Saorla Fey
When the children fail to arrive with Aoife at the palace of Bov her guilt is discovered, and Bov changes her into a 'demon of the air'. She flies forth shrieking, and is heard of no more in the tale. But, Bov and Lir seek of the swan-children, and find that they have not only human speech, but have preserved the characteristic Danaan gift of making wonderful music. From all parts of the island companies of the Danaan resort to Lake Derryvaragh to hear this wonderous music and to converse with the swans, and during that time a great peace and gentleness seemed to prevade the land. But, at last the day came for them to leave the fellowship of their kind and take up their life by the wild cliffs and every angry sea of the north coast. Here they knew the worst loneliness, cold, and storm. Forbidden to land, their feathers froze to the rocks in the winter nights, and they were often buffeted and driven apart by storms. As Fionuala sings:
Cruel to us was Aoife
Who played her magic upon us,
And drove us out on the water
Four wonderful snow-white swans.
Our bath is the frothing brine,
In bays by red rocks guarded,
For mead at our father's table,
We drink of the salt, blue sea.
Three sons and a single daughter,
In the clefts of the cold rocks dwelling,
The hard rocks, cruel to mortals
We are full of keen to-night.
Fionuala, the eldest of the four, takes the lead in all their doings, and mothers the younger children most tenderly, wrapping her plummage around them on nights of frost. At last the time comes to enter on their third, and last period of doom, and they take flight for the western shores of Mayo. Here, too, they suffer much hardship, but the Milesians have now come into the land, and a young farmer named Evric, dwelling on the shores of Erris Bay, finds out who and what the swans are, and befriends them. To him they tell their story, and through him it is suppose to have been preserved and handed down. When the final period of their suffering is at hand they resolve to fly towards the palace of their father Lir, who dwells, we are told, at the Hill of the White Field, in Armagh, to see how things have fared with him. They do so, but knowing what happened on the coming of the Milesians, they are shocked and bewildered to find nothing but green mounds and whin-bushes and nettles where once stood, and still stands, only that they cannot see it, the palace of their father. Their eyes are holden, we are to understand, because a higher destiny was in store for them than to return to the land of youth. On Erris Bay they hear for the first time the sound of a Christian bell. It comes from the chapel of a hermit who has established himself there. The swans are at first startled, then terrified by the thin, dreadful sound, but afterwards approach and make themselves known to the hermit, who instructs them in faith, and they join him in singing the offices of the church. Now it happens that a princess of Munster, Deoca (the woman of the south) became betrothed to a Connacht chief named Lairgnen, and begged him as a wedding gift to procure for her the four wonderful singing swans whose fame had come to her. He asks them of the hermit, who refuses to give them up, whereupon the man of the North seizes them violently by the silver chains with which the hermit had coupled them, and drags them off to Deoca. This is their last trial. Arrived in her presence, an awful transformation befalls them. The swans plummage falls off, and reveals, not, indeed, the radiant forms of the Danaan divinities, but four wretched, snow-haired, and miserable human beings, shrunken in the decrepitude of their vast old age. Lairgnen flies from the palace in horror, but the hermit prepares to administer baptism at once, as death is rapidly approaching them. 'Let us in one grave', says Fionuala, 'and place Con by my right hand and Fiachra at my left, and Hugh before my face, for there they were wont to be when I sheltered them many a winter night upon the seas of Moyle.' And, so it was done, and they went to heaven, but the hermit it is said, sorrowed for them til the end of his earthly days...
