is

"A marvelous land, full of music, where primrose blossoms on the
hair, and the body is white as snow.

"There none speaks of _mine and thine;_ white are the teeth and
black the brows; eyes flash with many-colored lights, and the
hue of the fox-glove is on every cheek. . . .

"Though fair are the plains of Ireland, few of them are so fair
as the Great Plain. The ale of Ireland is heady, but headier far
the ale of the Great Country. What a wonder of a land it is!
No youth there grows to old age. Warm streams flow through
it; the choicest mead and wine. Men there are always comely
and blemishless."

Well; Ith set sail from the Great Plain, with three times thirty
warriors, and landed at Corcaguiney in the south-west of Ireland;
and at that time the island inhabited less by men than by Gods;
it was the Tuatha De Danaan, the Race of the Danaan Gods, that
held the kingship there. Little wonder, then, that the first
name of Ireland we get in the Greek writings is "Sacred Ierne,
populous with the Hibernians."

Well now, he found MacCuill, MacCecht, and MacGrene the Son of
the Sun, arranging to divide the kingdom between them; and they
called on him to settle how the division should be.--"Act," said
he, "according to the laws of justice, for the country you dwell
in is a good one; it is rich in fruit and honey, in wheat and in
fish; and in heat and cold it is temperate." From that they
thought he would be designing to conquer it from them, and so
forestalled his designs by killing him; but his companions
escaped, and sailed back to the Great Plain. That was why the
Milesians came to conquer Ireland. The chiefs of them were Eber
Finn, and Eber Donn, and Eremon, and Amargin the Druid: the
sons of Mile, the son of Bile the son of Bregon; thus their
grandfather was the brother of that Ith whom the Gods of
Ireland slew.

It was on a Thursday, the first of May, and the seventeenth day
of the moon, that the Milesians arrived in Ireland; and as he
set his right foot on the soil of it, Amargin chanted this poem:

I am the wave of the Ocean;
I am the murmur of the billow;
I am the ox of the seven combats;
I am the vuture upon the rock;
I am a tear of the sun;
I am the fairest of plants;
I am a wild boar in valor;
I am a salmon in the water;
I am a lake in the plain;
I am a word of science;
I am the spear-point that gives battle;
I am the god who cre