Similar Tales
This story of Oisín and Niamh bears a striking similarity to many other tales, including the Japanese tale of Urashima Tarō, though how the tales may have travelled is unknown. Francis Hindes Groome recorded another such tale in his Gypsy Folk Tales. Another version concerns King Herla, a legendary king of the ancient Britons, who visited to the Otherworld, only to return some two hundred years later after the lands had been settled by the Anglo-Saxons. The "Seven Sleepers of Ephesus", a group of Christian youths who hid inside a cave outside the city of Ephesus around 250 AD, purportedly awoke approximately 180 years later during the reign of Theodosius II. The Blessed Realm being on an island far to the West that mortals cannot visit except by express invitation of the Immortals is reminiscent of Valinor in the mythology of J.R.R. Tolkein's Middle Earth.
Read more about this topic: Tír Na NÓg
Famous quotes containing the words similar and/or tales:
“Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Among the Indians he had fought;
And with him many tales he brought
Of pleasure and of fear;
Such tales as told to any Maid
By such a Youth, in the green shade,
Were perilous to hear.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)