Irish Revival writer James Stephen's dazzling little 1924 novel  In the Land of Youth, though largely forgotten today, is nothing short of a modern pagan classic. In it, Stephens takes up an ancient Irish literary genre, back-stories to the Táin Bo Cuailinge, and recounts, in shining, lapidary prose, his tales (and tales-within-tales, and tales-within-tales-within-tales) of human and sidhe, of This World and the Other, and of the intercourse between the two.

The Song of Death is drawn from the novel's second section, “The Feast of Lugnasa,” but in this Season of the Ancestors it is the novel's first half, “The Feast of Samhain,” which I commend to the reader and which, in my opinion, richly deserves to become to the modern Samhain what Dickens' Christmas Carol has become to its eponymous holiday.

In the royal hall at Cruachan, on the Eve of Samhain—when gates between worlds swing wide—Ailill the King proposes to his assembled heroes a pastime while waiting for the feast to be made ready: that on this night of terrors, one of them should go out alone to tie a withy around the ankle of one of the dead men hanging from a nearby tree.

Two men go out, two men fearfully return, deed undone. Then Nera the Hero goes out into the night's darkness, withy in hand.

But things are not as they seem, for Ethal Anbual, King of the Sidhe of Connacht, is that very night proposing to raid and burn the royal hall at Cruachan....

 

The Song of Death

(James Stephens)

 

And then they come away, away,

where pain or trouble may not stay,

where all is great and good and gay,

in the Wonderful Land.

 

The Land of Music, the Land of Magic,

the Wonderful Land.

 

There the primrose blows and blossoms in the hair.

Snow-white are the arms of the maidens there.

Strong are the men, and wise, and fair,

in the Wonderful Land.

 

The Land of Music, the Land of Magic,

the Wonderful Land.

 

Fair is the world in plain and hill.

But sweeter far, and fairer still,

each vale and mead and wood and rill

of the Wonderful Land.

 

The Land of Music, the Land of Magic,

the Wonderful Land.

 

Will you, can you, still delay?

Grey and gloom are gone to-day.

The world is gone, away, away,

to the Wonderful Land.

 

The Land of Music, the Land of Magic,

the Wonderful Land.

 


James Stephens (1924), In the Land of Youth. New York: Macmillan