Part 5

“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 Taillkenn[6] 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 time[7] 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.

The Fate of the Sons of Turenn

The Fate of the Sons of Turenn

I will tell you now the old heroic saga of the Fate of the Sons of Turenn: how they paid the great eric laid upon them by Lu the Long-Handed, called the Ildanna because of his great wisdom in all magic craft and Dedannan lore; and how at the last their dauntless bravery was as sand before the wind, as mist before the sun, as dew upon the grass.

It is one of the most ancient of tales. Brian, Ur, and Urba, the sons of Turenn, did their great wrong upon Kian, the father of Lu of the Long Hand, and paid their unheard-of and heroic eric, when Bove Derg, the last king of the Dedannans, was still a youth--and that was long before the Children of Lir were changed into four white swans.

No Milesian had been seen in Erin in those days. Nevertheless the power of the Dedannans was already broken, though they were still foremost in green Banba, as the bards loved to call Erin, after a great queen who had reigned there, when the Fairy Host was supreme: for the fierce Fomorian pirates of the north had descended upon them again and again like a devastating plague, and at last their High King, the King of Lochlin, Balor of the Evil Eye, had subdued them into bondage.

Year by year, and that for the fourth part of a year, Balor sent his emissaries to collect tribute. The men were of the greatest and fiercest of the black Fomorians, so called because they were black-haired and black-bearded, with fells as coarse and thick as those of wild boars. These men were dreaded by the Dedannans, for they appeared to be beyond all reach of magic spells, and to have more terrible arms and an invincible power in warfare.

At that time Nuadh of the Silver Hand was High King of Erin. He was the most prudent of all the Dedannan kings, but there were many of the wisest druids and bards even in his own day who lamented that he was over-prudent, and that it would be wiser to risk all in order to regain honour and freedom than to lose all for the sake of an inglorious peace. Nevertheless, so great was the love of life among the people at large, and so keen was their desire to be left at peace by the Fomorians, that Nuadh of the Silver Hand put aside his kinglihood, and agreed to pay both tribute and homage.

The yearly tax laid by Balor of the Evil Eye upon Nuadh of the Silver Hand and all the Dedannan folk, was this: a tax separately upon querns, kneading-troughs, and baking-flags, the three things which every Dedannan had to use. Besides this, there was a tax of one gold ounce for every man and woman of the Tuatha-De-Danann. Every year the people had to assemble at the Hill of Tara, where the High King had his palace, and there submit their tribute with many obeisances to the dark, scowling emissaries of Balor of the Evil Eye.

In one year of the years this happened as before. But after Nuadh of the Silver Hand and all his nobles and druids and all the Dedannans had made humble obeisance before the Fomorians, and while the tribute was being put together, a strange sight was descried.

Coming from the east was a company of lordly men, splendidly arrayed in white with gleaming helmets and shields, and riding tall white horses. These were headed by a youthful champion of so great a stature and so warlike a mien, that all men knew he could be none other than Lu the Long-Handed, son of Kian the Noble. All the northlands and eastlands of Erin were aware of the rumour of his great valour and worth, and there was at that day no champion so feared between the two seas.

Lu, son of Kian, was also of the Dedannans, but he was of the older and rarer branch, and he and his claimed that the Fairy Host, of which they formed the chief ornament, rose or fell by their support. Among the splendid company were the sons of Manannan, son of Lir, the lord of the sea, and other chieftains and brave knights. Yet, as they approached, it was Lu of the Long Hand who held all eyes. Upon his head was a golden helmet, wherefrom gleamed two great shining stones--the eyes of strange gods they seemed to the people. His body was covered with shining armour that was no other than the famous coat of armour of Manannan, through which no weapon might pierce; and by his side hung the terrible sword, the “Answerer,” which had but one answer for every one against whom it was raised--death. The horse, too, that Lu rode was the far-famed stallion of Manannan, so swift that the March wind could not overtake him, nor could water, air, or land offer any obstacles to his progress.