Meanwhile the centuries roll over the children of Lir on the peaceful Lake Dairbhreach, not altogether without sunshine, since the people—Milesians and Tuatha de Danann alike—were wont to crowd on its shore to hear their music and watch their graceful movements. But the time came when they found themselves in “the current of Mull,” tossed on the stormy seas twixt Erin and Alba, and here they had to dree their weird with much suffering for another cycle; sometimes separated from each other in the storm and darkness; at other times almost frozen to death on Carraig-nanròn. Hapless birds! the slow moving ages bring them to the third stage, which is pretty much a repetition of their experiences in the second. For in the Western Ocean round Glora Isle they are still tormented by the restless wave and the cold and vicious winds of winter, till their three hundred years therein are accomplished. And then at last St Kemoc comes; they hear the sound of the Christian bell and their spell is broken. Thereafter the children of Lir, no longer swans, receive Christian baptism and die. For rashly attempting to take the birds prematurely away from his protection one of the MSS. asserts that St. Kemoc cursed King Larguen with righteous energy. And after their death, in the manner of the previous interments, he buried these ill-starred children all in one grave, sang their death-song, performed their funeral rites, raised their tomb, and wrote their names in Ogam. Thus ended their chequered career, which lasted well-nigh a millennium. The third Sorrow of Gaelic storydom, that of “Deirdre and the Sons of Uisneach,” does not belong, strictly speaking, to the mythological cycle; yet it is prehistoric and mythical in every other respect, though devoid of the absurd and fantastical elements so characteristic of the other two. Indeed it may have sprung, as Mr. J. F. Campbell maintains, from some Indo-European romance, the common heritage in one form or other of the Aryan family from India to Ireland. The tale is at once the oldest and most famous of the three Aideds, and must have had a wide vogue in early times, for it is mentioned in so ancient an authority as the Book of Leinster, that it was one of the _primscela_ that the bards were bound to know. Many versions of the saga exist, but chiefly in ballad form. The oldest and shortest is that in the Book of Leinster, twelfth century, with which may be classed one in the Yellow Book of Lecain, fourteenth century, and in the Egerton MS., British Museum. The best and fullest version, now published, is generally held to be that obtained from MSS. LIII. and LVI. of the Scottish collection, the former a vellum of the fifteenth century. In addition to various other documents in the Advocates’ Library, such as Nos. V. and XLVIII., which contain fragments, Monsieur H. d’Arbois de Jubainville found seventeen copies of the legend in later MSS. in London and Dublin.