The haunting music rang clearer, and as the last words died
away, four snow-white swans glided from behind the sedges, and with a wild
flap of wings flew toward the eastern shore. There, stricken with wonder,
stood Lir.
'Know, O Lir,' said Finola, 'that we are thy children, changed by the
wicked magic of our step-mother into four white swans.' When Lir and the
Dedannan people heard these words, they wept aloud.
Still spake the swan-maiden. 'Three hundred years must we float on this
lone lake, three hundred years shall we be storm-tossed on the waters
between Erin and Alba, and three hundred years on the wild Western Sea.
Not until Decca be the Queen of Largnen, not until the good Saint come to
Erin and the chime of the Christ-bell be heard in the land, not until then
shall we be saved from our doom.'
Then great cries of sorrow went up from the Dedannans, and again Lir
sobbed aloud. But at the last silence fell upon his grief, and Finola told
how she and her brothers would keep for ever their own sweet Gaelic
speech, how they would sing songs so haunting that their music would bring
peace to the souls of all who heard. She told, too, how, beneath their
snowy plumage, the human hearts of Finola, Aed, Fiacra, and Conn should
still beat--the hearts of the children of Lir. 'Stay with us to-night by
the lone lake,' she ended, 'and our music will steal to you across its
moonlit waters and lull you into peaceful slumber.
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