Part 3

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.