had found it, when he rode with the
princess over the waves on a white horse whose hoofs never touched
water, and he abode with her in _Tir nan Og_, in the Land of Them Who
are Young, for a thousand years or more, until the great homesickness
for Ireland took him, that takes the strongest, and he came for a visit
on the white horse; but the girths of the saddle broke, and he fell to
the ground, and the horse flew away. And he who had been strong and
young and beautiful became old and bald and blind, and Patrick of the
Bells and Crosses took him, and put him with the groaning penitents, who
beat their breasts under the fear of hell. And he, who had known Tir nan
Og and the Silver Woman, was a drooling ancient with a wee lad to lead
him.... But that was just a winter's tale with no sense to it.

But there were other things in books that had the ring of truth to them.
There was the voyage of Maeldun, who had set out in his coracle, and
visited strange islands. The Island of Huge Ants was one, and wee Shane
had seen in his geography book pictures of armadillos, and he shrewdly
surmised that Maeldun had been to South America. And there was the
Island of Red-Hot Animals, but that was a poser. Still and all, the
rhinoceros had armor like an old knight's, and that would surely get
red-hot under the suns of the equator. It would explain, too, why the
rhinoceros favored the water, like a cow in July.... Sure that was it:
Maeldun had been to Africa. And Maeldun, too, had found the Fortunate
Isle. Brendan, too, had known it. Wasn't it in old charts--St. Brendan's
Isle? He said he found it, and surely a saint of God wouldn't lie....

Och, it was there somewhere, but people were different from what they
were in the ancient days. They didn't bother. If they had told his
father about it, sure all Colquitto would have done was to call for pen
and paper.

"_Mo bhron air an fhairrge_," he would have written: "My grief on the
sea--how it comes between me and the land where my mind might be easy--"
And then he'd have lain back and chanted it. "'_Avourneen_, did you ever
in all your life hear a poem as good as my poem? Sure old Homer's
jealous in the black clouds. Was there ever a Greek poet the equal of a
Gaelic one? _Anois, teacht an Earraigh_--now the moment spring comes in,
't is I will hoist sail, _inneosad mo sheol_...."

And Alan Donn might have started to find it, but at the first golf links
he'd stop, "to take the conceit out of