Old Celtic Romances. Anonymous

Four snowy swans like children speaking!

      Come, brothers dear, approach the coast,

       To welcome Lir's mysterious host.

       Oh, woful welcome! woful day,

       That never brings a bright to-morrow!

       Unhappy father, doomed for aye

       To mourn our fate in hopeless sorrow!

      When Lir came to the shore, he heard the birds speaking, and, wondering greatly, he asked them how it came to pass that they had human voices.

      "Know, O Lir," said Finola, "that we are thy four children, who have been changed into swans and ruined by the witchcraft of our stepmother, our own mother's sister, Eva, through her baleful jealousy."

      When Lir and his people heard this, they uttered three long mournful cries of grief and lamentation.

      After a time, their father asked them, "Is it possible to restore you to your own shapes?"

      "It is not possible," replied Finola; "no man has the power to release us until Largnen from the north and Decca from the south are united. Three hundred years we shall be on Lake Darvra; three hundred years on the sea-stream of Moyle; three hundred years on the Sea of Glora in the west. And we shall not regain our human shape till the Taillkenn come with his pure faith into Erin, and until we hear the voice of the Christian bell."

      And again the people raised three great cries of sorrow.

      "As you have your speech and your reason," said Lir, "come now to land, and ye shall live at home, conversing with me and my people."

      "We are not permitted to leave the waters of the lake, and we cannot live with our people any more. But the wicked Eva has allowed us to retain our human reason, and our own Gaelic speech; and we have also the power to chant plaintive, fairy music, so sweet that those who listen to us would never desire any other happiness. Remain with us to-night, and we will chant our music for you."

      Lir and his people remained on the shore of the lake; and the swans sang their slow, fairy music, which was so sweet and sad, that the people, as they listened, fell into a calm, gentle sleep.

      At the glimmer of dawn next morning, Lir arose, and he bade farewell to his children for a while, to seek out Eva.

      The time has come for me to part:—

       No more, alas! my children dear,

       Your rosy smiles shall glad my heart,

       Or light the gloomy home of Lir.

      Dark was the day when first I brought

       This Eva in my home to dwell!

       Hard was the woman's heart that wrought

       This cruel and malignant spell!

      I lay me down to rest in vain;

       For, through the livelong, sleepless night,

       My little lov'd ones, pictured plain,

      Stand ever there before my sight.

      Finola, once my pride and joy;

       Dark Aed, adventurous and bold;

       Bright Ficra, gentle, playful boy;

       And little Conn, with curls of gold;—

      Struck down on Darvra's reedy shore,

       By wicked Eva's magic power:

       Oh, children, children, never more

       My heart shall know one peaceful hour!

      Lir then departed, and travelled south-west till he arrived at the king's palace, where he was welcomed; and Bove Derg began to reproach him, in presence of Eva, for not bringing the children.

      "Alas!" said Lir; "it was not by me that the children were prevented from coming. But Eva, your own foster child, the sister of their mother, has played treachery on them; and has changed them by her sorcery into four white swans on Lake Darvra."

      The king was confounded and grieved at this news; and when he looked at Eva, he knew by her countenance that what Lir had told him was true; and he began to upbraid her in a fierce and angry voice.

      "The wicked deed thou hast committed," said he, "will be worse for thee than for the children of Lir; for their suffering shall come to an end, and they shall be happy at last."

      Again he spoke to her more fiercely than before; and he asked her what shape of all others, on the earth, or above the earth, or beneath the earth, she most abhorred, and into which she most dreaded to be transformed.

      And she, being forced to answer truly, said, "A demon of the air."[XVIII.]

      "That is the form you shall take," said Bove Derg; and as he spoke he struck her with a druidical magic wand, and turned her into a demon of the air. She opened her wings, and flew with a scream upwards and away through the clouds; and she is still a demon of the air, and she shall be a demon of the air till the end of time.

      Then Bove Derg and the Dedannans assembled on the shore of the lake, and encamped there; for they wished to remain with the birds, and to listen to their music. The Milesian people[XIX.] came and formed an encampment there in like manner; for historians say that no music that was ever heard in Erin could be compared with the singing of these swans.

      And so the swans passed their time. During the day they conversed with the men of Erin, both Dedannans and Milesians, and discoursed lovingly with their friends and fellow nurselings; and at night they chanted their slow, sweet, fairy music, the most delightful that was ever heard by men; so that all who listened to it, even those who were in grief, or sickness, or pain, forgot their sorrows and their sufferings, and fell into a gentle, sweet sleep, from which they awoke bright and happy.

      So they continued, the Dedannans and the Milesians, in their encampments, and the swans on the lake, for three hundred years.[XX.] And at the end of that time, Finola said to her brothers—

      "Do you know, my dear brothers, that we have come to the end of our time here; and that we have only this one night to spend on Lake Darvra?"

      When the three sons of Lir heard this, they were in great distress and sorrow; for they were almost as happy on Lake Darvra, surrounded by their friends, and conversing with them day by day, as if they had been in their father's house in their own natural shapes; whereas they should now live on the gloomy and tempestuous Sea of Moyle, far away from all human society.

      Early next morning, they came to the margin of the lake, to speak to their Father and their friends for the last time, and to bid them farewell; and Finola chanted this lay—

      I.

      Farewell, farewell, our father dear!

       The last sad hour has come:

       Farewell, Bove Derg! farewell to all,

       Till the dreadful day of doom![XXI.] We go from friends and scenes beloved, To a home of grief and pain; And that day of woe Shall come and go,

      Before we meet again!

      II.

      We live for ages on stormy Moyle,

       In loneliness and fear;

       The kindly words of loving friends

       We never more shall hear.

       Four joyous children long ago;

       Four snow-white swans to-day;

       And on Moyle's wild sea

       Our robe shall be

       The cold and briny spray.

      III.

      Far down on the misty stream of time,

       When three hundred years are o'er,

       Three hundred more in storm and cold,

       By Glora's desolate shore;

       Till Decca