“I have heard strange things,” he muttered, “and in my madness have come to learn of the beasts. Have not the hawks and eagles of Shee Finnaha told me bitter tidings, and has not the hill-fox barked to me of the graves of dead hopes, and has not the she-wolf whined to me in the dusk of the sorrows that flit through the woods--the old ancient sorrows of the wise and the beautiful and the brave that are now no more? Why then should not a wild swan speak? Have I forgotten that, ages ago, the children of Lir were changed into swans, and that they spoke with the human tongue, and sang songs so passing sweet that life and death became as the selfsame dream? Ah! that dream of dreams: fragrant it was as the breath of Moy Mell, the honey-sweet plain of Heaven; restful as the sound of the waves beating on the shores of Tir-fa-Tonn, where the dead dwell in youth and joy; strange and wild as the noise of invisible wings over the blessed isle that is Hy Brásil in the west.” Conn spake again: “Art thou a Dedannan, old man?” “A Dedannan I am, O Swan, that speakest with the tongue of man; yea, a Dedannan I am, if a sere and fallen leaf can be called a child of the green tree. Say, rather, a Dedannan I was.” “Dost thou know aught of Bove Derg, the King of the Dedannans, or of Lir, the lord of Shee Finnaha?” The stranger sighed, and by the veiling of his eyes Conn knew that the old harper was with the past. “Ay,” he muttered at last, “but who can note the passage of the years when one is old and broken and sick unto death? A hundred years have trodden the red leaves again, or it may be thrice a hundred, since I chanted the death-song of Bove Derg, the King of the Dedannans; since I looked on the white face of Lir, as he lay grey and ashy among the ashy-grey thistles.” Conn uttered a cry of sorrow, and a bitter keen of lament came from his two brothers and from Fionula. “Then these also speak,” muttered the old harper: “almost can I persuade myself that I look on the wild swans that are the four children of Lir--Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn. Ages ago I thought they had lapsed in death. All are gone now, save only Aeifa, who is a demon of the air, and wails among the hills and in desolate places.” All this time Fionula had been looking earnestly at the old man. Now she spoke. “Tell me, art thou not Irbir the Harper?” “It is Irbir the Harper I am, the chief harper of Bove Derg, that was King of the Dedannans before the Fairy Host faded away from the meadows and pastures of Erin. And if indeed ye be the children of Lir, know I am that Irbir who sang the birth-song at the birthing of ye, Fionula and Aed, and at the birthing of ye, Fiachra and Conn.” Thereupon the old harper embraced the four swans, tears running down his face the while. While he was yet embracing them, his wildered mind began to wander, and he talked idly of vain things.