Erinn, whereof the fame is come to us, for we have here indeed all things that are delightful and joyous, but poesy alone we had not.  But now we have the chief poet of the race of men to live with us, immortal among immortals, and the fair and cloudless life that we lead here shall be praised in verses as fair; even as thou, Oisin, did’st praise and adorn the short and toilsome and chequered life that men live in the world thou hast left forever.  And Niam my daughter shall be thy bride, and thou shalt be in all things even as myself in the Land of Youth.”

Then the heart of Oisin was filled with glory and joy, and he turned to Niam and saw her eyes burn with love as she gazed upon him.  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.  Anon they came to the forest, and the hunters with the hounds made a wide circuit on this side and on that, till at last the loud clamour of the hounds told that a stag was on foot, and Oisin saw them streaming down an open glen, the stag with its great antlers laid back and flying like the wind.  So he shouted the Fian hunting-cry and rode furiously on their track.  All day long they chased the stag through the echoing forest, and the fairy steed bore him unfaltering over rough ground and smooth, till at last as darkness