Celts -- Folklore; Fairy tales; Fairy tales -- Great Britain; Folklore -- Great Britain; Tales -- Great Britain
And after this there came to them twins, a son and a daughter, and they
gave them for names Fingula and Aod. And two more sons came to them,
Fiachra and Conn. When they came Ove died, and Lir mourned bitterly for
her, and but for his great love for his children he would have died of
his grief. And Dearg the king grieved for Lir and sent to him and said:
"We grieve for Ove for thy sake; but, that our friendship may not be
rent asunder, I will give unto thee her sister, Oifa, for a wife." So
Lir agreed, and they were united, and he took her with him to his own
house. And at first Oifa felt affection and honour for the children of
Lir and her sister, and indeed every one who saw the four children could
not help giving them the love of his soul. Lir doted upon the children,
and they always slept in beds in front of their father, who used to rise
at early dawn every morning and lie down among his children. But
thereupon the dart of jealousy passed into Oifa on account of this and
she came to regard the children with hatred and enmity. One day her
chariot was yoked for her and she took with her the four children of Lir
in it. Fingula was not willing to go with her on the journey, for she
had dreamed a dream in the night warning her against Oifa: but she was
not to avoid her fate. And when the chariot came to the Lake of the
Oaks, Oifa said to the people: "Kill the four children of Lir and I will
give you your own reward of every kind in the world." But they refused
and told her it was an evil thought she had. Then she would have raised
a sword herself to kill and destroy the children, but her own womanhood
and her weakness prevented her; so she drove the children of Lir into
the lake to bathe, and they did as Oifa told them. As soon as they were
upon the lake she struck them with a Druid's wand of spells and wizardry
and put them into the forms of four beautiful, perfectly white swans,
and she sang this song over them:
"Out with you upon the wild waves, children of the king!
Henceforth your cries shall be with the flocks of birds."
And Fingula answered:
"Thou witch! we know thee by thy right name!
Thou mayest drive us from wave to wave,
But sometimes we shall rest on the headlands;
We shall receive relief, but thou punishment.
Though our bodies may be upon the lake,
Our minds at least shall fly homewards."
And again she spoke: "Assign an end for the ruin and woe which thou hast
brought upon us."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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