as a hawk. I knew every hill and stream; every
field and glen of Ireland. I knew the shape of cliffs and coasts, and
how all places looked under the sun or moon. And I was still a hawk when
the sons of Mil drove the Tuatha De' Danann under the ground, and held
Ireland against arms or wizardry; and this was the coming of men and the
beginning of genealogies.

"Then I grew old, and in my Ulster cave close to the sea I dreamed my
dream, and in it I became a salmon. The green tides of ocean rose over
me and my dream, so that I drowned in the sea and did not die, for I
awoke in deep waters, and I was that which I dreamed. I had been a man,
a stag, a boar, a bird, and now I was a fish. In all my changes I had
joy and fulness of life. But in the water joy lay deeper, life pulsed
deeper. For on land or air there is always something excessive and
hindering; as arms that swing at the sides of a man, and which the
mind must remember. The stag has legs to be tucked away for sleep, and
untucked for movement; and the bird has wings that must be folded and
pecked and cared for. But the fish has but one piece from his nose to
his tail. He is complete, single and unencumbered. He turns in one turn,
and goes up and down and round in one sole movement.

"How I flew through the soft element: how I joyed in the country where
there is no harshness: in the element which upholds and gives way; which
caresses and lets go, and will not let you fall. For man may stumble in
a furrow; the stag tumble from a cliff; the hawk, wing-weary and beaten,
with darkness around him and the storm behind, may dash his brains
against a tree. But the home of the salmon is his delight, and the sea
guards all her creatures."

CHAPTER IX

"I became the king of the salmon, and, with my multitudes, I ranged on
the tides of the world. Green and purple distances were under me: green
and gold the sunlit regions above. In these latitudes I moved through a
world of amber, myself amber and gold; in those others, in a sparkle
of lucent blue, I curved, lit like a living jewel: and in these again,
through dusks of ebony all mazed with silver, I shot and shone, the
wonder of the sea.

"I saw the monsters of the uttermost ocean go heaving by; and the long
lithe brutes that are toothed to their tails: and below, where gloom
dipped down on gloom, vast, livid tangles that coiled and uncoiled, and
lapsed down steeps and hells of the sea where even the salmon could not
go.