Celts -- Folklore; Fairy tales; Fairy tales -- Great Britain; Folklore -- Great Britain; Tales -- Great Britain
Then Lir and his people raised their shouts of grief, crying, and
lamentation, and they stayed by the shore of the lake listening to the
wild music of the swans until the swans flew away, and King Lir went on
to the Hall of Dearg the king. He told Dearg the king what Oifa had done
to his children. And Dearg put his power upon Oifa and bade her say
what shape on earth she would think the worst of all. She said it would
be in the form of an air-demon. "It is into that form I shall put you,"
said Dearg the king, and he struck her with a Druid's wand of spells and
wizardry and put her into the form of an air-demon. And she flew away at
once, and she is still an air-demon, and shall be so for ever.
But the children of Lir continued to delight the Milesian clans with the
very sweet fairy music of their songs, so that no delight was ever heard
in Erin to compare with their music until the time came appointed for
the leaving the Lake of the Red Eye.
Then Fingula sang this parting lay:
"Farewell to thee, Dearg the king,
Master of all Druid's lore!
Farewell to thee, our father dear,
Lir of the Hill of the White Field!
"We go to pass the appointed time
Away and apart from the haunts of men
In the current of the Moyle,
Our garb shall be bitter and briny,
"Until Deoch come to Lairgnen.
So come, ye brothers of once ruddy cheeks;
Let us depart from this Lake of the Red Eye,
Let us separate in sorrow from the tribe that has loved us."
And after they took to flight, flying highly, lightly, aerially till
they reached the Moyle, between Erin and Albain.
The men of Erin were grieved at their leaving, and it was proclaimed
throughout Erin that henceforth no swan should be killed. Then they
stayed all solitary, all alone, filled with cold and grief and regret,
until a thick tempest came upon them and Fingula said: "Brothers, let
us appoint a place to meet again if the power of the winds separate us."
And they said: "Let us appoint to meet, O sister, at the Rock of the
Seals." Then the waves rose up and the thunder roared, the lightnings
flashed, the sweeping tempest passed over the sea, so that the children
of Lir were scattered from each other over the great sea. There came,
however, a placid calm after the great tempest and Fingula found herself
alone, and she said this lay:
"Woe upon me that I am alive!
My wings are frozen to my sides.
O beloved three, O beloved three,
Who hid under the shelter of my feathers,
Until the dead come back to the living
I and the three shall never meet again!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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