Fantasy fiction; Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Mythology, Celtic -- Fiction
whosoever finds this moment and listens to the Song shall become like
the Immortal Powers themselves; I came back to Ireland and asked the
fairy men, and the cow-doctors, if they knew when this moment was; but
though all had heard of it, there was none could find the moment upon
the hour-glass. So I gave myself to magic, and spent my life in fasting
and in labour that I might bring the Gods and the Fairies to my side;
and now at last one of the Fairies has told me that the moment is at
hand. One, who wore a red cap and whose lips were white with the froth
of the new milk, whispered it into my ear. Tomorrow, a little before the
close of the first hour after dawn, I shall find the moment, and then
I will go away to a southern land and build myself a palace of white
marble amid orange trees, and gather the brave and the beautiful about
me, and enter into the eternal kingdom of my youth. But, that I may hear
the whole Song, I was told by the little fellow with the froth of the
new milk on his lips, that you must bring great masses of green boughs
and pile them about the door and the window of my room; and you must put
fresh green rushes upon the floor, and cover the table and the rushes
with the roses and the lilies of the monks. You must do this to-night,
and in the morning at the end of the first hour after dawn, you must
come and find me.'
'Will you be quite young then?' said the boy.
'I will be as young then as you are, but now I am still old and tired,
and you must help me to my chair and to my books.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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