The Land of Eternal Youth
A lesson in Irish mythology, and an ancient story which captures that very Irish experience: leaving home.
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The other day I was giving one of my English classes a lesson on Irish folklore, mythology and legends. We read the story of Oisín and Tír na nÓg, one of the better-known Irish tales of Irish mythology. Some of the class had even heard of it before, even though everyone in this particular group has been in the country less than three months.
We read and answer the questions, as the routine goes.
“Did you enjoy the story?” I asked when we’d finished, adults all of them, most versions you find these days being fairytale versions for children.
“Yes”, they replied, with what felt like genuineness rather than a sense of obligation of politeness.
I was reading it myself again for the first time in many, many years, details of the story forgotten since I was a child. I wasn’t sure if the nuances of the story were taken on board, with it being a beginner’s English class.
I had to admit that, not only did I enjoy it myself, but it gave me goosebumps.
The Legend
For those of you unfamiliar or who haven’t heard the story since school – or maybe since watching a re-run of Into the West some Christmas – the story of Tír na nÓg is part of the story of Oisín and the Fenian cycle of Irish mythology, an epic series of stories and ballads comparable to the Iliad and the likes in Greek mythology.
Tír na nÓg, (rhymes with ‘cheer na vogue’) means the Land of the Young (also known as or Tír na hÓige/Land of Youth – eternal youth, that is). Oisín was a poet and son of Fionn MacCumhail (Finn Mac Cool), famous hunter-warrior and leader of Na Fianna, a band of soldiers and warriors. Oisín falls in love with and marries Niamh Cinn Óir (pronounced ‘Nee-uv Kin-Ore’, Niamh of the Golden Hair) and they ride off to her home in Tír na nÓg, to live happily ever after, as they say, with ever in this case being ‘forever’.
The so-called Land of the Young is a magical paradise of lush green valleys which lies under the ocean and where no-one grows old or dies. It’s a Garden of Eden or Valhalla style heaven, and a place of beauty, wealth, abundance, and everlasting happiness.
But despite living in a perfect world, after some time Óisín begins to miss Ireland.
He misses his family. He misses hunting in the forests of Ireland with his friends. He misses his country, his land and the place where he’s from – he misses Home.
Niamh feels bad for him and gives him the chance to ride back to Ireland on her horse, but just for a visit. The only rule is: don’t touch the ground of Ireland, or you’ll never be able to come back to Tír na nÓg.
Unfortunately for Oisín, when he gets back to Ireland it’s not like he remembers. His family are nowhere to be seen. His home is gone. He recognises no-one. Even though he’s only been away for a year, the world he knew has not just moved on, but disappeared entirely and is unrecognisable.
He meets some men trying to move some rocks and tries to help them from his horse, careful to heed Niamh’s instruction. He gets tangled in his stirrup however and falls from his horse. As soon as he touches the ground he begins to age rapidly, turning into a decrepit old man within minutes.
It turns out he’s been away not for one year, as it felt like to him, but for 300 years. I guess living in the Land of the Young kind of messes with your concept of time.
Oisín’s time was up. Not only was his home and everything he ever knew gone, but he couldn’t go back to Tír na nÓg now either. Caught between two worlds, Oisín was forced to choose one or the other, and in the end he belonged to neither.
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Home or Away
The mythical otherworld of Tír na nÓg represents the idyllic grass-is-always-greener places of somewhere else – those places we long to go because we imagine life will be perfect there.
In this case, it was.
But even when life is perfect, there is always the pull of home. There is more life, after all, than perfection. It isn’t a question of some quantifiable measure of quality, or whether one place is ‘better’ than the other. It just is what it is.
As someone once said, home is not meant to be perfect, it’s always going to have its ups and downs – but if somewhere is perfect, it’s not home, it’s just somewhere you like being.
So Oisín’s head was turned, though in this case it was turned back to where he came from. He missed everything from home, perhaps not perfect or as idyllic as life where he was now, but home nonetheless.
He learned a lesson the hard way however, and one that so many emigrants and travellers have learned over the years:
Once you’re gone, you’re gone.
And no matter how much you try or have a change of heart, sometimes there might just be no going back to where you came from.
There’s two ways to go away from home, whether that’s going on holiday, leaving your home-town to move to a bigger city, or emigrating to another country: you’re either gone or you’re not.
If you’re not committed to your new place, your heart remains at home. Everything you do is anchored by your return home, whether that’s in a week or a year. Some leave for five years, or even forever, and never truly leave home. It could take the form of banding together with fellow emigrants from your home country, in Kilburn or St. Kilda.
Perhaps these people can return home at some point in the future.
Others though, they commit fully to the foreign lands they find themselves in. And for those it mightn’t be so simple to go back. Even if home doesn’t change, then you will.
Where is Home?
Making yourself at home somewhere else is not strictly about comfort, and finding yourself more in rhythm with life in another place, or in another way, somewhere that’s more to your liking or that suits your needs better.
Nor is it about finding a new place, and learning it so well as you know the place you came from that you can at some point replace that one, claiming greater knowledge of this one. In fact, your new home away from home mightn’t even be a single physical place, it might simply be the very act of living life on the road itself, adopting the role of wanderer.
It’s not even about time spent, as some people spend their whole lives away from home and dreaming of it and inhabiting it still so deeply that it’s like they never left; and others leave for a matter of months, or just a year or two, and they become unrecognisable to the land of their birth – and it to them.
It's about intention.
And more specifically, it’s about your intention to leave.
This changing of where your home is occurs on two levels, within and without. The change without is one you’ve no control over. It is the moving on of your home with the passing of time, and one that contains your notable absence (for a while at least).
Things change. People grow up without each other. People move on, things get built and others fall apart.
On some level it may be overcome, or it may never be an issue for many, though it must be remembered that, despite all best intentions, some people will always hate you because you left. Paradoxically, the changes that occur outside of you are irrelevant in determining where your home is.
The change within is the key. This is the change you seek by leaving home. And if you are ever to enact this change, and if you are to assume the vision of yourself that you’re seeking to embody by leaving, then as I’ve described through the course of some of my recent journeys, a part of you must die.
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There’s no Turning Back
Home is not just a house, nor your hometown a row of them. It’s the part of you that has existed since birth, and much of it is rooted in the ways of your natural and cultural environment, whether village or town or city.
But you leave because you want something different to what your home offers you at that time. You want a change of circumstances or a change of perspective. You have things to do. Maybe you just want to see what’s up, over there, or beyond, to see what people do whenever they’re not here.
Maybe you never even wanted to change, or at least never knew you did.
For you to truly move away from home, you have to be willing to undergo a change in yourself.
There can be no two ways about it. As much as we might like to remain with one foot in either camp, one at home and one away, living in perhaps our idea of an idyllic world but with ties still at home so that we can return home when we want, unfortunately it’s not so simple.
To be where you are at any moment in time requires a choice to be made. You cannot exist in two places at once. To be in one place and thinking of somewhere else, whether that’s home or a third place, or a fourth or a fifth, is to subject yourself to a form of chaos and anxiety and a chronic longing that can’t be fixed. You will never be happy where you are unless you choose to make it your home, and choose to stop wishing you were somewhere else.
There are levels to this commitment, but at a basic level there are just the two choices.
Home or away.
We might make many different homes for ourselves throughout our lives, but at any one time there can only be one.
Returning Home is a funny thing. If you’ve spent a committed period of time away from it, then it is fundamentally changed forever. Leaving severs a spiritual tie that may never be successfully repaired. You may never again feel at home there, though it still exists as your home. Like Frodo returning to the Shire, there is a loss of innocence that cannot be regained, from knowing other places and making them your home.
The longing of home is a powerful thing.
There is far more to life and where you choose to live than perfection, and some things cannot be measured against any other, even if one appears to be ‘better’ than another – or perfect like Tír na nÓg. But there are some longings that cannot be cured.
Oisín found out that perfection is not enough sometimes. But he also learned when it was too late, that sometimes if you leave, then no matter how much you want to return home, it mightn’t be so easy to go back.
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