And what she said seemed sweeter and more wonderful as she spoke it than anything they could afterwards remember to have heard, but so far as they could remember it, it was this:-- "Delightful is the land beyond all dreams, Fairer than aught thine eyes have ever seen.
There all the year the fruit is on the tree, And all the year the bloom is on the flower.
"There with wild honey drip the forest trees; The stores of wine and mead shall never fail.
Nor pain nor sickness knows the dweller there, Death and decay come near him never more.
"The feast shall cloy not, nor the chase shall tire, Nor music cease for ever through the hall; The gold and jewels of the Land of Youth Outshine all splendours ever dreamed by man.
"Thou shalt have horses of the fairy breed, Thou shalt have hounds that can outrun the wind; A hundred chiefs shall follow thee in war, A hundred maidens sing thee to thy sleep.
"A crown of sovranty thy brow shall wear, And by thy side a magic blade shall hang.
Thou shalt be lord of all the Land of Youth, And lord of Niam of the Head of Gold." As the magic song ended, the Fians beheld Oisin mount the fairy steed and hold the maiden in his arms, and ere they could stir or speak she turned her horse's head and shook the ringing bridle and down the forest glade they fled, as a beam of light flies over the land when clouds drive across the sun; and never did the Fianna behold Oisin, son of Finn, on earth again.
Yet what befell him afterwards is known.

As his birth was strange so was his end, for he saw the wonders of the Land of Youth with mortal eyes and lived to tell them with mortal lips.
When the white horse with its riders reached the sea it ran lightly over the waves and soon the green woods and headlands of Erinn faded out of sight.

And now the sun shone fiercely down, and the riders passed into a golden haze in which Oisin lost all knowledge of where he was or if sea or dry land were beneath his horse's hoofs.

But strange sights sometimes appeared to them in the mist, for towers and palace gateways loomed up and disappeared, and once a hornless doe bounded by them chased by a white hound with one red ear, and again they saw a young maid ride by on a brown steed, bearing a golden apple in her hand, and close behind her followed a young horseman on a white steed, a purple cloak floating at his back and a gold-hilted sword in his hand.

And Oisin would have asked the princess who and what these apparitions were, but Niam bade him ask nothing nor seem to notice any phantom they might see until they were come to the Land of Youth.
[Illustration: "They rode up to a stately palace"] At last the sky gloomed above them, and Niam urged their steed faster.
The wind lashed them with pelting rain, thunder roared across the sea and lightning blazed, but they held on their way till at length they came once more into a region of calm and sunshine.