“Hearken, O children of Lir,” she cried, “for I have yet one thing to say: and that out of the sorrow in my heart because of the doom I have put upon ye. Although ye are turned into wild swans, ye shall not become as the desert birds, and have no speech but the savage screams and cries of the wilderness. Ye shall keep for ever your own sweet Gaelic speech, and so be able to talk each with the other, and with any of the human kind whom ye may meet. And more than this, ye shall be able to sing the most sweet, plaintive songs, and the most wild, haunting music that ever man has heard; so that all whose ears list shall be lulled into deep sleep, or into a peace sweeter than slumber itself. Nor shall the law of the soulless brutes be upon you, but ye shall be Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn, the children of Lir.” Having said these words, Aeifa raised her arms and chanted this song: “Speed hence, speed hence, O lone white swans, Across the wind-sprent foam; The wave shall be your father now, And the wind alone shall kiss your brow, And the waste be your home. Speed hence, speed hence, O lone white swans, Your age-long quest to make; Three hundred years on Moyle’s wild breast, Three hundred years on the wilder west, Three hundred on this lake. Speed hence, speed hence, O lone white swans, And Lir shall call in vain; For all his aching heart and tears, For all the weariness of his years, Ye shall not come again. Speed hence, speed hence, O lone white swans, Till the ringing of Christ’s bell; Then at the last ye shall have rest, And Death shall take ye to his breast At the ringing of Christ’s bell.” Having sung this farewell song, Aeifa ordered the horses to be yoked again to her chariot. This done, she drove away westward, nor was there a single heart in those who accompanied her but was filled with sorrow and foreboding. When the lake was no longer visible, and the gloom of the mountains came down upon the pass which led towards the westlands where Bove Derg dwelled, a faint wild aerial singing was heard, delicate as tinkling cowbells on far hill-pastures. Before Aeifa drew near to the great dun of Bove Derg, she put each of her company under a solemn bond of silence as to what she had meant to do and not done, and as to what later she had done; and because of the lealty of the bond to a woman, and also because of the fear of each towards the druidical fairy wand that she still carried, the oath was taken by one and all. Therefore it was easy for Aeifa to mislead Bove Derg as to the reason why she had not brought the children of Lir with her. Nevertheless he doubted greatly that his foster-daughter deceived him, for he could not think that Lir his friend would so mistrust him as to refuse to let Fionula and her brothers accompany their stepmother.