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Straight and strong was Oisin, the son of the Chieftain of the Fianna. Like a sword of pale bronze, his body was hard and lean. Clean-sculpted was his face, and his eyes were midnight pools from which a startling flash could leap as swiftly as lightning.His hair was a swath of shadow; blackness starred with lustrous reflections, cascading down wide shoulders to the middle of his back. Oisin, the handsomest youth in Ireland, was twenty winters of age when he witnessed an amazing spectacle.

On that morning the young man and his father, Fionn mac Cumhail,1 went out hunting in the company of many warriors of the Fianna. The sky was the breast of a blue bird, plumed with wisps of white cloud. The custom of the Fianna was first to climb the bluff and look out across the Atlantic Ocean, so that they could scan the watery acres for any sign of approaching invaders. As the huntsmen reached the cliff tops of Kerry, the waves pounded on the rocks below, the gulls screamed, the wind came careering cold and fresh, to rush up the precipice. Miniature mosses and sea pinks were clinging in crevices of ruined stonework—some ancient fort had once stood on the headland. The men were clad in shirts of linen, tunics of moleskin, and boots of leather. The salt breeze ruffled their hair as they laughed and chaffed one another. Eagerly, the hounds coursed the ground, their tongues lolling between their fangs and dripping with desire for the chase.

Below the cliffs the sea boiled like gooseberry wine. Scalloped were the waves, and netted with a delicate, filmy lacework of foam that continually tore and reknitted, only to fray again. The water was lucent, as green as cats’ eyes, marbled with foam and woven with lank streamers of kelp, begemmed with beads of bubbles. Far below the swirling and the rushing of the waves threaded a distant plaint: a song, perhaps, or was it only a trick of fancy, a plucking of aural nerve endings by the shameless fingers of the wind?

As that famous band of Irish warriors scanned the ocean, they were discussing past exploits. Oisin said, “Centuries from now they will still be singing songs about us. For there have been none like ourselves. The Fianna were but fifteen men, but we defeated the king of the Saxons by the strength of our spears and our own bodies, and we won a battle against the king of Greece.”

“We took Magnus the great,”r ejoined Caoilte, “the son of the king of Lochlann of the speckled ships; we came back no way sorry or tired: we put our rent on far places.”

Faolan directed his attention to Fionn mac Cumhail. “Aye, and we fought nine battles in Spain and nine times twenty battles in Ireland; from Lochlann and from the eastern world a share of gold came to you, Fionn.”

“And of all chieftains you are the most open-handed, Fionn,”said Osgar. “You were generous with that gold; you gave food and riches, you never refused strong or poor, for your heart is without envy.”

“Now the ranks of the Fianna have swelled mightily,”Oisin declared with pride. “We have seven battalions of warriors to defend Ireland against invasion.”

“Fionn, don’t you wish you could be hearing those songs they will be making about the Fianna?”ask ed Caoilte.

“The poets will have much to be singing about,”r eplied Fionn mac Cumhail, “but I’d as soon hear the song of the blackbird in Leiter Laoi, and the very sweet thrush of the Valley of the Shadow, or the noise of the hunt on Slieve Crot. The cry of my twelve hounds is better to me than harps and pipes.”

“Save for the songs of Little Nut,”said Caoilte, laughing as he glanced toward the dwarf standing staunchly beside his chieftain, “for when he makes tunes he puts us all into a deep sleep.”

“I can guess what else you have a mind to be listening to,”Oisin said to his father, “the wave of Rudraighe beating the Strand, the bellowing of the ox of Magh Maoin, the lowing of the calf of Glenn da Mhail.”The young man turned his head to look out across the ocean, toward the band of white gauze where the water met the horizon. “The cry of the seagulls there beyond on Iorrus,