Then King Lir returned and met the cruel stepmother at her father's
palace. When her father, King Bove, was told what she had done, he was hot
with anger. "This wicked deed," he said, "shall bring severer punishment
on thee than on the innocent children, for their suffering shall end, but
thine never shall." Then King Bove asked her what form of existence would
be most terrible to her. She replied, "That of a demon of the air." "Be it
so," said her father, who had also Druidical power. He struck her with his
wand, and she became a bat, and flew away with a scream, and the legend
says, "She is still a demon of the air and shall be a demon of the air
until the end of time."

After this, the people of all the races that were in Erin used to come
and encamp by the lake and listen to the swans. The happy were made
happier by the song, and those who were in grief or illness or pain forgot
their sorrows and were lulled to rest. There was peace in all that region,
while war and tumult filled other lands. Vast changes took place in three
centuries--towers and castles rose and fell, villages were built and
destroyed, generations were born and died;--and still the swan-children
lived and sang, until at the end of three hundred years they flew away, as
was decreed, to the stormy sea of Moyle; and from that time it was made a
law that no one should kill a swan in Erin.

Beside the sea of Moyle they found no longer the peaceful and wooded
shores they had known, but only steep and rocky coasts and a wild, wild
sea. There came a great storm one night, and the swans knew that they
could not keep together, so they resolved that if separated they would
meet at a rock called Carricknarone. Finola reached there first, and took
her brothers under her wings, all wet, shivering, and exhausted. Many such
nights followed, and in one terrible winter storm, when they nestled