Page:Celtic Stories by Edward Thomas.djvu/85

 guessed he was Ossian, one of the Fena. Hither and thither he rode visiting all the scenes of the Fena's exploits. But he saw only the little creatures made in the image of men. He felt very pitiful towards them.

One day in the Glen of Thrushes he saw a cluster of these men trying to lift up a huge stone. They were three hundred, but they could neither raise it to its place nor get free from underneath it, and they said:

'O kingly champion, help us.'

So Ossian stretched himself forward upon his horse's neck and stooped and gripped the stone in one hand. All the little men ran out from underneath like lizards disturbed. Then Ossian put forth his strength. He raised the stone above his head and threw it. It covered the multitude like a high roof as it flew. But he had burst the saddle girth of his horse with the effort; the saddle slipped and he could not recover himself; and his feet touched the earth. The white horse vanished away. Now came altogether the change and decay that could not befall him in Tirnanoge; his strength ebbed away fast, and he sank sighing down like a wave; he became the old, frail, mighty one who leaned on his spear and would listen to Patrick talking about Heaven, and would talk to him of Niav and of Tirnanoge, the Land of Youth.