[155] “Om” originally referred to the three Vedas; afterwards it signified the Trinity. There are many interesting points of resemblance between certain of the Irish and Indian legends. We are informed, for instance, of the Celtic St. Finnen, who fasted like a Brahman, so to compel a pagan sage, Tuan MacCarell, to reveal the ancient history of Ireland. Tuan had lived all through the various mythical Ages; his father was the brother of Partholon, king of the “Silver Race”. At the end of the First Age, Tuan was a “long-haired, grey, naked, and miserable old man”. One evening he fell asleep, and when he woke up he rejoiced to find that he had become a young stag. He saw the people of Nemed (the Bronze or Red Race) arriving in Ireland; he saw them passing away. Then he was transformed into a black boar; afterwards he was a vulture, and in the end he became a fish. When he had existed as a fish for twenty years he was caught by a fisherman. The queen had Tuan for herself, and ate his fish form, with the result that she gave birth to the sage as her son. In similar manner Bata of the Egyptian Anpu-Bata story,[156] after existing as a blossom, a bull, and a tree, became the son of his unfaithful wife, who swallowed a chip of wood. [156] See _Egyptian Myth and Legend_. Tuan MacCarell assured St. Finnen, “in the presence of witnesses”, as we are naively informed, that he remembered all that happened in Ireland during the period of 1500 years covered by his various incarnations. Another, and apparently a later version of the legend, credits the Irish sage, the fair Fintan, son of Bochra, with having lived for 5550 years before the Deluge, and 5500 years after it. He fled to Ireland with the followers of Cesara, granddaughter of Noah, to escape the flood. Fintan, however, was the only survivor, and, according to Irish chronology, he did not die until the sixth century of the present era. One of the long-lived Indian sages was named Markandeya. In the _Vana Parva_ section of the _Mahábhárata_ he visits the exiled Pandava brethren in a forest, and is addressed as “the great Muni, who has seen many thousands of ages passing away. In this world”, says the chief exile, “there is no man who hath lived so long as thou hast.... Thou didst adore the Supreme Deity when the Universe was dissolved, and the world was without a firmament, and there were no gods and no demons. Thou didst behold the re-creation of the four orders of beings when the winds were restored to their places and the waters were consigned to their proper place.... Neither death nor old age which causeth the body to decay have any power over thee.” Markandeya, who has full knowledge of the Past, the Present, and the Future, informs the exiles that the Supreme Being is “great, incomprehensible, wonderful, and immaculate, without beginning and without end.... He is the Creator of all, but is himself Increate, and is the cause of all power.”[157] [157] Roy's translation.