Oisin

Oisin is the great poet of the Fenian Cycle — the blind bard, in later tradition, who outlived his world by three hundred years and sat with Saint Patrick to dictate the deeds of the Fianna to a Christian scribe. The contrast between Oisin's pagan heroic values and Patrick's Christianity is the animating tension of the Acallam na Senórach (Colloquy of the Old Men), one of the masterpieces of early Irish literature.

The story of his departure begins with Niamh of the Golden Hair, daughter of the king of Tír na nÓg, who came to the Fianna's hunting ground, chose Oisin, and carried him away on a white horse across the western sea. In the Land of Eternal Youth no one aged and no one died; what felt like three years was three hundred. When Oisin grew homesick for Ireland, Niamh gave him a white horse and warned him never to touch the ground — if he dismounted, he would become his true age.

He reached Ireland to find the Fianna gone, the Ireland he knew buried under a Christian age. Helping some men move a stone from a road, his saddle-girth broke and he fell. He aged three centuries in a moment and died in Patrick's arms, having just enough time to give his testimony.