[There is a country called Tír-na-n-Og, which means the Country of
the Young, for age and death have not found it; neither tears nor
loud laughter have gone near it. The shadiest boskage covers it
perpetually. One man has gone there and returned. The bard, Oisen,
who wandered away on a white horse, moving on the surface of the
foam with his fairy Niamh, lived there three hundred years, and
then returned looking for his comrades. The moment his foot touched
the earth his three hundred years fell on him, and he was bowed
double, and his beard swept the ground. He described his sojourn in
the Land of Youth to Patrick before he died. Since then many have
seen it in many places; some in the depths of lakes, and have heard
rising therefrom a vague sound of bells; more have seen it far off
on the horizon, as they peered out from the western cliffs. Not
three years ago a fisherman imagined that he saw it. It never
appears unless to announce some national trouble.
There are many kindred beliefs. A Dutch pilot, settled in Dublin,
told M. De La Boullage Le Cong, who travelled in Ireland in 1614,
that round the poles were many islands; some hard to be
approached because of the witches who inhabit them and destroy by
storms those who seek to land. He had once, off the coast of
Greenland, in sixty-one degrees of latitude, seen and approached
such an island only to see it vanish. Sailing in an opposite
direction, they met with the same island, and sailing near, were
almost destroyed by a furious tempest.
According to many stories, Tír-na-n-Og is the favourite dwelling
of the fairies. Some say it is triple--the island of the living,
the island of victories, and an underwater land.]