The Laughter of Peterkin

The Tale of the Four White Swans

The story that I will tell you now is one of the most famous among all the peoples of the Gael. It is called sometimes “The Tale of the Four White Swans,” sometimes “The Fate of the Children of Lir,” sometimes simply “Fionula,”1 because of the beauty and tenderness of Lir’s daughter.

The tale is of the old far-off days. It was old when Ossian was a youth, and Fionn heard it as a child from the lips of grey-beards. Often I have spoken to you, Peterkin, of the Danann folk, the Tuatha-De-Danann who lived in the lands of our race before the foreign peoples came and drove the ancient dwellers in Ireland and Scotland to the hills and remote places. When men allude to them now in this late day, they speak of the Dedannans (as they are often called) as the Hidden Folk, the Quiet People, the Hill Folk, and even as the Fairies. It is natural, therefore, that years are as dust in the chronicles of this lost race. They live for hundreds of years where we live for ten; and so it is that the foam of time is white against the brief wave of our life, when against the mighty and long reach of theirs it is but flying spray.

You have heard Eilidh singing the song of the Four White Swans. It is a music that hundreds of tired ears have heard. It is so sweet, Peterkin, that old men grow young, and old women are girls again, and weary hearts ache no more, and dreams and hopes become real, and peace puts out her white healing hand.

“Have you heard that singing, Ian?”

“Yes, my boykin, often. And you, too, shall often hear it. It is in lonely places, in lonely hours, that you shall hear it. It is a beautiful strange sound, and so old and so wonderful that in it you will hear the beating of the heart of the world thousands of years ago. But first I will tell you the story of the Four Swans, and then we can speak again of the strange singing I have heard at times, and that you often shall hear.”

The Dedannans were the most wonderful and happy people in the world till they became discontented with what the unknown and beautiful gods had given them. Then they split into sections, and some sought one vain thing and some another, and in the end all found weariness. Their wise men knew that as long as they were at one no enemy could prevail against them; but it has never been the way of the unquiet to believe in the old wisdom, and so feuds arose, and the Fairy Host itself—as the great array of the warriors of the Tuatha-De-Danann was called—ceased to be invincible, because the banners blew to the four winds.

Not all their ancestral sojournings in the dim lands of the East, nor in the ages of their migration to the country of fjords which has its whole length in the sea, nor in Alba, that is now Scotland, nor Eiré, that is now Ireland, not all they had learned in their remote past helped them against the undoing of their own folly.

It has been said that the Dedannans never fought against men till the Milesians, the warriors of Miled out of some land in the south—the land, mayhap, we know as Spain—came against them upon the banks of a river then as now called the Blackwater, in the heart of Meath.

But before the Dedannans themselves ever saw it, the Green Isle was held by the Firbolgs, a terrible, heroic race, but allied to the dark powers. Some say they became demons, after they were defeated in many battles by the Tuatha-De-Danann, and at last wholly conquered. But so old is this ancient tired world, that long before the Dedannans and the Firbolg people fought for sovereignty, the Firbolg had striven with and overcome an earlier race—the Nemedians—which had come to Ireland under a mysterious king, Nemed. None knows who Nemed was, though he may have been a god, seeing that he overcame that most ancient people who were the first to set foot in the Isle of Destiny, under Partholan, a son of him who was called the Most High God.

Whether it be true or not that the overlordship of the world was meant for man, certain it is that man has thought so. Therefore are all stories of his cosmic strife coloured by this destiny. Terrible and mighty were the Firbolgs, fierce and terrible and beautiful were the Dedannans, but now there is no rumour of either, save in the wail of the wind, or in the stirring of swift, stealthy feet in the moonshine.

But now, Peterkin, I will tell you about the children of Lir, who was one of the great princes of the Dedannans.

The first great battle between the Milesians and the Dedannans had been fought, and the ancient people, for all their secret powers of wonders and enchantment, had been defeated. Throughout all Erin—for Ireland at that time was called either Eiré (Erin), or Fola, or Banba, after three great queens—there was a rumour of lamentation. It was the beginning of the end, though few save the wisest Druids foresaw it.

But the people knew that their dissensions were the cause of their sorrow. They clamoured for one king to be overlord, so that the whole Dedannan race might be united.

There were five great princes who claimed to be king by right. Of these two were greater than the others—Bove Derg, son of Dagda, one of the divine race (and some say a mighty god), and Lir of Shee Finnaha. In the end Bove Derg was elected Ardree, or High King. Even Midir the Haughty acquiesced in this judgment of the people, but Lir was wroth and held aloof. All the princes and warriors were fierce with Lir because he had left the assembly in anger, paying heed to no one, and scornfully ignoring the majesty of the king. A hundred swords of proven heroes leapt before Bove Derg, for all were eager to follow Lir and destroy him and his, because of the insult to the king and to the voice and freewill of the people. But Bove Derg was a wise and generous prince, and forbore. This was well. For in time a great sorrow came upon Lir. When the rumour of this sorrow reached Bove Derg, he saw how he might win over Lir.

“In my house,” he said, “are my three foster-children, the daughters of Aileel of Ara. Each is beautiful, all are wise and sweet and noble. Let messengers go to Lir, and tell him that my friendship is his if he will have it. Surely now he will submit to the will of the people. And he can have to wife whomsoever of the three daughters of Aileel he may choose, if so be that she will gladly and freely go with him.”

Lir was glad at this message. He called his warriors together, and in fifty chariots he and they set forth. They rested not till they came to the palace of Bove Derg, by the Great Lake, nigh to the place now called Killaloe. Great were the rejoicings, and again at the alliance which after many days was made between the king and Lir.

When Lir saw the three daughters of Aileel, he could not say who was the most beautiful.

“Each is alike beautiful, O king,” he said; “and I cannot tell which is best. But surely the eldest must be the noblest of the three, and so I will choose her, if so be that she gladly and freely come with me as my wife.”

And so it was. When Lir returned to his own place, he took with him as his wife the beautiful Aev, who was the eldest of the daughters of Aileel of Ara, and was foster-child of Bove Derg the king. From that day, too, a deep and true friendship lived between Bove Derg and Lir.

In the course of time Aev bore him twin children, a son and a daughter. The daughter was named Fionula, because of her lovely whiteness, and the son was named Aed, for that his eyes, and the mind behind his eyes, were bright and wonderful as a flame of fire.

And at the end of the second year Aev again bore twin children. Both were sons, and they were named Fiachra and Conn. But in giving them life she lost her own.

Lir was in bitter distress because of her death, and for the reason that his four little children were now motherless. He was comforted by Bove Derg, who not only gave him friendship and kingly aid and counsel, but said that he should not be left alone to mourn, and that his little ones should not go motherless.

Thus it was that Aeifa, the second of the daughters of Aileel of Ara and foster-child of Bove Derg the king, came to Shee Finnaha and espoused Lir.

For some years all went well. Aeifa nursed the children, and tended them. They were so fair and beautiful that the poets sang of them far and wide. Even Bove Derg loved them as though they were his own. As for Lir, so great was his love, that he could not bear to be long apart from them. His sleeping-room was separated from them only by a deerskin, and this often he pulled aside at dawn, so that he might see his dear ones, and perchance go to them to talk lightly and happily, or to caress them with loving laughter and joy.

Lir was never sad save when the four children went south to the Great Lake to stay awhile with Bove Derg, who in his turn was filled with melancholy when the time came for them to go home again. Nor was Lir ever so proud as when, at the Feast of Age, whenever that festival came to be held at Shee Finnaha, the king and the nobles and the warriors delighted in the beauty and marvellous sweet charm of Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn. Thus it was that the saying grew: “Fair as the four children of Lir.”

But there was a deep shadow behind all this joy. This shadow came out of the heart of Aeifa. In love there is sometimes a poisonous mist. It is what we call Jealousy. At first Aeifa truly loved her step-children. But as the years lapsed, and when Fionula was passing from girlhood into maidenhood, the wife of Lir was filled with anger against the four children. She was bitter at heart because their father loved them with so great a tenderness, and that even the king himself cared for them above all else, and because all the Dedannans had joy of them.

The time came when this dull smouldering fire, which she might have overcome had she loved nobly and not ignobly, burst into flame. This flame withered her heart, and rose thence till it obscured her mind.

She had something of the old druidical wisdom, but she feared the counter-spells of others wiser than herself. Nevertheless she set herself to learn one or other of the ancient incantations against which even the gods are powerless to avert evil from men and women.

While she was brooding thus—and for weeks and even months she lay in the house of Lir as one stricken with some terrible ill—her rage grew till she could no longer endure the sight of her husband or of her step-children.

One day she arose and ordered the horses to be yoked to her chariot, and bade a small chosen company to be ready to go with her and the four children to the Great Lake: for, she said, she wished to see Bove Derg, her foster-father, and to take the children to gladden his heart. Lir was sad, and sadder still when he saw the tears in Fionula’s eyes. In vain he asked her why this drifting dew was there instead of the sun-bright laughing glancings he joyed so much to see. She would not answer: for all she could have said was that in a dream she had fore-knowledge of the evil desire of Aeifa to kill her and her brothers. Perhaps, she thought, it was but a dream. She loved honour, too, and would not put her father against his wife because of a visionary thing that came to her in the night.

It was when they were in a deep gorge of the hills that Aeifa was overcome by her hatred. Turning to her attendants, she offered them wealth and whatsoever they desired if only they would slay the four children of Lir then and there, inasmuch as these had come between her and her husband, and had therein and in all else made her life a burden to her.

The attendants listened with horror. Not one there would lift a hand against Lir’s children. What was wealth, or any fruit of desire, compared with so foul a treachery, so terrible a crime! The oldest among them even warned Lir’s wife that the very thought of such evil would surely work a dreadful punishment against her.

At this, Aeifa laughed wildly. Then, seizing a sword, she strove to wield it herself against the defenceless children. The three boys stood, wondering. In the blue eyes of Fionula there was something the wife of Lir dreaded more than the wrath of husband or king. Dashing the sword to the ground, she cried to the chariot-driver to make haste onward.

No word was spoken among them till they reached the hither end of the Lake of Darvra.2 There Aeifa called a halt, and the horses were unyoked for rest. It was a fair and warm day, so when she bade the children undress and go into the water, they did so gladly.

While their white sunlit bodies were splashing in the lake, she took from beneath the rim of the chariot, where she had secreted it, a druidical fairy wand. This had been given her by a Dedannan druid, and was a dreadful thing to possess, for its power was of the black magic, against which nothing might prevail. Going to the side of the clear water, she struck lightly with the wand the shoulder of each of the four children; and, as she touched Fionula, Lir’s fair young daughter became a beautiful snow-white swan, and as she touched Aed and Fiachra and Conn, Lir’s three young sons were changed like unto Fionula.

A cry of lamentation arose from the witnesses of this deed, though none guessed that the ill was so dreadful and beyond the reach of druidic skill, nor did the children know at first what evil had befallen them, but swam to and fro laughing in their hearts, and rejoicing in their white feathers and in their swift joy in the water. But when Fionula heard the lamentation, and looked upon the evil face of Aeifa her stepmother, she knew that the hour of doom had come.

Then Aeifa stretched out her arms, and chanted these words:

“Lost far and wide on Darvra’s gloomy water,
  With other lonely birds tost far and wide.
For nevermore shall Lir behold his daughter,
  And never shall his sons lie by his side.”

Then while all on the shore stood in deep grief, Fionula swam close, and looked up into the white face of Aeifa, which was whiter then than the whitest breast-feathers of these poor bewildered swans.

“This is an evil deed thou hast done, O Aeifa,” she said. “Out of a bitter heart thou hast wrought this cruel wrong upon us who love thee, and have never done or wished thee ill. Nevertheless it is not our ill that shall endure for ever, but thine own evil. There shall be an avenging terrible for thee, whensoever it come.”

It was then that Fionula for the first time sang as a swan, and even then the marvellous sweet singing brought both gladness and tears into the hearts of those who heard.

“In the years long ago, long ago now, long ago,
We were loved by her who dooms us to this evil cruel woe:
        Who with magic wand and words
        Hath changed us into birds—
Snow-white swans to drift and drift for evermore
Homeless, weary, tempest-baffled hence from shore to shore.”

A silence followed this melancholy singing. Then at last Fionula spoke again.

“Tell us, O Aeifa, how long this doom is to be upon us, so that we may know when death shall come to take away our suffering?”

Then because in that day it was not honourable to refuse the truth when asked, Aeifa did as Fionula prayed of her.

“Better would it be for thee and thy brothers to know nothing and to hope much. But since thou hast asked this thing I will tell it:

“Three hundred years shall ye, Fionula, and Aed and Fiachra and Conn, who are now four white swans, abide here on this great lonely, desolate lake of Darvra. For three hundred years thereafter shall ye inhabit the wild sea of Moyle, which lies between the Stairway of the Giants, and the bleak shores of the great headland of Alba.3 And for yet another three hundred years ye shall drift to and fro among the storm-swept seas off the rocky isles to the west of Erin.

“Furthermore, ye shall be idle sport for the storms until Lairgnen, a great prince of the north, has union with Decca, in the south: until the Taillkenn,4 the new prophet, shall come to Erin and preach a new faith that shall chase away the old gods: and until ye shall be filled with fear and wonder at a strange sound, that shall be the ringing of the first Christian bell. All this I tell ye because of the prophetic sight I have, and that has come to me through the druidic wand wherewith I have changed ye into four wild white swans. And this too, I say unto ye, Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn, that neither by your own power nor by your prayers, nor by mine, nor by the power of Lir and Bove Derg, nor by that of all kings and princes and druids whatsoever; no, nor by any god, nor by any power in heaven or earth, can ye be freed from this spell I have put upon ye, until the times and events I have spoken of shall be fulfilled.”

When Aeifa had ceased speaking, there was no sound to be heard, save the lap-lapping of the lake-water upon the shore. Of the company of those with her none spake a word, each dreading the evil that was sure to come. At last a faint sobbing came from amid the sedges, where the young brothers nestled by the side of Fionula, who had already begun to mother these dear ones whom she loved.

When she heard these sobs, Aeifa’s heart smote her. Even if she would, she could not now undo the age-long spell she had set upon the children of Lir. But one thing was left to her that she might do with the fairy wand, which could be moved once again if stirred by the breath of her will.

“Hearken, O children of Lir,” she cried, “for I have yet one thing to say: and that out of the sorrow in my heart because of the doom I have put upon ye. Although ye are turned into wild swans, ye shall not become as the desert birds, and have no speech but the savage screams and cries of the wilderness. Ye shall keep for ever your own sweet Gaelic speech, and so be able to talk each with the other, and with any of the human kind whom ye may meet. And more than this, ye shall be able to sing the most sweet, plaintive songs, and the most wild, haunting music that ever man has heard; so that all whose ears list shall be lulled into deep sleep, or into a peace sweeter than slumber itself. Nor shall the law of the soulless brutes be upon you, but ye shall be Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn, the children of Lir.”

Having said these words, Aeifa raised her arms and chanted this song:

“Speed hence, speed hence, O lone white swans,
  Across the wind-sprent foam;
The wave shall be your father now,
And the wind alone shall kiss your brow,
  And the waste be your home.

Speed hence, speed hence, O lone white swans,
  Your age-long quest to make;
Three hundred years on Moyle’s wild breast,
Three hundred years on the wilder west,
  Three hundred on this lake.

Speed hence, speed hence, O lone white swans,
  And Lir shall call in vain;
For all his aching heart and tears,
For all the weariness of his years,
  Ye shall not come again.

Speed hence, speed hence, O lone white swans,
  Till the ringing of Christ’s bell;
Then at the last ye shall have rest,
And Death shall take ye to his breast
  At the ringing of Christ’s bell.”

Having sung this farewell song, Aeifa ordered the horses to be yoked again to her chariot.

This done, she drove away westward, nor was there a single heart in those who accompanied her but was filled with sorrow and foreboding.

When the lake was no longer visible, and the gloom of the mountains came down upon the pass which led towards the westlands where Bove Derg dwelled, a faint wild aerial singing was heard, delicate as tinkling cowbells on far hill-pastures.

Before Aeifa drew near to the great dun of Bove Derg, she put each of her company under a solemn bond of silence as to what she had meant to do and not done, and as to what later she had done; and because of the lealty of the bond to a woman, and also because of the fear of each towards the druidical fairy wand that she still carried, the oath was taken by one and all.

Therefore it was easy for Aeifa to mislead Bove Derg as to the reason why she had not brought the children of Lir with her. Nevertheless he doubted greatly that his foster-daughter deceived him, for he could not think that Lir his friend would so mistrust him as to refuse to let Fionula and her brothers accompany their stepmother.

So, secretly, he sent a swift messenger across the hills and straths to the dun of Lir.

Lir was at once wroth and filled with fear when he heard that Aeifa had reached the dun of Bove Derg without the children. Some treachery surely had been done, he cried.

Then, calling together a company, he set forth with all speed. Towards sundown, the cavalcade came upon the wide desolate shores of the great lake of Darvra.

“What is that sound?” cried Lir.

“It is the wind in the reeds, O Lir,” answered a spearman by his side.

“The wind in the reeds is a sweet sound to hear, Coran, but never have I heard any wind that could make so sweet a music.”

“It is the little gentle lapping of the wavelets by the west wind, O Lir.”

“It is no gentle lapping of the wavelets by the west wind, Coran, nor yet is it the wind in the reeds; but that is the voice of Fionula singing.”

And as the sound grew clearer, all heard it, and soon the words were audible:

“Behold the Danann host is on the shore,
Seeking for those now lost for evermore;
But let us haste towards that proud array
And tell the tidings of this fatal day.”

And while the song was still in the ears of all there, Lir gave a great cry and pointed to where above the midmost of the lake four wild swans were winging swiftly towards the eastern shore.

When he heard from Fionula—and he knew her voice, which was sweeter than any other he had ever heard—of all that had happened, and of the strange and dreadful doom that was put upon her and her brothers, he fell sobbing to the ground. From all his company the keening of a bitter lamentation arose.

Alas, as he knew well, not even the great length of years which the Dedannan folk lived—and a score of years is to them what one year is to us—would enable him to see his dear ones again. Three hundred years on Darvra, these he might mayhap live to see; but not the three hundred years on the bleak and wild region of the Moyle, nor the three hundred on the wild tempestuous western seas, nor the far-off day when a prophet called Taillken would come to Erin with a new faith, and in the glens and across the plains would be heard the strange chiming of Christ’s bell.

Yet was he comforted when he heard that his children were to keep their Gaelic speech, and to be human in all things save only in their outward shape. And glad he was that they were to be able to chant music so wild and sweet that all who should hear it would be filled with joy and peace. For music is the most beautiful and wonderful thing in the world, and is the oldest, as it will be the latest speech.

“Remain with us this night, here by the lake,” said Fionula, “and we shall sing to you our fairy music.”

So all abode there, and so sweet was the song of the children of Lir, that he himself and all his company fell into a deep, restful slumber. All night long they sang their sweet sad song, and were glad because of the quiet dark figures by the lake-side lying drowned in shadow. Slowly the moon sank behind the hills. Then the stars glistened whitelier and smaller, and a soft rosy flush came over the mountain crest in the east. Then Lir awoke, and Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn ceased their singing, and spread out their white pinions to the light of a new day, and ruffled their snowy breasts against the frothing that the dawn-wind made upon the lake.

Lir took a harp from one of his followers, and sang a song of farewell to his children. At that singing all awoke, and the heart of each man was heavy because of the doom that had fallen upon the children of Lir.

He sang of the fateful hour when he had taken Aeifa to wife, and of the cruel hardness of her heart, that thus out of jealous rage she could work so great and unmerited evil. And what rest could there be for him, he chanted, since whenever he lay down in the dark he would see his loved ones pictured plain before him: Fionula, his pride and joy; Aed, so agile and adventurous; the laughing Fiachra; and little Conn, with his curls of gold.

Then with a heavy heart indeed Lir went on his way. Before he and his company entered the great pass at the western end of Lough Darvra, he looked back longingly. In the blue space of heaven he saw four white cloudlets drifting idly in a slow circling flight.

“O Fionula,” he cried, “O Aed, O Fiachra, O Conn, farewell, my little ones! Well do I know that you have risen thus in high flight so that my eyes may have this last glimpse of you. Nevertheless I will come again soon.”

It was a weary journey thence to the dun of Bove Derg, but all weariness was forgotten in wrath against Aeifa.

No sooner had Lir spoken to the king, no sooner had the king looked at the face of Aeifa as she heard the accusation, than Bove Derg knew that the truth had been told, and that Aeifa was guilty of this cruel wrong. Turning to his foster-daughter, he exclaimed, in the hearing of all:

“This ill deed that thou hast wrought, Aeifa, will be worse for thee than all thou hast put upon the children of Lir. For in the end they shall know joy and peace, while as long as the world lasts thou shalt know what it is to be lonely and accursed and abhorred.” Then for a brief time Bove Derg brooded. There was naught in all the world so dreaded in the dim ancient days as the demons of the air, and no doom could be more dreadful than to be transformed into one of those dark and lonely and desperate spirits that make night and desolate places so full of terror. At last the king rose. Taking his druidical magic wand, he struck Aeifa with it, and therewith turned her into a demon of the air. A great cry went up from the whole assemblage as they saw Aeifa spread out gaunt shadowy wings, and struggle as in a sudden anguish of new birth. The next moment she gave a terrible scream, and flew upward like a swirling eagle, and disappeared among the dark lowering clouds which hung over the land that day.

Thus was it that Aeifa became a demon o the air. Even now her screaming voice may be heard among the wild hills of her own land, on dark windy nights, when tempests break, or in disastrous hours.

But out of a wrong done the gods may work good. So was it with the Dedannans.

For not only Lir, and all his people, but Bove Derg and a great part of the nation assembled by the shores of Lake Darvra, and there pitched their tents, which afterwards grew into a vast rath, wherein the king builded a mighty dun.

For Lir and Bove Derg had vowed that henceforth they would live their years by the shores of Darvra, where they might converse with their dear ones, and where they might listen to the sweet oblivious songs which Fionula and her brothers sang to the easing of the heart, and the silence of all pain and weariness.

But so great was the rumour of this marvel that all Erin heard of it. The Milesians in the south agreed to a long truce of three hundred years; and came and dwelt in amity with the Dedannans, for they too loved the sweet and wonderful music of the white swans that were the children of Lir.

“Three hundred years yet may we live,” said Bove Derg to Lir, “and as I am a king, I swear never to leave the lough of Darvra while the four swans that are thy sons and daughter inhabit it. The heavy years shall pass for us, listening to their beautiful sweet singing; and therein we shall know peace and joy.”

“So be it,” said Lir, and he spoke the truth, for in that day the Dedannans lived to a great age; some say to three hundred, some to five, some to seven hundred years.

The years went by, one after the other, and by tens and by scores, and still Lir and Bove Derg and the Dedannans and Milesians dwelled by the shores of Lake Darvra. For never in the world’s history has there been chronicle of so sweet a singing as that of the four children of Lir. All day the swans discoursed lovingly with their father and Bove Derg, and their kith and kin, and all who sought them; and each night they sang their slow, sweet, fairy music—a music so wonderful and passing sweet, that all who listed to it forgot weariness and pain and bitter memories and the burden of years, and fell into a deep restful slumber, whence they awoke each morrow as though they had drunken overnight of the Fountain of Youth.

The hair of Lir and Bove Derg was long and white, and almost had the Dedannans and the Milesians forgotten their ancient enmity, when a day of the days came whereon Fionula called aside her three brothers.

“Dear brothers,” she said, as she looked sadly at the three beautiful white swans, and at the four drifting shadow-swans in the depths of the lake, “dear brothers, do you know that the time has come when we must put away our happiness as a dream that has been dreamed? For now the three hundred years of our sojourn here are at an end, and at dawn to-morrow we must arise and wing our sad flight across the dear lands of Erin, till we come to the wild and stormy waters of the sea-stream of the Moyle.”

Aed and Fiachra and Conn made so loud and bitter lamentation at this that all heard, and soon the whole host that was encamped there filled the region with long keening cries of grief, and a sorrowful mourning strain as of the melancholy wind among the hills.

But once more all were soothed that night into deep slumber and happy peace, because of the slow, sweet, fairy music of the chanting swans.

At dawn, the four swans arose, and with their white pinions circled high above the lake, glittering as they soared into the sunflood as it swept across the summits of the eastern hills.

“Farewell! farewell! farewell!” they chanted, and at that sad sound all the Dedannan host and all the Milesians, headed by Lir and Bove Derg, kneeled along the lake pastures and amid the reeds and sedges.

Then Fionula, as she and her brothers slowly descended in wide-sweeping curves, sang this song:

“Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!
Far hence we lost ones go:
  Hearken our knell,
  Hearken our woe!

Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!
With breaking hearts we flee:
  For none can tell
  Our wild home on the sea.

For ages on the Moyle,
In loneliness and pain,
  Our feet shall tread no soil,
  Wild wave, wild wind, wild rain.

For ages in the west,
Fierce storms and fiercer cold
  Shall be alone our rest,
  While ye grow old.

Let not our memories pass,
O ye who stay behind—
  Who are as the grass
  And we the wind.

Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!
Far hence we lost ones go:
  Hearken our knell,
  Hearken our woe!”

As Fionula ceased this song, she and her brothers swept so close to the water’s edge that their white wings made a little dazzle of spray. Then with swift pinions they rose again, and soared in great spirals of flight, till they gleamed against the morning blue like four white banners adrift before a skiey wind.

Then for a brief while they suspended on outspread wings, and looked longingly down upon the dear ones and all their kith and kin, who on their part could scarce see the four white swans for the mist of tears that was before all faces.

Suddenly they swung hither and thither, like foam tossed by a tidal wind, and then flew straight to the northward. Soon they were but white specks; then the blue closed in upon them, as the wastes of the sea close at last behind the hulls of drifting ships.

Before the torch of a stormy sun sank that night amid the tossed green billows of the Moyle, there where the sea flows to and fro betwixt Erin and Alba, the children of Lir drooped their weary wings. Their home now was the running wave. In darkness and loneliness and sorrow, they floated close to each other, waiting for the dawn to steal into that first night of bitter exile.

From that day they were severed from those who loved them. Of a truth, there was keening and lamentation and sorrow by the shores of the lough of Darvra. At the last, as the snow melts, the great host of the Dedannans and Milesians passed away: to the westward, some; others, to the south.

As for Bove Derg and Lir, their white hairs and the grey ashes of their lives were the mournful refrain of many a song on the lips of wandering bards.

---

There were tears in the eyes of Peterkin when Ian Mor ceased speaking. His heart was sore because of Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn.

Nevertheless, he too would be glad to be a swan for a time, if only so as to be able to soar into the blue spaces of the sky, and to spread white wings over the dancing waters, and to move through them swifter than any boat. With what joy he had once climbed on to the fan of an old windmill, and slowly revolved through the hot August air, which winnowed around him a coolness like the flowing of wind over the summit of a hill.

A bright shining came into his eyes, then laughter bubbled to his lips.

Eilidh looked at him, half in mock reproof, half rejoicingly.

“Peterkin, why do you laugh?”

“Oh, for sure, dear, it’s not laughing I am at the poor swans, but at the face of Old Nanny, my nurse, when she came out of the cottage in the glen and saw me lying flat and holding on to the fan of the windmill, with my hair all blown back, and both my legs hanging in the air.”

“Some day you will kill yourself, Peterkin,” said Eilidh gravely.

“Then I’ll be a swan! and I’ll fly round and round Iona, and whenever you or Ian want to go to the mainland, I’ll take you on my back.”

Suddenly Peterkin sprang to his feet, and jumped to and fro, clapping his hands.

“Ah, how I would love it!” he exclaimed.

“Love what, dearie?”

“Love to see Ian fall off my back and go plump in among the herrings in the Sound! What a splash he would make!”

“And poor Ian—— Why, he might be drowned, Peterkin!”

“Oh, no; I would swoop down the way a gannet does when it sees a fish, and would scoop him up with my bill.”

The picture was too much for Peterkin. The thought of grabbing the dripping half-drowned Ian in his bill, and of soaring away with him to the white dry sands, was better than any dream of the fairies he had ever had, even than that when he rode a fairy horse in the guise of a white mouse, with grasshoppers for hounds, and a great bumble-bee as a wild boar for the occasion. He threw himself on the floor in front of the hearth, and rolled over and over, contorting his small body into alarming convulsions, clapping his hands, and laughing, laughing, laughing.

Eilidh, too, let the laughter take her, and then Ian found it sweet; and soon the little room was full of joyous laughter upon laughter, and of the leaping flame-light from the blazing log on the peats, and of the dancing of the shadow-men in the corners and up and down the walls.

“The swans! The swans!” cried Peterkin suddenly, as he grabbed wildly at some shadowy shapes which slid along the floor. But these swans proved as tantalising as the wind-shadows on the grass which so often he chased, and suddenly in a flash they disappeared altogether. They seemed to spring right into Ian Mor; at any rate it was in his arms that Peterkin found himself.

“Where are the shadows? Where are the shadows, Ian?” he cried: “I believe you are hiding them inside yourself! Where are they? Where are they?”

“Why, you boykin, where could they be?”

“They are in your heart, Ian! I know they are! I see them! I see them!”

Ian glanced at Eilidh. Then, putting his arm round Peterkin, he laid his lips against his downy cheek and whispered:

“Yes, my little lad, you’ve guessed right.”

“Then why don’t you chase them out, Ian?”

Again Ian Mor glanced at Eilidh.

“They live there, lennavan-mo. They jumped out because of your laughter, but they are back now.”

“Then I’ll be laughing often, Ian dear, and some day I’ll catch them and drive them out into the sunshine, and then they’ll melt—ay, ay, they’ll melt for sure, Ian, and what will you be after doing then?”

“Well, like Fionula and the wild swans, Peterkin, I’ll rise up and soar away on the great flood of the sun across the sea till I come to Hy Brásil, the Isle of Youth far away in the West.”

“Yes, I know,” Peterkin said gravely: “Hy Brásil: Eilidh told me that is where she and you are going to live. Will you take me there too?”

“Yes, you will come there too, mochree, some day.”

“But with you — when you and Eilidh go?”

“Perhaps we’ll not be going there together, Peterkin. But we won’t be forgetting our dear little Peterkin. We’ll be on the shore looking out for you when you come.”

“Why are your eyes wet, Ian, and Eilidh’s too?”

“Why, you unfeeling little wretch, it’s because we have left the poor swans, Fionula, and Aed, and Fiachra, and Conn, alone on the rough seas of the Moyle all this while.”

“Tell me, tell me now about the children of Lir. Did they see any one up there? Were they ever happy?”

“Eilidh knows the rest of the story as well as I do, Peterkin, so go and sit in her lap while she tells it to you and to me.”

With that, Ian Mor rose and put another log on the red peats. A shower of sparks shot up into the dark hollow of the chimney. Peterkin laughed.

“Hush!” whispered Eilidh, with smiling eyes: and then in her sweet, low voice resumed the tale of the Children of Lir, from where Ian had stopped.

It was at the edge of winter when Fionula and her brothers reached the wild bleak seas of the Moyle.

At first there was no too bitter cold or too fierce tempestuousness to make their evil lot still more hard to bear; but sad indeed were their hearts as day after day they saw nothing but the same grey skies, the same grey wastes and dark sullen waves, the same bleak, rocky coasts inhabited only by the cormorant and the sea-mew. Never to see a familiar face, never to hear a familiar voice: to dwell from morning dusk till evening dark in loneliness and sorrow—that, indeed, was a hard fate upon the four children of Lir. From hunger and cold, too, they suffered much. No longer could they be cheered as they were on Lough Darvra, and often and often they lamented that their doom could not have permitted them to remain as swans indeed, but as swans on that now dear and home-sweet inland sea of Darvra.

Day after day passed, but while their misery and want did not grow less they were not yet tortured by wintry storms and bitter frosts.

But one forlorn afternoon a terrible congregation of clouds, black and heavy and flanked with livid gleams, appeared above the horizon and slowly invaded the whole west, and then all the sky northward and all southward.

Fionula saw that a great tempest was nigh, so she called Aed, and Fiachra, and Conn, to come to her side.

“Dear brothers,” she exclaimed, “the storm that will soon be upon us will be worse than any we have yet known. Hardly can we hope not to be driven far apart. Let us agree, therefore, to meet somewhere, if so be that we are not utterly destroyed. For though Aeifa, our cruel stepmother, doomed us to these long ages of suffering, it may well be that even her potent spell is not strong enough against death: and death may come to us through famine, or cold, or in the drowning wave.”

At first the brothers could answer nothing. Then Aed spoke. “Thou art wise, dear Fionula. Let us, then, fix upon the rocky isle of Carrick-na-ron, as that place is well known to each of us, and can be descried from a great way off.”

Thus it was that Carrick-na-ron was made their place of meeting, if so be that in the blind fury and confusion of the tempest they should be driven the one from the other.

This was well: for that night, with the darkening of the night into a hollow of starless blackness, a terrible tempest swept over the seas, and lashed them into foam and into vast heaving, rolling, swaying billows. Amid the noise of the waves, and behind the screaming of the wind, the four weary rain-drenched bewildered swans could hear the crashing of the thunder and see the wild fitful blue glare of savage lightnings.

Before midnight they were whirled this way and that by the fierce paws of the gale. Soon they were separated, and with despairing cries, each swept solitary through the night. In the heart of each of the children of Lir there was little hope of any morrow. All nearly died of weariness and despair. Nevertheless dawn broke at last, and with the first coming of light the tempest passed away.

When the sun rose the waters were almost smooth again. A sparkling came into the crest of every wave. The sea blued.

Fionula was the first to descry the rocky isle of Carrick-na-ron, and gladly she swam towards it, for she was now too weary to fly. Eagerly she hoped to find her brothers there, safe-havened. Alas, there was not a sign of any, not even when she flew to the summit of the highest rock and looked far and wide across the wilderness of waters.

Great sorrow was hers, for sure, when she beheld nothing but wave upon wave, wave upon wave, till on the far horizon the long low line of sea climbed into the sky.

A song of mourning broke from Fionula, so sad and sweet and despairing that the gannets and sea-mews and dark fierce cormorants wheeled around Carrick-na-ron, wondering at the marvel of this wild swan, with the strange remote voice of the human kind. It was a song of farewell.

When Fionula ceased her lament she looked once more across the wastes of the sea. Suddenly she uttered a glad cry, for she descried Conn swimming slowly towards the rocky isle, slowly, and with drooping head, for he was drenched with the salt brine, and so weary that he could scarce move.

Hardly had she welcomed him with joy, and helped him to reach a flat ledge of rock whereon the sunlight poured with healing warmth, than she saw Fiachra desperately striving to make his way towards them, but so far spent that it seemed as though death would overtake him before he reached the foam-edged rocks. Fionula sprang into the running wave, and soon was beside Fiachra, aiding him to her utmost. With difficulty she helped him to the ledge where Conn crouched in the sun, but so weak was he that when he was spoken to he could utter no word in reply. Fionula looked with pity upon her two young brothers. It was hard for her to see their unmothered pain and weariness. So she spread out her broad white pinions, and gave the warmth of her body to the two drenched and shivering swans.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, as she crouched on the ledge, with Fiachra nestling by her right side and Conn by her left; “ah! if only Aed were here too, all might yet be well. And even if it be death, sweeter far that we might all perish together.” It was as though her loving prayer were answered, for before long she descried Aed swimming swiftly through the sunny foam-splashed seas. He, at least, she saw with joy, had not suffered as his younger brothers had done, for he came on with head erect and his white plumage all unruffled and dazzlingly ashine.

Nevertheless, Aed, too, was glad to rest in the sunshine, so Fionula placed him under her breast.

Noon found them thus: Fionula with sad eyes staring out across the wastes of windy seas; under the warm feathers of her breast, Aed; and close nestled to the warm down of her sides, Fiachra and Conn. She heard their low breathing as they slept, and that they might sleep the deeper and longer she sang her low, sweet, fairy music:

Sleep, sleep, brothers dear, sleep and dream,
  Nothing so sweet lies hid in all your years.
        Life is a storm-swept gleam
        In a rain of tears:
Why wake to a bitter hour, to sigh, to weep?
  How better far to sleep——
        To sleep and dream.

To sleep and dream, ah, that is well indeed:
  Better than sighs, better than tears;
Ye can have nothing better for your meed
        In all the years.
Why wake to a bitter hour, to sigh, to weep?
        How better far to sleep——
To sleep and dream, ah, that is well indeed!

This and other songs Fionula chanted low throughout the day, till at last she too was overcome by her weariness; and she slept.

At the rising of the moon, all awoke. Full glad were Aed and Fiachra and Conn that their tribulation was over; only Fionula knew that the doom which Aeifa had put upon them held worse things, and many, in store for them.

For some days thereafter there was peace. Then a snow-whisper came, and the inland hills and the peaked summits of the isles were white. The cold grew deeper day by day; at each dawn the frost bit with a keener grip. The bitter hardships of the children of Lir were now more almost than they could bear. Nevertheless, they had a yet more dreadful trial to endure: for at mid-winter there came a tempest of whirling snow and icy wind so fierce and terrible, that for a day and a night the waves were strewn with the dead bodies of sea-mews and terns. Nothing the four swans had ever suffered was like unto what they suffered at this time.

But when Fionula had again found and sheltered her dear ones, and mothered them with her great love, she knew that whatever their sufferings they would now surely endure until the end. Had they been subject to the mortal law, they could not have survived that dreadful day, and still more awful night.

And so another year passed. The worst sorrow of the children of Lir was their great loneliness, a thing more bitter than hunger or thirst or any privation. They longed for their kind as the first white flowers of the year long for the sun. When mid-winter came again a terrible frost arose. All the north isles were like black bosses in a gleaming shield, for sheets of ice covered the seas, and each island was gripped as in an iron vice. Day by day the cold grew more terrible. On the morrow of the ninth day the four children of Lir thought that the end of their misery was at hand. The whole sea was one solid floor of ice; the isle of Carrick-na-ron, where they were, was like a black iceberg; into ice lapsed each faint failing breath that they drew with ever greater pain.

Each morning they had waked to find their feet frozen to the rock, and even the edges of their wings; and a bitter thing it was to tear themselves free, and to leave clinging to the rock the soft feathers of their breasts and the outer quills of their wings and the skin of their feet.

How fain each was of death! How gladly they would have passed away from the world of the living, though in exile, and longing with aching hearts to see once more their own dear land and the faces of those whom they loved! But their doom was on them, and they could not leave the sea of Moyle, nor could they win death.

The brave heart of Fionula knew this. She knew too what cruel pain it would give her and her brothers to swim through the salt seas with their bleeding wounds, for the brine would enter them and cause agony. Nevertheless, she led them forth towards the coast of the mainland. There they found a fjord and a haven amid the pine-clad shores, and before long their wounds were healed, and the feathers on their wings and breasts grew again.

But of what avail to tell the tale of all their years? Fionula saw that while they must ever return each night to the sea of Moyle till the three hundred years were over and done, they might fly as far and wide as they could between dawn and dusk. Mighty and strong were they now upon the wing, and fit to endure the slashing of rains, the buffetings of wild winds, the whirling briny sleet of the seas, and the cold of the high forlorn spaces of the lonely sky.

Far and wide therefore they roamed, sometimes along the foam-swept headlands of Alba, sometimes by the stormy coasts of Erin, sometimes for leagues and leagues out into the vast dim wilderness, wherein, so men said, Hy Brásil lay—Hy Brásil, the Isle of Rest, the Isle of Joy, the Isle of Youth Eternal.

One day, far in the oblivion of these selfsame years, they chanced to be flying past the mouth of the Bann, on the north coast of Erin: and Aed gave a cry of joy, and bade Fionula and his brothers look inland, for there, coming out of the south-west, was a stately cavalcade, the horsemen mounted on white steeds, beautifully apparelled, and with weapons gleaming in the sun.

How joyous it was to see their own kind again! All gave a cry of rapture, their hearts aching the while that they could not set foot upon the land, as that was forbidden to them, though they might adventure to the shore.

Long and earnestly Fionula looked, but she could not tell who the strangers were.

“Keen are your eyes, Aed,” she said; “can you discern who the men of yonder cavalcade are?”

“I know them not as men: but it seems to me that they are a troop of our own Dedannan folk, or perchance they may be of the Milesians.”

But while they were still wondering and discussing, the cavalcade drew nearer, and the men of it saw the four swans, and, recognising them as the children of Lir, made signs to Fionula and her brothers to alight on the shore.

With joy the Dedannans, for so they were, hailed the poor exiles, for whom indeed they had long been seeking along the north coasts of Erin. As for the children of Lir they could scarce speak, so great was their happiness to hear their dear familiar speech once more and to see the faces of their own people.

Again and again they were embraced by the two chiefs of the Fairy Host, as the Dedannan warriors were called—Aed the keen-witted, and Fergus the chess-player, the two sons of Bove Derg, king of the Tuatha-De-Danann.

With joy the children of Lir learned that their father was still alive, and was even then celebrating at his house at Shee Finnaha, along with Bove Derg and the chiefs of the Dedannans, the Feast of Age. As for Aed and Fergus and all their following, they wept when they heard the tale of the misery of these lost years, when Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn were the sport of the winds.

While eagerly and lovingly they were conversing, none noticed that the sun was sinking upon the low wavering line of the ultimate wave. But when at last Fionula saw this, she uttered a sad cry of warning to her brothers, and all four rose on their white wings and made ready to fly back to the bleak and desolate sea of Moyle. And sad, sadder than ever, was the heart of Fionula, for she knew that they could not be there till nightfall, and that the penalty of this would be that they should not again see the face of their kind, either on the shores of Erin or Alba, until the end of the three hundred years on the wastes of the Moyle.

As they circled in the air, she sang this song, the last of the swan-songs heard of any of the Dedannans who were in that company:

Happy our father Lir afar,
With mead, and songs of love and war:
The salt brine, and the white foam,
With these his children have their home.

In the sweet days of long ago
Soft-clad we wandered to and fro:
But now cold winds of dawn and night
Pierce deep our feathers thin and light.

The hazel mead in cups of gold
We feasted from in days of old:
The sea-weed now our food, our wine
The salt, keen, bitter, barren brine.

On soft warm couches once we pressed
While harpers lulled us to our rest:
Our beds are now where the sea raves,
Our lullaby the clash of waves.

Alas! the fair sweet days are gone
When love was ours from dawn to dawn:
Our sole companion now is pain,
Through frost and snow, through storm and rain.

Beneath my wings my brothers lie
When fierce the ice-winds hurtle by:
On either side and ’neath my breast
Lir’s sons have known no other rest.

Ah, kisses we shall no more know,
Ah, love so dear exchanged for woe,
All that is sweet for us is o’er,
Homeless for aye from shore to shore.

A great lamentation went up from the cavalcade of the Fairy Host when Fionula ended this song, and she and her brothers flew swiftly northward athwart the waves, red and wild because of the stormy setting of the sun.

Sad was the tale the Dedannans had to relate when they returned to Shee Finnaha.

Nevertheless, Bove Derg, the aged king, and white-haired Lir himself, took comfort in this, that Fionula and her brothers were still alive. Moreover, they knew that in the end the spell of Aeifa would be broken and that the exiles would be freed from their sufferings.

But often, often, they thought with tears, as the slow revolving seasons lapsed one into the other, of the children of Lir upon the desolate far seas of the Moyle.

---

Here Eilidh’s voice lapsed into silence. Then, looking no longer at Peterkin, but staring into the red heart of the peats, she sang a Gaelic song, called the Sorrow of the Grey Hairs of Lir.

Peterkin never loved Eilidh so well as when she sang; but he was sorrowful to-night when he saw that the song brought tears into her eyes.

“Eilidh,” he whispered.

“Yes, Peterkin, dear.”

“Wouldn’t you be liking to kiss Ian?”

Eilidh laughed low, a faint flush coming and going upon her face.

“For why, boykin?”

“Oh, I know that whenever you have tears in your eyes Ian can chase them away. I have seen him kiss you when you are tired.”

At this Ian Mor rose and lifted Peterkin in his arms.

“Eilidh is thinking of something sad, Peterkin; that is all. See, she is smiling now, and laughing too by the same token.” The boy tossed his curls, and with a roguish smile added:

“Ah, that is just because I said she wanted to kiss you.”

“You’re much too wise, Peterkin. But there, down with you! Now run to the door, and tell me if it is still raining.”

Peterkin never could go straight anywhere, for his progress was ever like that of a kid or lambkin, a series of jumps and little sudden runs. No sooner was he gone, than Ian turned to Eilidh, and took her in his arms.

“Sweetheart,” he whispered, “that little burst o’ sunshine is right. A kiss from your lips is the best thing to chase away the tears. But why are you sad, mochree?”

“I was thinking of the sorrow of old Lir; and how little it matters whether one live fifty years or five hundred, as these old Dedannans did. Then suddenly the thought flashed across me that some day soon we should lose Peterkin: he too will become a wild swan, and it will be we who shall hear the far-off singing of his laughing childhood.”

“Perhaps he will take his childhood with him into manhood, dear. Let him look often into your beautiful eyes, Eilidh, and the little one will learn much without knowing that he is learning. And then, too, to be near you: why, that is to be a child always deep down, and to have sunshine in the heart and mind—for have you forgotten your name, ‘Sunshine’?”

As he spoke, Ian Mor leaned and kissed her. Puzzled at the sudden radiant smile on her face, he looked round. There was Peterkin, sitting squatted on the hearth, with an impish smile in his blue eyes. He had crawled behind the hanging curtain at the door, and unseen and unheard gained the fireside.

With a joyous laugh he sprang to his feet.

“Ah, Ian, you and your rain! Is it not hearing you are? It’s on the window as if the brownies were throwing little wee stones. It was not the rain you were wanting, but only a kiss from Eilidh! Now, Eilidh, tell me true?”

“Tell you true, Blumpits. Why——”

But here Peterkin, overcome by some sudden memory suggested by the pet name which Eilidh sometimes gave him, went dancing round the room, laughing and chuckling by turns, and once and again clapping his hands in elfin glee.

“Eilidh, Eilidh,” he cried, “do tell me again that story of Blumpits and the Bunnywig.”

Ian looked puzzled.

“What’s a bunnywig, Blumpits?”

“A bunnywig—you’re not for knowing what a bunnywig is—and you, Ian Mor, too! A bunnywig is a kunak.”5

“And what did Blumpits do?”

“He got on the bunnywig, in the green fern, and rode on it into fairyland, and no one saw him go but a squirrel. But no, Eilidh, I am not wanting to hear about that now; and don’t be looking at my bed there, for I haven’t got the sleep upon me yet. Tell me the rest of the tale about Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn.”

“I wonder, now, if that’s because you really want to hear, or if it’s because you don’t want to be sent to bed?”

Peterkin had kicked aside his shoes, and taken off his socks, and was warming his feet at the fire. His body was bent nearly double, as he looked round, clutching the while his big toe in the hollow of his tiny fist.

“O Eilidh,” he said reproachfully, but with a light of such mischief in his eyes that Eilidh laughed. Then stooping, she took him on her lap, and after a few seconds, when all three looked idly and dreamily into the red fanwave in the heart of the peats, her lips moved again to the sorrowful sweet tale of the Children of Lir.

---

Year after year passed for the four swans that were the children of Lir. On that bleak and lonely sea of the Moyle they saw none of their own kind from year’s end to year’s end: only the sea-mew and the cormorant, the gannet and the tern, the slow droves of the pollack, the travelling schools of mackerel and herring, the swift seals migrating from isle to isle. With each Spring they saw the great solanders and wild swans flying northward towards the polar seas: thence, at the first days of winter, they saw them again flying southward, athirst for the thin blue wine of unfrozen seas.

There was no change save the changefulness of the seasons; the grey-black wave of winter lapsed into the grey-blue wave of spring, and out of the dark-blue wave of summer grew the grey-green wave of autumn.

Cold and hunger and weariness: these only did not vary.

But at last the long weary exile on the Sea of Moyle came to an end. One day Fionula told her brothers that on the morrow they would have to fly far westward, for the three hundred years on the sea-stream of the Moyle were over, and now they had to begin their long and mayhap still more bitter, bleak, and mournful exile on the wild western ocean beyond Erin.

“We must fly straight to the bleak headland of Irros Domnann,” she said, “and then must remain on the wild and desolate seas off the isle of Glora, the island that is farthest away from the mainland of our beloved Erin.”

Thither, accordingly, the four swans flew on the morrow. It was with joy that they left the sea of the Moyle, where they had known so much privation and misery; but little cause had they for joy, for not less bleak were the skies, not less desolate the coasts, not less wild the storm-lashed, rain-swept seas, off the lifeless, barren isle of Glora. The great waves of the shoreless western ocean beat upon it for ever, and their thunder often filled the darkness for countless leagues with a sound most dreadful to hear.

But after many years it chanced that a young man, named Ebric, the son of a Dedannan lord, came to farm a tract of land lying along the shore of Irros Domnann. This youth, who was a poet, and loved all beautiful things, soon cared more for the sweet, wonderful singing of the four swans, which often he heard, and to see their white bodies glistening in the sun, than to till his land.

One day Fionula and her brothers descried him. Flying to the shore, they called, and great was his wonder to hear the dear familiar Gaelic speech in the mouths of wild swans.

From that time he walked daily down to the extreme rocks on the shore, that he might converse with the children of Lir, and hear all they had to tell of their sad story; though he, on his part, could relate little to them of what had happened, or was happening further inland in Erin, though they heard from him with sorrow that the Milesians were now mightier than the Dedannans, and that the Fairy Host was no longer able to withstand the might of these enemies who long since had come out of the south.

“For,” he said, “it is the way of what is beautiful and wonderful; that the wonder passes and the beauty fades.”

That night he heard Fionula singing, and knew that the burden of her song was no other than the saying he had uttered:

Dim face of Beauty haunting all the world,
Fair face of Beauty all too fair to see,
Where the lost stars adown the heavens are hurled,
        There, there alone for thee
        May white peace be.

For here where all the dreams of men are whirled
Like sere torn leaves of autumn to and fro,
There is no place for thee in all the world,
        Who driftest as a star,
        Beyond, afar.

Beauty, sad face of Beauty, Mystery, Wonder,
What are these dreams to foolish babbling men —
Who cry with little noises ’neath the thunder
        Of ages ground to sand,
        To a little sand.

Ebric moved homeward through the moonlight wondering much at that song of Fionula. But because he was a poet, he understood.

From him the people of the hills, and the valleys round about Irros Domnann, heard the story of the speaking swans; and soon the wonder of it, and the whole sorrowful tale of the Children of Lir became as well known in that region as, long, long ago, to the Dedannans and Milesians on the shores of Lough Darvra, when they encamped by its shores because of the slow, sweet, fairy music of the four swans.

Then once again it chanced that the four children of Lir unwittingly transgressed their doom, and so had to leave the shores where they could converse with the people who loved them. But Ebric, to whom they had told everything, was a poet, and wrought of their story a tale so sweet and marvellous that it has lasted all these ages, and is heard to this day on the lips of peasants in the west of Erin.

From that time onward the sufferings of Fionula and her brothers were no less than they had been on the sea of the Moyle. Yet even the worst they had there known was surpassed midway in the heart of a terrible winter, a winter when cattle died in covered sheds, and men and women in their houses, and the wild creatures of the forest under their branches, and the storm-inured seabirds in the hollows of their ocean-fronting cliffs.

On that day the whole surface of the sea from Irros Domnann to Achill was frozen into one solid mass of ice. Across this a polar wind drove sheets of hail and sleet. By nightfall, Aed and Fiachra and Conn were so far spent that they despaired of any morrow; and at the last Fionula herself, who had striven to comfort them, was herself in so pitiful a misery that she could only lament with them that death was so long in coming.

But in the full horror of midnight, while they clung nigh-frozen to the rock of Glora, Fionula had a vision. It was of that God, that new faith, that great wonder and beauty which was even then coming towards Erin, though St. Patrick had not yet set foot upon its shores.

“Brothers,” she cried, “take heart. I have had a vision. Of a truth our ancient gods are but the children of a greater than they. Aed, dear Aed and Fiachra and Conn, believe now in this great and loving God, the most splendid God of the living truth: for it is He who has made all things, the pleasant, fruitful land and the wild barren sea; and it has been revealed to me that if we put our trust in Him, He will comfort us and send us help.”

“That we now do, O Fionula!” cried Aed and Fiachra and Conn.

Thereupon they fell into a deep slumber. When they awoke the sun was shining; the fierce wind no longer blew; the waves danced joyously, tossing little sheets of spray from one to another. The bitter cold was gone, and they rejoiced exceedingly.

“It is Spring!” Aed cried, with joy.

“It is the answer of God,” said Fionula gravely.

From that hour they had peace. Thenceforth they suffered no more from cold or hunger. When the savage frosts of winter, or the wild rains of autumn, came over the western sea, the four swans alighted on Innis Glora, and sang their wild, sweet, beautiful music, and then fell asleep, nestling side by side, till they awoke to warmth and joy.

So was it till the end of the three hundred years. Three hundred years on the lough of Darvra; three hundred on the sea-stream of the Moyle; three hundred on the sea of Glora, to the west of Erin. All these ages had they endured, and now their exile was at an end.

“On the morrow, dear brothers,” Fionula sang rejoicingly, “on the morrow we shall wing our way inland; for our hearts ache to see again our own country and our kindred, and the faces of Lir our father, and Bove Derg the king, and all whom we love. Great shall be the joy at Shee Finnaha when they behold us once more; but not more joyous shall their delight be than it will be for us to see the smoke rising from the fires of our people, and to see the greatness and beauty of Shee Finnaha.”

They could not sleep that night for eagerness. At dawn they rose on white wings, circling through the wide blue spaces of the air. When the yellow stream of the sun poured westward out of the mountain-ridges of Achill, they chanted a farewell song, and then stretched their wide pinions and flew homeward with beating hearts.

Sweet it was to see below them the green grass instead of the cold, running wave; and the hollows of the meadows, how much dearer were they than the troughs of the drowning billows!

When they came to the great hill above Shee Finnaha, their wings were seized with so great a trembling that scarcely could they reach into view of Lir’s high shining house.

Descending, therefore, they alit on a rock and rested awhile. A deep sadness oppressed Fionula. There was so great a silence on every rock, on every tree. Moreover, she had seen a stag stand staring inland with idle eyes, and had seen the hill-fox and the wolf prowling in the glen where as a child she had often played.

“What is the fear that is in your eyes, Fionula?” asked one of her brothers with sudden dread.

“Alas! Aed, if Lir and the Dedannans were still here, would a stag stand staring inland, where Shee Finnaha is, with heedless eyes and no hoof lifted, and nostrils idly sniffing the unfrequented wind?”

“Of a surety no, Fionula.”

“Yet that have I seen, Aed. And if in Shee Finnaha still dwelled our Dedannan folk, would the hill-fox and the wolf prowl in the Glen of the White Water, there where we were wont to play and bathe, we and all the little children?”

“Of a surety no, Fionula.”

“Yet that have I seen, O Aed and Fiachra and Conn. Come! we are rested now. Let us hasten homeward to Shee Finnaha, that we have longed for all these years, and to our father Lir, who awaiteth us.”

Onward they flew.

But just as they soared over the shoulder of Knoc-na-Shee, Fionula uttered a piercing cry.

There indeed was the valley where Lir long, long ago had made his home. But now there was not a single wreath of smoke rising to the sky, not a single cow lowed in the pastures, neither man nor woman nor child moved to and fro. Nay, there were not even any houses. All had gone. Amid the desolate place rose the gaunt, dishevelled ruins of Lir’s great dun; its halls empty and roofless, or tenanted only by the rank grass and tall companies of nettles.

“Alas!” cried Aed, “for the omen of the stag staring idly on Shee Finnaha, and for that of the hill-fox and the wolf prowling in the Glen of the White Water.”

But Fionula could speak no word, for her heart was breaking.

For long they crouched silent amid the desolation of that ruined place. Thrice three hundred years had passed since they had played in front of the house of Lir: beneath yonder ruined wooden arch they had set forth with Aeifa on that ill-fated journey.

The dusk came. Still the four children of Lir crouched silent amid the ruined desolation which was all that remained of lordly Shee Finnaha.

The wolf prowled near, but turned away the flame of his yellow eyes, for he feared those who crouched there and had the voices of the human kind. The bats and owls alone paid no heed.

When the stars glistened in the sky, and the moon rose, and on the night wind there was not the lowing of a cow or the barking of a dog, or any sound whatsoever, save from the rustling forest and the murmuring stream, Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn fell into a bitter sobbing and a long, mournful keen, that rose into the hills with plaintive echoes.

When the day broke, each told the other that they could no longer stay in Shee Finnaha. That desolation was now to them more bitter than the wilderness of the bleak seas of the Moyle. While they were still speaking thus sorrowfully, Conn descried an old man—so old and worn that his hair hung about his wrinkled face like thistledown, so white and bleached was it. He carried a small harp, but in his eyes was the look of one who saw only far into the mind and never from the mind outward.

“Who art thou, O stranger?” Conn asked.

The man looked at the swan that spoke to him in human speech, and in the sweet, familiar tongue of the Gael.

“I have heard strange things,” he muttered, “and in my madness have come to learn of the beasts. Have not the hawks and eagles of Shee Finnaha told me bitter tidings, and has not the hill-fox barked to me of the graves of dead hopes, and has not the she-wolf whined to me in the dusk of the sorrows that flit through the woods—the old ancient sorrows of the wise and the beautiful and the brave that are now no more? Why then should not a wild swan speak? Have I forgotten that, ages ago, the children of Lir were changed into swans, and that they spoke with the human tongue, and sang songs so passing sweet that life and death became as the selfsame dream? Ah! that dream of dreams: fragrant it was as the breath of Moy Mell, the honey-sweet plain of Heaven; restful as the sound of the waves beating on the shores of Tir-fa-Tonn, where the dead dwell in youth and joy; strange and wild as the noise of invisible wings over the blessed isle that is Hy Brásil in the west.”

Conn spake again:

“Art thou a Dedannan, old man?”

“A Dedannan I am, O Swan, that speakest with the tongue of man; yea, a Dedannan I am, if a sere and fallen leaf can be called a child of the green tree. Say, rather, a Dedannan I was.”

“Dost thou know aught of Bove Derg, the King of the Dedannans, or of Lir, the lord of Shee Finnaha?”

The stranger sighed, and by the veiling of his eyes Conn knew that the old harper was with the past.

“Ay,” he muttered at last, “but who can note the passage of the years when one is old and broken and sick unto death? A hundred years have trodden the red leaves again, or it may be thrice a hundred, since I chanted the death-song of Bove Derg, the King of the Dedannans; since I looked on the white face of Lir, as he lay grey and ashy among the ashy-grey thistles.”

Conn uttered a cry of sorrow, and a bitter keen of lament came from his two brothers and from Fionula.

“Then these also speak,” muttered the old harper: “almost can I persuade myself that I look on the wild swans that are the four children of Lir—Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn. Ages ago I thought they had lapsed in death. All are gone now, save only Aeifa, who is a demon of the air, and wails among the hills and in desolate places.”

All this time Fionula had been looking earnestly at the old man. Now she spoke.

“Tell me, art thou not Irbir the Harper?”

“It is Irbir the Harper I am, the chief harper of Bove Derg, that was King of the Dedannans before the Fairy Host faded away from the meadows and pastures of Erin. And if indeed ye be the children of Lir, know I am that Irbir who sang the birth-song at the birthing of ye, Fionula and Aed, and at the birthing of ye, Fiachra and Conn.”

Thereupon the old harper embraced the four swans, tears running down his face the while.

While he was yet embracing them, his wildered mind began to wander, and he talked idly of vain things.

Nevertheless, they learned from him that more than a hundred years back, and maybe thrice a hundred, the Tuatha-De-Danann had fought a last great battle with the Milesians and had been utterly defeated. They were now a dispersed and hidden people, some deathless, others living to the thousand and one years of the old-world folk, and some with a new and terrible mortality upon them. As for Bove Derg and all the Fairy Host, the wild thistle waved over their nameless graves. Lir lay beneath the grass outside his great dun of Shee Finnaha. His last words had been: “I hear the beating of wings. O wild swans, I hear the beating of thy wings.”

Thereafter Irbir the Harper moved aimlessly away, and with him passed the shadow of the greatness that was gone.

The children of Lir now spoke wearily among themselves of what they should do. At the last they decided to go back to the Isle of Glora, and there await the fulfilment of their doom.

One more night they spent at Shee Finnaha, mourning over the grey sorrow of Lir, and over the desolation of that noble place, and over the ruin of the Dedannan folk. So wild and mournful was their singing that night that the beasts of the forest congregated round the ruined dun, and from the crags of the hills thronged the cliff-hawks and the eagles. In the heart of the woods Irbir, the old harper, died, dreaming that he was in Tir-nan-Og, the Land of Youth, and was listening again to the voices of Love.

On the morrow the children of Lir flew sorrowfully away from Shee Finnaha and returned to Innis Glora. They alit at a small lake in the heart of that isle, and there began once more to sing their slow, sweet, fairy music.

So wonderful was their singing, with all its added pain and the mystery of years, that the birds of all the regions round were wont to collect daily, and gather in flocks round about the singing swans. Thus it was that the little lake came to be called the Lake of the Bird Flocks.

At sunrise these innumerable birds would disperse far and wide; some seaward, some inland, some northward to Achill, some as far south as the three rocks known as Donn’s Sea-Rest, some to Inniskea—to this day called the Isle of the Lonely Crane, for there dwells, and has dwelled since the beginning of the world, and shall dwell till the day of flame, a solitary brooding crane. But at night every bird returned to Innis Glora, to hear the slow, sweet, fairy music of the children of Lir.

In this way the years went past.

On a day of the days Fionula called her brothers to listen to her, because of a dream that she had dreamed.

“The Taillkenn6 has come at last,” she said. “I saw a strange light in the East at midnight. A star rose out of it, and travelled through the gulfs of the sky, and rested over Erin, and sank slowly over this our dear land. Then I heard a smoke of voices rising to the stars, and thence, too, came a chiming sweeter than any chants we have sung in all these thrice three hundred years.”

On the eve of that day a man came forth from the mainland in a coracle. He came to Innis Glora, and alighted there, and kneeled in a strange fashion, and supplicated some god.

It was St. Kemoc.

After nightfall the wild swans were silent, for all were heavy with the strangeness of this man, who was not like unto any Dedannan or even a Milesian, and who prayed on his knees, and supplicated a god set beyond the stars.

In the grey dawn they awoke, trembling. Trembling still, they started and ran bewilderedly to and fro, for strange and dreadful to them was the sound that they heard. It was but a little sound, and faint and afar; but it was the chiming of a bell, and in all the thrice three hundred years and more they had lived they had heard nought like it. The bell was the matin-bell of St. Kemoc, but they knew it not, nor what it meant. Aed and Fiachra and Conn ran wildly and far, but at last when the bell ceased, they returned to Fionula.

“Do you know what this sound is, this faint, fearful sound that has terrified us, dear brothers?”

“No, we have heard the faint, fearful voice, but know not what it is. Is it the voice of the strange man who has come among us, and is he a god?”

“No,” answered Fionula, with grave joy, “but it is the voice of the Christians’ bell. Soon we shall be free of our spell; soon we shall have peace. It is the bell we have dreamed of for so many years.”

All were glad at that. Kemoc had again begun to ring his matin-bell, and the four swans crouched low, listening to its strange music. When it ceased, Fionula spoke:

“Let us now sing our music.”

Therewith they sang their slow, sweet, fairy music.

Kemoc rose in his place, amazed with great wonder. At first he thought it was the voices of the angels singing in Paradise. Then suddenly it was revealed to him that it was the slow, sweet, fairy music of the children of Lir, whereat he rejoiced exceedingly, for he had fared westward in the hope to find and save Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn, of whom he had heard soon after he came to Erin with tidings of Christ and the Christian faith.

So when his prayers were done, and sunrise put a shine of gold upon the sea, Kemoc rose and went to the lake, and hailed the four white swans. And when they answered and told him who they were, he gave thanks to God.

“Come now to land,” he added, “and sojourn with me, for it is in this place that ye are destined to be freed from your enchantment.”

Filled with a great joy on hearing the words of the Christian saint, they came ashore, and went with him to where he had builded his cell against the forefront of a cave.

Three days later a skilled craftsman for whom he had sent came to Innis Glora, and wrought two slender shining chains of silver. These St. Kemoc put upon Fionula and Aed and upon Fiachra and Conn, to show that they were now bondagers to Christ, for all that they were still swans and under the doom of the spell of Aeifa.

Thereafter the time passed with joy and peace. Kemoc taught them the holy faith, and came to love them with his whole heart. As for the children of Lir they were glad with so great a gladness that they remembered no more their long misery, and even loved better to hear the hymns and litanies of St. Kemoc than the lifesweet war-chants and love-songs they had heard in their childhood from Irbir and other bards and minstrels.

But at that time7 there was a queen in Erin who above all other things desired the glory of having these marvellous singing swans as her own. In the olden days men and women were wont to hold the decrees of the gods and of fate in reverence; and more thought was taken of the inner meanings of dreams, marvels, and the strange vicissitudes of life. Has not a wise poet declared that the smaller the soul the greater the tyranny? This queen was Decca, daughter of Finghin, king of Munster, and wife of Lairgnen, the king of Connaught.

It was of these two that Aeifa, long, long ago, had spoken prophetically, but none remembered this save only Fionula, in whose mind dreams and memories floated as water-blooms on a mountain lake—the blooms that float and sink and rise as though a breath sustained or swayed them, the breath out of still, pellucid depths.

At last the desire of Decca overmastered her. She begged Lairgnen to fare westward to Kemoc, and obtain the swans from the saint and bring them to her. But this the king feared to do, nor held it a kingly act. Then Decca gave way to her anger, and left the great house of the king and vowed that she would not sleep there another night till Lairgnen brought her the singing swans.

So the woman fled southward into Munster, her father’s realm.

Lairgnen the Connaught king loved his wife to weakness. He was the slave of her dark eyes and her smiling lips and her selfish heart and her poor will: so he came to evil then, and later. For according as a man’s love is, and as he loves to strength, so shall his life be abased or uplifted.

So Lairgnen sent messengers after Decca, and sought her in the south. Thus was the prophecy fulfilled.

The woman returned, but put a bond upon the king. He was weak, and she made a sport of him as women do who are loved to weakness and not to strength: as with men also, when women love them ignobly, and not as high mate with high mate.

Thus it came about that Lairgnen gave the word to St. Kemoc that he desired the four swans to be sent to him at his royal house in Connaught. Kemoc, however, refused. He served the King of kings, not the king of Connaught.

Full of wrath, Lairgnen set out for the western coast, and at last reached Innis Glora. When he asked Kemoc if he had indeed refused to give up the swans at his command, and was told that this was so, he swore the old pagan oath by the sun and the moon and the wind, and vowed that he would not leave that place without them.

“Doom must be fulfilled, O king,” said Kemoc, “but woe unto that man by whom the evil of a day of the days is wrought.”

Lairgnen laughed, and followed the saint into the little chapel where the four swans stood before the altar, singing a sweet wonderful song that was a hymn of peace and joy. Seizing the silver chain of Fionula and Aed in one hand, and that of Fiachra and Conn in the other, he forced them to follow him.

“Do not do this thing, Lairgnen, son of Colman,” said St. Kemoc.

“And for why not?” asked the king, smiling grimly, as he neared the door of the wattle-church. “Am I not the king, and can I not do as I will in mine own lands?”

“There is another King. If thou doest a wrong against Him, thou shalt have neither the desire of thine heart nor yet go free of the penalty of lifelong sorrow and a bitter end.”

For a moment Lairgnen quailed. The angry voice of a cleric was a perilous omen in those days. Then he strode forward, dragging after him the four swans.

Suddenly a wild, strange cry resounded over the church. All stood silent, appalled. To Fionula only was it revealed that it was neither the screaming of the wind, nor the thin shrewd wail of the sea, nor the savage cry of a sea-mew—but that it was the voice of Aeifa, that lost forlorn demon of the air for whom there might be no rest now till the day of the flame of which St. Kemoc spoke.

“Come!” said Lairgnen, with a great effort.

But when he strove with the chains, lo! a strange thing happened. These fell apart, and at the same moment the great wings of the swans contracted, and the white feathers that were the beauty of their bodies shrivelled. A mist of blown feathers was about them: and when Lairgnen and Kemoc looked through this as it settled upon the ground like dust, they beheld a wonderful and a terrible thing.

For as the feathers fell away from the children of Lir, Fionula and her brothers once more regained their human shape. But now they were no longer fair and sweet and young, as they were when Aeifa put her enchantment upon them. They stood there, worn with intolerable age. Grey and ashy were their bodies, and long and sere and white their thin, blanched hair: and they were tremulous as reeds, and their wan hands were as the shaking wan leaves of the poplar when autumn is dead.

The children of Lir looked one upon the other with dim, forlorn eyes. It was a bitter thing to live so many ages only to find that their own kith and kin were as dust, and that their habitation was a wilderness, and that their very race had passed away: to see each other in human form again, but Fionula an aged ancient woman, grey as old hanging moss and wrinkled as the wave-rippled sand, and tall Aed and swift Fiachra and laughing Conn as three feeble old men, wavering as their own shadows.

When Lairgnen saw this he was overcome with dread. He uttered a strange cry, and, averting his face, fled from the little chapel, nor looked back once upon Innis Glora; and feared the following flight of his own shadow till once more he reached his great house in Connaught, over which he heard a demon of the air wailing and laughing, and knew that it was Aeifa, and that the terror of this banshee would be with him and his for ever.

As he fled, he heard the bitter execrations of St. Kemoc, but these he heeded less than the thin, inarticulate murmur of the voices of the children of Lir, like the hum of gnats in a well.

Nevertheless Kemoc himself was able to hear the whisper of Fionula. So one may hear the faint rustle of leaves in the heart of a forest where there is no wind.

“Be swift, holy one, and give us baptism, here before the altar. We have but a brief while wherein to draw breath. Great is thy sorrow at this parting, but not more great than is ours. Nevertheless the end is always in the beginning, and we are but the dry thistledown of the young sprays of green. For thee, too, O Kemoc, the vial of silence shall be broken, but not until thy hair is like the foam of the sea, and thine eyes dim as the light beneath a wave.”

Thereupon St. Kemoc led them slowly towards the altar, and bade farewell to each, for he saw that the shadow of death had covered them from the soles of the feet to the chin of the head, and was rising to the eyes.

Once more Fionula spoke.

“Farewell, dear brothers,” she said. “We are so old that we have forgotten age. Very weary should we be were it not for sweet death. We go far hence, and it may well be that we visit Hy Brásil before we see the shining of the gates of Paradise. There we shall greet our father Lir, and he shall come with us. And if he come not, we shall abide with him, for love is stronger than death.”

“Even so,” whispered Aed and Fiachra and Conn.

“And to thee, Kemoc, thou holy one,” she murmured, “I have this thing for the saying. We are of our people, and would fain be in the darkness as our ancient forgotten dead before us. It is not fitting that we lie in the earth who are of the old race, and have the blood of kings, and have lived in no dishonour, and die as we have lived.”

“Speak, Fionula.”

“When we fail utterly and perish, as we shall do within this hour that is upon us, O Kemoc, remember that as in life I so often sheltered my brothers against my breast and sides when we were swans, we must not be apart in death. Therefore bury us on this spot and in one grave.8 And in that grave let Conn stand near me at my right side, and Fiachra at my left, and let Aed my twin-brother be before my face.”

With that she sighed. So sighs a wan, drifting leaf wind-slidden over sere grass.

Then Kemoc baptized Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn: and when he had given them eternity and the company of saints, they died. They did not fall, but wavered as dry reeds, and were suddenly at one with their own shadows, and were no more.

When the saint rose from his knees, he put the tears from his face and stared into the deeps of heaven. Then he had the joy of a glad vision. Overhead he beheld four children with light silver-shining wings, their faces radiant: yet knew not whether they were little ones or were youthful with new life, for the glory dazzled him. A moment, as the foam-bells on a falling wave, they were there: then they vanished, and passed westward, and were in Hy Brásil with Lir and their own people even while Kemoc bent lamenting over the frail ancient bodies that had been the children of Lir.

So in that place a grave was digged, and Fionula was placed standing therein: and by her right side, Conn; and by her left, Fiachra; and before her face, Aed. Over this grave Kemoc raised a mound, and put a great stone upon it. Then he made a lament over the dead.

When all the people were gone, there remained only Kemoc, and a young poet and cleric named Ebric the son of Ebric, the son of Ebric of Irros Domnann. And when St. Kemoc went to his cell, and knew the dark hour, because of his sorrow, Ebric stood by the great stone at the mound and graved in Ogham the names of Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn.

The salt grasses wave out of the dust, the dust of the powder of that stone which Ebric graved with cunning hand: but out of the hearts of men who shall take the sorrowful tale of the Children of Lir, or against it shall prevail what frost of age, what breath of time?

The stone perisheth, but the winged word on the breath of the lips endureth for ever.