anded her the silver branch; and the next
morning with a company of thirty persons he sailed out on the ocean. In
a few days they landed on an island inhabited only by women, of whom the
strange lady appeared to be the chieftainess. Here Bran Mac Fearbhall
remained several ages before returning to his own palace near Lough
Foyle. An Arab tale in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris shows us a
king's son who in his wanderings lands on a strange island, where he
marries the king's daughter and becomes his father-in-law's vizier. The
country was watered by a river which flowed at certain seasons from a
great mountain. Every year it was the vizier's duty to enter the cavern,
having first received instructions from the king and a mysterious gift.
At the end of an hour he reappeared, followed by the stream, which
continued to flow during the time needful for the fertilization of the
country. When the prince as vizier entered the cavern he found a negro,
who led him to his mistress, the queen of a people of Amazons. In her
hands was the management of the river; and she had caused the
periodical drought in order to exact a tribute of date-stones which she
had to pass on to an Ifrit, to purchase his forbearance towards her own
subjects. The prince ingratiates himself with her: she suppresses the
periodical droughts and marries him. After two centuries of wedded life
she dies, leaving him ten daughters, whom he takes back, together with
considerable wealth, to the city formerly governed by his father-in-law,
and now by his great-great-grandson. The latter was a hundred years old,
and venerable by the side of his great-great-grandfather, over whose
head the years had passed in that enchanted realm without effect. He
made himself known to his descendant and stayed ten years with him; but
whether he succeeded in marrying off any of his daughters, of ages so
very uncertain, the abstract of the story I have before me does not say.
At last he returned to his native land, and reigned there for a long
time.[152]

In the hero of the Island of Happiness we found just now one who, having
returned to earth for a season, had been taken back again by his
supernatural spouse to a more lasting enjoyment. But he is not alone in
his good fortune. Thomas of Erceldoune, a personage less shadowy than
some of those commemorated in this chapter, is known to have lived in
the thirteenth century. His reputation for prophetic powers has been
wide and lasti