Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic | Page 9

the slender white horse, not feeling his
weight, dashed across the waves of the ocean, which did not yield
beneath his tread. They galloped across the very sea, and the maiden,
whose name was Niam, sang to him as they rode, and this so
enchantingly that he scarcely knew whether hours passed or days.
Sometimes deer ran by them over the water, followed by red-eared

hounds in full chase; sometimes a maiden holding up an apple of gold;
sometimes a beautiful youth; but they themselves rode on always
westward.
At last they drew near an island which was not, Niam said, the island
they were seeking; but it was one where a beautiful princess was kept
under a spell until some defender should slay a cruel giant who held her
under enchantment until she should either wed him or furnish a
defender. The youth Usheen, being an Irishman and not easily
frightened, naturally offered his services as defender, and they waited
three days and nights to carry on the conflict. He had fought at
home--so the legend says--with wild boars, with foreign invaders, and
with enchanters, but he never had quite so severe a contest as with this
giant; but after he had cut off his opponent's head and had been healed
with precious balm by the beautiful princess, he buried the giant's body
in a deep grave and placed above it a great stone engraved in the
Ogham alphabet--in which all the letters are given in straight lines.
After this he and Niam again mounted the white steed and galloped
away over the waves. Niam was again singing, when soft music began
to be heard in the distance, as if in the centre of the setting sun. They
drew nearer and nearer to a shore where the very trees trembled with
the multitude of birds that sang upon them; and when they reached the
shore, Niam gave one note of song, and a band of youths and maidens
came rushing towards them and embraced them with eagerness. Then
they too sang, and as they did it, one brought to Usheen a harp of silver
and bade him sing of earthly joys. He found himself chanting, as he
thought, with peculiar spirit and melody, but as he told them of human
joys they kept still and began to weep, till at last one of them seized the
silver harp and flung it away into a pool of water, saying, "It is the
saddest harp in all the world."
Then he forgot all the human joys which seemed to those happy people
only as sorrows compared with their own; and he dwelt with them
thenceforward in perpetual youth. For a hundred years he chased the
deer and went fishing in strangely carved boats and joined in the
athletic sports of the young men; for a hundred years the gentle Niam
was his wife.
But one day, when Usheen was by the beach, there floated to his feet
what seemed a wooden staff, and he drew it from the waves. It was the

battered fragment of a warrior's lance. The blood stains of war were
still on it, and as he looked at it he recalled the old days of the Feni, the
wars and tumult of his youth; and how he had outlived his tribe and all
had passed away. Niam came softly to him and rested against his
shoulder, but it did not soothe his pain, and he heard one of the young
men watching him say to another, "The human sadness has come back
into his eyes." The people around stood watching him, all sharing his
sorrow, and knowing that his time of happiness was over and that he
would go back among men. So indeed it was; Niam and Usheen
mounted the white steed again and galloped away over the sea, but she
had warned him when they mounted that he must never dismount for an
instant, for that if he once touched the earth, she and the steed would
vanish forever, that his youth too would disappear, and that he would
be left alone on earth--an old man whose whole generation had
vanished.
They passed, as before, over the sea; the same visions hovered around
them, youths and maidens and animals of the chase; they passed by
many islands, and at last reached the shore of Erin again. As they
travelled over its plains and among its hills, Oisin looked in vain for his
old companions. A little people had taken their place,--small men and
women, mounted on horses as small;--and these people gazed in
wonder at the mighty Usheen. "We have heard," they said, "of the hero
Finn, and the poets have written many tales of him and of his people,
the Feni. We have read in old