Few stories delighted him more than the wild folk-lore tales which he heard from the shepherds and fishermen, or than those which he was told on Iona. It was to that island he was taken when he was still a child, at a time when the shadow of death darkened his young life. But there, staying with Ian Mor and with Eilidh, his wife, he lived the happiest months of his early years, and came closer to the beauty of the past and to the beauty of the present than ever before or after. It was on Iona that he first heard the “Three Sorrows of Story-Telling,” though that of Nathos and Darthool--or of “The Sons of Usna,” as it is generally called--was rather overheard by him as Ian related it to Eilidh, than told to him direct. Throughout the first months of his stay in Iona, Peterkin was told something daily by Ian Mor, so that, child as he was, he became familiar with strange names and peoples of the past, as well as with all the wonders of the living world. True, there was thus in his mind a jumble of the past and the present, and Columba was more real to him than McCailin Mor himself, and Finn and Cuchulain, Ossian and Oscar and Dermid as vivid and actual as any fisherman of Iona. When he was old enough to follow aright, Ian Mor told him, anew and in his own way, the three famous tales which follow. The Tale of the Four White Swans “The cold and cruel fate that overtook The children of the great De Danann, Lir, Is of the Sorrow-stories of our isle. This sorrow-tale indeed is old and young; Old, for so many hundred years have gone Since last beneath the midnight shimmering star Was heard the music of the birds of snow: Young, for amid the bright-eyed tuneful Gael The sorrows of the snowy-breasted four Are told again to-day, and shall be told Long as the children of Milesius last To people Banba’s hills and pleasant vales.” _The Three Sorrows of Story-Telling_: “The Children of Lir,” _trs. by Dr. Douglas Hyde_. [Illustration: As she touched Fionula, Lir’s fair young daughter became a beautiful snow-white swan. _To face p. 33._] ] The Tale of the Four White Swans The story that I will tell you now is one of the most famous among all the peoples of the Gael. It is called sometimes “The Tale of the Four White Swans,” sometimes “The Fate of the Children of Lir,” sometimes simply “Fionula,”[1] because of the beauty and tenderness of Lir’s daughter.