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 ve