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 books that he had a son Usheen who went away with a fairy
maiden; but he was never seen again, and there is no race of the Feni
left." Yet refusing to believe this, and always looking round for the
people whom he had known and loved of old, he thought within himself that
perhaps the Feni were not to be seen because they were hunting fierce
wolves by night, as they used to do in his boyhood, and that they were
therefore sleeping in the daytime; but again an old man said to him, "The
Feni are dead." Then he remembered that it was a hundred years, and that
his very race had perished, and he turned with contempt on the little men
and their little horses. Three hundred of them as he rode by were trying
to lift a vast stone, but they staggered under its weight, and at last
fell and lay beneath it; then leaning from his saddle Usheen lifted the
stone with one hand and flung it five yards. But with the strain the
saddle girth broke, and Usheen came to the ground; the white steed shook
himself and neighed, then galloped away, bearing Niam with him, and Usheen
lay with all his strength gone from him--a feeble old man. The Island of
Youth could only be known by those who dwelt always within it, and those
mortals who had once left it could dwell there no more.



V

BRAN THE BLESSED