embering what the Princess had told him, that he would find Ireland
changed. He wondered if he had been wise to come at all. But he went
on, and now he rode fast, in this direction and in that, to try to
find the Fenians. Sometimes he asked people whom he met if they could
tell him of his father. Some of them shook their heads and said that
they knew no such person as Finn McCool. Others laughed at him. One or
two old men told him that the Fenians had all died long ago and that
the man of greatest power in Ireland now was Patrick. It was hard for
him to believe. He would have thought himself in a dream, but a dream
seems right and true while it lasts, and this seemed all wrong and
false. Yet, when he found a place that he knew and looked for some
familiar stronghold of the Fenians, he found only a low mound of
earth, grown all over with grass, or perhaps with weeds and bushes.
And everywhere he saw these houses of stone, with crosses on their
tops.

"Then it came into his mind to find this Patrick of whom he heard so
much, and to see what sort of man was now the greatest in Ireland.
This was an easier matter than searching for the Fenians. Everyone
knew where the holy Patrick was, and soon Oisin came near the place
and found that the saint was building another of the stone houses. As
Oisin came near he saw some men trying to lift a heavy stone upon a
car, to take it to the new building. It almost made him laugh to see
how small and weak the men were. He knew well that he could put the
stone on the car alone. It was no larger than the stones that the
Fenians used to throw for sport.

"He came near and leaned down from his saddle to lift the stone for
the men. He took hold of it and began to raise it, but with the weight
the girth of his saddle broke, the saddle slipped around on the horse,
Oisin fell, and the horse ran away. Oisin lay there on the ground of
Erin, which the Princess had forbidden him to touch, an old man, weak,
helpless, blind, hollow-cheeked, wrinkled, white-haired.

"The men took him up and carried him to St. Patrick, who welcomed him
kindly and kept him for a while in his own house. Many times the saint
talked with him and tried to make him a Christian, but Oisin could
think of nothing but the grand days of the Fenians. When St. Patrick
talked with him he would begin to tell of these, and he would make the
poems about them that have been kept till now and give us what we know
of Finn McCool and his