[For St. Patrick's Day:]


Some thousands of years before this day — no one can say for certain how long before — other warriors and leaders first came from Spain into Ireland. They were people called Gaedhal or Gael because their ancestor in the days of Moses was Gaedhal Glas. When this Gaedhal was a child Moses cured him of the bite of a serpent — and he prophesied, look you, that no serpent or other poisonous thing would infest the green western Island that his far-off posterity would one day inhabit. 

The Gael wandered for hundreds of years before they came into Spain, following their leader Mil or Milesius, and after they had long lived there they heard of the beautiful island to the north: the Isle of Destiny, foretold by Moses. Mil’s uncle Ith was first sent to find that land, to return them a report upon it. But the Tuatha De Danann, the great wizard-people of the island, suspecting his purpose, killed Ith. It was the first death of the wars of the Milesians and the Tuatha De Danann.  

When Mil was dead in Spain, his eight sons, with their mother Scota and their families and followers, set out for that isle; but when they attempted to land at a place in the South the Tuatha De raised a great storm that drove them away, which they could do and have done in other times. The Milesian poet Amergin prayed a prayer for them: I pray that they reach the land of Eirinn, those who ride upon the vast and fruitful sea; that they come to live everywhere upon her plains, her mountains, and her valleys, in her forests that drop nuts and all fruits, upon her rivers and her cataracts, upon her lakes and her great waters and her spring-abounding hills: and that kings may rise from them at Tara.

In time they did reach Eirinn, and fought the Tuatha De Danann until at last a peace was made whereby the Milesians took the land under the sky and the stars for their part, and the Tuatha the land beneath the earth and in the hollow hills for theirs. And the lands of the children of Mil under the sky were divided into fourths, north, east, south, and west: and a fifth part lay in their hearts always, wherever they went, no matter how far away. 


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