Faery Places

Tír na mBeo (Land of Life, Land of Perpetual Life, Land of the Ever-Living)

Is a golden dream-light streaming
Like eve through an opal west.

We sing to the sun-god, calling
By his name of yellow fire.

The touch of the dew-wet grasses,
The breath of the dawn-cool wind,
With the dawn of the god-light passes
And the world is left behind.

We drink of a fountain giving
The joy of the gods, and then –
The Land of the Ever-living
Has passed from us again.

Passed far beyond all saying,
For memory only weaves
On a silver dawn outraying
A cloud of daffodil leaves
–The Fountains of Youth,
By George William Russell [1867-1935]
The Irish Theosophist, September 1897.

Ballykeele Well. The Land of the Living lies upon a mythic island in the western sea. It is reached by crossing the ocean. It has crimson hazel-nuts, apples, and sweet-smelling rowan berries.

It is ruled by the god Lugh. The sword Fragarach: The Answerer, was brought by Lugh from the Land of the Living. The entrance to his underworld palace is near the Fairy Mound of Angus on the River Boyne: Milk River. Magic Fog, a fairy residing at Dun Aolig, kidnapped two sons of the Isle of Ever-Living because he had no sons. Ruan Luimneach, a fairy leader, called the people to rescue them.

The princess of the land of life carries balsam and healing herbs that cures wounds. Her apple-branch produces music so soothing that people who hear it forget all their troubles. To enter her world before the appointed hour marked by death, the passport is a silver branch of the sacred apple-tree, which the queen of the Land of the Ever-Living and Ever-Young gives to those mortals whom she wishes for as companions; though sometimes, as we shall see, it was a single apple without its branch. – Walter Y. Evans Wentz [Worlds List] (6, 99, 133, 183, 247)