Ireland

by William Henry Frost

"So the other monk heard his confession, and before midnight he died. And this was the way that God had chosen to show him the meaning of His word."

It was a pretty story, but Kathleen understood no more than before. "No," said her grandmother, "you cannot understand, and I cannot. We live here such a little while and we are so shut in by time, that we cannot understand how it is with those who live always. But we shall understand when the right time comes, and then we shall wonder how we could ever wonder. And I will tell you another story about it, not to make you understand, but to show you how it is.

"Long ago Finn McCool was the great champion of Ireland. He had many warriors, who were called Fenians. He had a son, Oisin, who was a great warrior, too, and besides that a poet and a minstrel. Some of his poems are left to us yet. One day the Fenians were hunting, when they met a beautiful girl riding on a white horse. She called to Oisin, and he went apart from the others to speak with her.

"She told him that she was the Princess of Tir-na-n-Oge, and that she had come to take him there, where she was to be married to him. 'Tir-na-n-Oge' means 'Land of the Young,' and they say that nobody ever grows old there. The Princess was as beautiful as moonlight, and her voice was as sweet as the wind blowing on a harp, and Oisin was in love with her and eager to go before she had done speaking.

"He went back to his father and his companions and bade them farewell. It was with tears that Finn said good-by to Oisin, for I think he knew that he should never see him again. But Oisin did not know. Then Oisin mounted the white horse and set the Princess in front of him, and the horse galloped away toward the west. In a little while they came to the sea, and the horse kept straight on, galloping over the water as if it had been a smooth road. Then some say that the water rose around them and covered them and that they were in a beautiful place under the sea. I am not sure of that. Lands there are under the sea, they say, and no doubt there are, but I am not so sure that the real Tir-na-n-Oge is there.

"For others say that the tops of blue hills rose before them, and changed to green as they came nearer, and then Oisin saw that soft grass sloped down to the very water here and there, and in other places there were tall cliffs, and trailing vines hung down from the tops of them, covered with bright flowers, and they swung to and fro in the light breeze. Beyond there were more hills, covered with rich woods. Little veils of mist hid them partly and made them more beautiful, and streams poured down from high places and looked like thin, silky tassels hung upon the hills, and they waved in the air, like the waving vines, and some of them seemed never to reach the ground at all, but to blow away into fine silver spray and to mix with the mists of the hills. And golden sunlight poured down over it all, and there was a warm shimmer in the air that made it all look like something seen in a dream. And this was Tir-na-n-Oge.

"The horse came to the shore and galloped over soft turf till it seemed to Oisin that they were in the very middle of the island, and there they came to a palace, and Oisin thought that it was more beautiful than anything else that he had seen. It may be that the palace was built of marble, but to Oisin it seemed like blocks of pure snow. It was so long that one might well mount his horse to go the length of it, instead of walking. It had gilded domes that looked like suns, with the light shining on them, and the whole palace was dazzling to look at. All around it were gardens, with trees and plants in full bloom, of all the colors of the rainbow, and colors that are not in the rainbow, and other trees with only deep green leaves, and pathways among them which led down into cool, shady hollows, with clear brooks running through them between banks of soft, dark-green moss, sinking their quiet little song.

"Oisin got down off his horse and then lifted the Princess down, and they went into the palace. There the Princess's father, the King of Tir-na-n-Oge, made Oisin welcome and led both of them to the banquet hall, where a great feast was spread in honor of the Princess and the new Prince. And Oisin thought that if the palace was beautiful outside, it was much more beautiful inside, and as for the table that was before him, he could not think of any of the best things in the world to eat and to drink that were not on it.

"The next day the Princess was married to Oisin. For a long time Oisin and the Princess lived in the palace and Oisin thought that he never could be more happy than he was now. The old warriors cared much for what they ate and drank, and Oisin ate and drank better things than he had ever tasted before. He walked with the Princess down through the shady ways among the trees and across the brooks and up the hill-sides among the flowers. They sat together in the garden or in the palace and she sang to him and told him wonderful tales of heroes and of princesses of olden times. Sometimes they rode hunting together, and everywhere they found game, the finest that Oisin had ever seen.

"But at last Oisin began to feel that he cared less for all these things than he had done at first. The grass and the flowers and the woods did not seem so fair to him as they had seemed; the sunshine was not such pure gold; he wished that the silver streams would not blow away in spray and mix with the mists; he wanted to see them come down yellow with the earth of the mountains and plunge into caverns with great rushing and roaring; he felt that the warm air was taking his strength from him; he no longer liked the rich feasts that were spread before him every day; he longed to follow the deer through the woods, with his old friends, to kill it and to cook it and eat it in the woods, and then to sleep there, under the trees and the stars; these trees and these gardens were beautiful, it was true, but they were too beautiful; a hard way through a rough forest would have pleased him better now; he did not love the Princess less, but he longed to see his father and his men again; her singing was no less sweet to him than it had ever been before, but he wished that he could be again where the Fenians, after a hard day's hunt or a hard day's fight, sat about the fire in their stronghold, and listened to one of them—perhaps himself, for he was the best singer of them all—while he sang songs of great heroes and of great fights.