A herd of horses like yellow gold is there on the strand; another herd, of purple hue; after them, yet another herd, of the hue of a pure grey pearl. At the sun’s uprising a fair man will come, who illumines the level lands; he rides over the fair plain whereon the sea beats, he tempers the ocean till it is [as] blood. The host will come across the pure sea; they show themselves, rowing towards the land; then they row to a flat rock, well in view, whence a hundred songs arise. It chants melody to the hosts, so that sorrow is not therein; the music swells from the choirs of hundreds, who look not for return or death. Emain of many forms by the sea, it may be near, it may be far; therein are women, many thousands, in chequered array, and the pure sea round about it. When he has heard the music’s sound, the note of the birds in Imchiúin, a little band of ladies will come down from the height to the field of games, whereon he stands. Freedom with health shall come to the land on which laughter is poured forth; ’tis on Imchiúin, at every season, that length of life with joy shall come. A day of serenity unending scatters silver on the land; a pure white cliff is on the seaboard range, drawing the sun’s heat from him. The multitude race their horses along Magh Mon, a glorious sport, not languid; in the chequered lea-land, all beauty excelling (?), they look not for return nor death.’ We may see at a glance how thoroughly pagan is the conception of the happy region here depicted, though assuredly lacking neither in beauty nor refinement, in which respects the Tír Tairngire need fear no comparison with the Elysium of the Greek poets, which it so strongly resembles. It is equally evident that the lord of this Island Paradise, Manannán Mac Lír, is the Tuatha Dé Danann counterpart of the Fomorian Tethra, king of the dead, who sends his messengers in the guise of beautiful women--ἄγγελοι in all literalness--to call his subjects unto him in his realm beyond the ocean. Indeed, Tethra himself appears in a legend, exactly parallel to the foregoing in design, though of more primitive structure, which relates the passing of Connla, son of the famous Árd-Rí, Conn of the Hundred Battles. Connla, like Bran, was visited by a beautiful damsel, who promised to confer upon him a continuance of youth and beauty which should never fail or fade until the Judgment. She then gave him an apple and left him. The virtue of this apple was such that it afforded Connla nutriment enough for a month, at the end of which time the damsel returned, and told him that the ever-living ones had sent for him, having chosen him to become one of the folk of Tethra, there to dwell for ever, in the companies of his forefathers, in the midst of his acquaintance and friends.[110] And Connla followed her to the sea-shore, where a ship of glass awaited