So indeedit was; Niam and Usheen mounted the white steed again and galloped awayover the sea, but she had warned him when they mounted that he must neverdismount for an instant, for that if he once touched the earth, she andthe steed would vanish forever, that his youth too would disappear, andthat he would be left alone on earth--an old man whose whole generationhad vanished.They passed, as before, over the sea; the same visions hovered aroundthem, youths and maidens and animals of the chase; they passed by manyislands, and at last reached the shore of Erin again. As they travelledover its plains and among its hills, Oisin looked in vain for his oldcompanions. A little people had taken their place,--small men and women,mounted on horses as small;--and these people gazed in wonder at themighty Usheen. "We have heard," they said, "of the hero Finn, and thepoets have written many tales of him and of his people, the Feni. We haveread in old books that he had a son Usheen who went away with a fairymaiden; but he was never seen again, and there is no race of the Fenileft." Yet refusing to believe this, and always looking round for thepeople whom he had known and loved of old, he thought within himself thatperhaps the Feni were not to be seen because they were hunting fiercewolves by night, as they used to do in his boyhood, and that they weretherefore sleeping in the daytime; but again an old man said to him, "TheFeni are dead.
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