Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic | Page 7

for the doom that awaits thee will surely be
worse than ours." Then Finola asked, "How long shall we be in the
shape of swans?" "For three hundred years," said the woman, "on
smooth Lake Darvra; then three hundred years on the sea of Moyle"
(this being the sea between Ireland and Scotland); "and then three
hundred years at Inis Glora, in the Great Western Sea" (this was a
rocky island in the Atlantic). "Until the Tailkenn (St. Patrick) shall
come to Ireland and bring the Christian faith, and until you hear the
Christian bell, you shall not be freed. Neither your power nor mine can
now bring you back to human shape; but you shall keep your human
reason and your Gaelic speech, and you shall sing music so sweet that
all who hear it shall gladly listen."
She left them, and ere long their father, King Lir, came to the shore and
heard their singing. He asked how they came to have human voices.
"We are thy four children," said Finola, "changed into swans by our
stepmother's jealousy." "Then come and live with me," said her
sorrowing father. "We are not permitted to leave the lake," she said, "or
live with our people any more. But we are allowed to dwell together
and to keep our reason and our speech, and to sing sweet music to you."
Then they sang, and the king and all his followers were at first amazed
and then lulled to sleep.
Then King Lir returned and met the cruel stepmother at her father's
palace. When her father, King Bove, was told what she had done, he
was hot with anger. "This wicked deed," he said, "shall bring severer
punishment on thee than on the innocent children, for their suffering

shall end, but thine never shall." Then King Bove asked her what form
of existence would be most terrible to her. She replied, "That of a
demon of the air." "Be it so," said her father, who had also Druidical
power. He struck her with his wand, and she became a bat, and flew
away with a scream, and the legend says, "She is still a demon of the
air and shall be a demon of the air until the end of time."
After this, the people of all the races that were in Erin used to come and
encamp by the lake and listen to the swans. The happy were made
happier by the song, and those who were in grief or illness or pain
forgot their sorrows and were lulled to rest. There was peace in all that
region, while war and tumult filled other lands. Vast changes took
place in three centuries--towers and castles rose and fell, villages were
built and destroyed, generations were born and died;--and still the
swan-children lived and sang, until at the end of three hundred years
they flew away, as was decreed, to the stormy sea of Moyle; and from
that time it was made a law that no one should kill a swan in Erin.
Beside the sea of Moyle they found no longer the peaceful and wooded
shores they had known, but only steep and rocky coasts and a wild,
wild sea. There came a great storm one night, and the swans knew that
they could not keep together, so they resolved that if separated they
would meet at a rock called Carricknarone. Finola reached there first,
and took her brothers under her wings, all wet, shivering, and
exhausted. Many such nights followed, and in one terrible winter storm,
when they nestled together on Carricknarone, the water froze into solid
ice around them, and their feet and wings were so frozen to the rock
that when they moved they left the skin of their feet, the quills of their
wings, and the feathers of their breasts clinging there. When the ice
melted, and they swam out into the sea, their bodies smarted with pain
until the feathers grew once more.
One day they saw a glittering troop of horsemen approaching along the
shore and knew that they were their own kindred, though from far
generations back, the Dedannen or Fairy Host. They greeted each other
with joy, for the Fairy Host had been sent to seek for the swans; and on
returning to their chiefs they narrated what had passed, and the chiefs
said, "We cannot help them, but we are glad they are living; and we
know that at last the enchantment will be broken and that they will be
freed from their sorrows." So passed their lives until Finola sang, one

day, "The Second Woe has passed--the second period of three hundred
years," when they flew out on the broad ocean, as was decreed, and
went to the island of Inis Glora. There they