last to choose another way to rid herself of them. One day she took them
to drive in her chariot:--Finola, who was eight years old, with her three
younger brothers,--Aodh, Fiacre, and little Conn, still a baby. They were
beautiful children, the legend says, with skins white and soft as swans'
feathers, and with large blue eyes and very sweet voices. Reaching a lake,
she told them that they might bathe in the clear water; but so soon as
they were in it she struck them with a fairy wand,--for she was of the
race of the Druids, who had magical power,--and she turned them into four
beautiful snow-white swans. But they still had human voices, and Finola
said to her, "This wicked deed of thine shall be punished, for the doom
that awaits thee will surely be worse than ours." Then Finola asked, "How
long shall we be in the shape of swans?" "For three hundred years," said
the woman, "on smooth Lake Darvra; then three hundred years on the sea of
Moyle" (this being the sea between Ireland and Scotland); "and then three
hundred years at Inis Glora, in the Great Western Sea" (this was a rocky
island in the Atlantic). "Until the Tailkenn (St. Patrick) shall come to
Ireland and bring the Christian faith, and until you hear the Christian
bell, you shall not be freed. Neither your power nor mine can now bring
you back to human shape; but you shall keep your human reason and your
Gaelic speech, and you shall sing music so sweet that all who hear it
shall gladly listen."

She left them, and ere long their father, King Lir, came to the shore and
heard their singing. He asked how they came to have human voices. "We are
thy four children," said Finola, "changed into swans by our stepmother's
jealousy." "Then come and live with me," said her sorrowing father. "We
are not permitted to leave the lake," she said, "or live with our people
any more. But we are allowed to dwell together and to keep our reason and
our speech, and to sing sweet music to you." Then they sang, and the king
and all his followers were at first amazed and then lulled to sleep.