Page 58 - Demo

58 Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
The best of the stories of the Fiann are Tóraíocht Diarmuid agus Gráinne, ‘The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne’; The Giolla Deacair –‘The Hard or Slothful Fellow’; the Adventures of Lomnochtán; Oisín in Tír na nOg -Oisín in the ‘Land of Perpetual Youth’, and of course the dialogues between St. Patrick and Oisín, who reputedly returned to Ireland after spend- ing 300 years beneath the waves in Tír na nOg.
Following the Battle of Gabhra, Oisín is fabled to have been carried away far under the western sea, to the pagan paradise, the aforementioned Tír na nOg, by the beautiful princess thereof, Niamh Cinn Oir-‘Niamh of the Golden Hair,’ who made him her husband. Also, Caoilte, he of the stories, the second poet of the Fiann, after Oisín, is reputed to have es- caped and found sanctuary under the hills with the Tuatha Dé Danann. The story goes, that long afterwards, when St. Patrick had come to Ireland and was converting its people to the Christian faith, both poets returned and become converts. They then attached themselves to Patrick’s company and travelled the country with him. When Patrick became tired from too much travelling, or work, or as often happened, from the perversity of some of the people he encountered, Oisín or Caoilte would refresh him with many a fine tale of the Fiann, their hunting, their feasting, their fighting, their wondrous adventures and glorious deeds.
In his Wanderings of Oisín, William Butler Yeats penned the following lines: O Patrick! for a hundred years
I chased upon that woody shore
The deer, the badger, and the boar.
O Patrick! for a hundred years
At evening on the glimmering sands, Beside the piled-up hunting spears, These now outworn and withered hands Wrestled among the island bands.
O Patrick! for a hundred years
We went a-fishing in long boats
With bending sterns and bending bows, And carven figures on their prows
Of bitterns and fish-eating stoats.
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