Only where men are wasteful and dirty , and let sewers run into the sea instead of putting the stuff upon the fields like thrifty reasonable souls ; or throw herrings ' heads and dead dog-fish , or any other refuse , into the water ; or in any way make a mess upon the clean shore -- there the water-babies will not come , sometimes not for hundreds of years -LRB- for they can not abide anything smelly or foul -RRB- , but leave the sea-anemones and the crabs to clear away everything , till the good tidy sea has covered up all the dirt in soft mud and clean sand , where the water-babies can plant live cockles and whelks and razor-shells and sea-cucumbers and golden - combs , and make a pretty live garden again , after man 's dirt is cleared away . And that , I suppose , is the reason why there are no water-babies at any watering-place which I have ever seen . And where is the home of the water-babies ? In St. Brandan 's fairy isle . Did you never hear of the blessed St. Brandan , how he preached to the wild Irish on the wild , wild Kerry coast , he and five other hermits , till they were weary and longed to rest ? For the wild Irish would not listen to them , or come to confession and to mass , but liked better to brew potheen , and dance the pater o'pee , and knock each other over the head with shillelaghs , and shoot each other from behind turf-dykes , and steal each other 's cattle , and burn each other 's homes ; till St. Brandan and his friends were weary of them , for they would not learn to be peaceable Christians at all . So St. Brandan went out to the point of Old Dunmore , and looked over the tide-way roaring round the Blasquets , at the end of all the world , and away into the ocean , and sighed -- `` Ah that I had wings as a dove ! '' And far away , before the setting sun , he saw a blue fairy sea , and golden fairy islands , and he said , `` Those are the islands of the blest . '' Then he and his friends got into a hooker , and sailed away and away to the westward , and were never heard of more . But the people who would not hear him were changed into gorillas , and gorillas they are until this day . And when St. Brandan and the hermits came to that fairy isle they found it overgrown with cedars and full of beautiful birds ; and he sat down under the cedars and preached to all the birds in the air . And they liked his sermons so well that they told the fishes in the sea ; and they came , and St. Brandan preached to them ; and the fishes told the water-babies , who live in the caves under the isle ; and they came up by hundreds every Sunday , and St. Brandan got quite a neat little Sunday-school . And there he taught the water - babies for a great many hundred years , till his eyes grew too dim to see , and his beard grew so long that he dared not walk for fear of treading on it , and then he might have tumbled down . And at last he and the five hermits fell fast asleep under the cedar - shades , and there they sleep unto this day . But the fairies took to the water-babies , and taught them their lessons themselves . And some say that St. Brandan will awake and begin to teach the babies once more : but some think that he will sleep on , for better for worse , till the coming of the Cocqcigrues . But , on still clear summer evenings , when the sun sinks down into the sea , among golden cloud-capes and cloud-islands , and locks and friths of azure sky , the sailors fancy that they see , away to westward , St. Brandan 's fairy isle . But whether men can see it or not , St. Brandan 's Isle once actually stood there ; a great land out in the ocean , which has sunk and sunk beneath the waves . Old Plato called it Atlantis , and told strange tales of the wise men who lived therein , and of the wars they fought in the old times . And from off that island came strange flowers , which linger still about this land : - the Cornish heath , and Cornish moneywort , and the delicate Venus 's hair , and the London-pride which covers the Kerry mountains , and the little pink butterwort of Devon , and the great blue butterwort of Ireland , and the Connemara heath , and the bristle-fern of the Turk waterfall , and many a strange plant more ; all fairy tokens left for wise men and good children from off St. Brandan 's Isle .
Now when Tom got there , he found that the isle stood all XXXXX pillars , and that its roots were full of caves .
In after among for into on till to until with