The Book of Irish Ballads

THE ENCHANTED ISLAND.

[BY ANONYMOUS.]

- Proofing in Progress -

[The tradition in this beautiful little ballad is almost the same as that on which "The City of Gold," "Hy-Brasail," and other poems in this collection are founded, except in point of locality; the scene of the latter ballads being placed in the Atlantic, to the west of the Isles of Arran, while "the Enchanted Island" is supposed to be in the neighbourhood of Rathlin Island, off the north coast of the county Antrim.  The name of the island, which has been spelled a different way by almost every writer on the subject, is supposed to be derived from Ragh-erin, or "the Fort of Erin," as its situation, commanding the Irish coast, might make it, not unaptly, be styled "the fortress of Ireland."--See Leonard's Topographia Hibernica.] 
To Rathlin's Isle I chanced to sail,
  When summer breezes softly blew,
And there I heard so sweet a tale,
  That oft I wished it could be true.

They said, at eve, when rude winds sleep,
  And hushed is ev'ry turbid swell,
A mermaid rises from the deep,
  And sweetly tunes her magic shell.

And while she plays, rock, dell, and cave,
  In dying falls the sound retain,
As if some choral spirits gave
  Their aid to swell her witching strain.

Then, summoned by that dulcet note,
  Uprising to th' admiring view,
A fairy island seems to float
  With tints of many a gorgeous hue.

And glittering fanes, and lofty towers,
  All on this fairy isle are seen;
And waving trees, and shady bowers,
  With more than mortal verdure green.

And as it moves, the western sky
  Glows with a thousand varying rays;
And the calm sea, tinged with each dye,
  Seems like a golden flood of blaze.

They also say, if earth or stone,
  From verdant Erin's hallowed land,
Were on this magic island thrown,
  For ever fixed, it then would stand.

But, when for this, some little boat
  In silence ventures from the shore--
The mermaid sinks--hushed is the note,
  The fairy isle is seen no more.

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Denis Florence MacCarthy Homepage

MacCarthy, Denis Florence (1817-1882), ed. The Book of Irish Ballads. Dublin: James Duffy, 1869.

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Title 17, United States Code, Section 304(b).
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Published in 1998 by Dennis McCarthy
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