The Wanderings of Oisin
Niamh is a fairy princess who falls in love with the poetry written by Oisin. She entreats him to join her in the immortal islands, and he agrees. For the next century he lives as a member of the Sidhe, spending his days feasting, dancing and hunting. One day he finds a spear that has washed up on the shore and for some reason finds that this makes him melancholy. Quickly, Niamh whisks him away to another island where they find a woman kept captive by a demon whom Oisin has battled off and on for the best part of one hundred years, before finally emerging victorious. The next island they land upon is populated by giants who do nothing but sleep. Niamh and Oisin lay down and sleep with them for a further one hundred years. At this point Oisin becomes homesick and wants to go back to Ireland, and see his comrades.
Niamh agrees to this, reluctantly. She lends him her horse but tells him that he must not let the horse's hooves touch the ground because if they do then he will never return to her. Oisin finds himself back in Ireland, a young man. His comrades are dead centuries before and the pagan land that he left is now Catholic. He sees two men struggling with a heavy sack of sand and goes to lift it with one hand but his saddle girth breaks and he falls off the horse. When he touches the ground he becomes three hundred years old and finds that his youth has vanished.
Based on an Irish legend, the poem tells the story of supernatural faeries putting a spell on a child and persuading him to fly away with them. The poem describes the land that the faeries are taking him to which is very different from Ireland and the land he is familiar with. He will not hear the farm creatures anymore, and his former countryside home will become as alien to him as the faerie world is to him now.
Down by the Salley Gardens
The Salley Gardens are believed to actually be the banks of the Ballysadare River, in County Sligo, Ireland. The residents grew trees there specifically to provide thatching materials for the roofs of their homes. The Speaker of the poem is an active participant in it, and describes seeing his love walking along the gardens. She urges him to take her in love, but he does not, and has lived with this regret ever since.
