Part 4

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.