And they were wedded the same day, and the joy they had in each other grew sweeter and deeper with every day that passed.

All that Niam had promised in her magic song in the wild wood when first they met, seemed faint beside the splendour and beauty of the life in the Land of Youth.

In the great palace they trod on silken carpets and ate off plates of gold; the marble walls and doorways were wrought with carved work, or hung with tapestries, where forest glades, and still lakes, and flying deer were done in colours of unfading glow.

Sunshine bathed that palace always, and cool winds wandered through its dim corridors, and in its courts there played fountains of bright water set about with flowers.

When Oisin wished to ride, a steed of fiery but gentle temper bore him wherever he would through the pleasant land; when he longed to hear music, there came upon his thought, as though borne on the wind, crystal notes such as no hand ever struck from the strings of any harp on earth.
But Oisin's hand now never touched the harp, and the desire of singing and of making poetry never waked in him, for no one thing seemed so much better than the rest, where all perfection bloomed and glowed around him, as to make him long to praise it and to set it apart.
When seven days had passed, he said to Niam, "I would fain go a-hunting." Niam said, "So be it, dear love; to-morrow we shall take order for that." Oisin lay long awake that night, thinking of the sound of Finn's hunting-horn, and of the smell of green boughs when they kindled them to roast the deer-flesh in Fian ovens in the wildwood.
So next day Oisin and Niam fared forth on horseback, with their company of knights and maidens, and dogs leaping and barking with eagerness for the chase.