A Book of Myths
him close to the snowy plumage of her breast, and happiness returned
to the children of Lir.
Many another tempest had they to strive with, and very cruel to them
were the snow and biting frosts of the dreary winters. One January
night there came a frost that turned even the restless sea into solid
ice, and in the morning, when the swans strove to rise from the rock
of Carricknarone, the iron frost clung to them and they left behind
them the skin of their feet, the quills of their wings, and the soft
feathers of their breasts, and when the frost had gone, the salt water
was torture for their wounds. Yet ever they sang their songs, piercing
sweet and speaking of the peace and joy to come, and many a
storm-tossed mariner by them was lulled to sleep and dreamt the happy
dreams of his childhood, nor knew who had sung him so magical a
lullaby. It was in those years that Finola sang the song which a poet
who possessed the wonderful heritage of a perfect comprehension of the
soul of the Gael has put into English words for us.
"Happy our father Lir afar,
With mead, and songs of love and war:
The salt brine, and the white foam,
With these his children have their home.
In the sweet days of long ago,
Soft-clad we wandered to and fro:
But now cold winds of dawn and night
Pierce deep our feathers thin and light.
* * * * *
Beneath my wings my brothers lie
When the fierce ice-winds hurtle by;
On either side and 'neath my breast
Lir's sons have known no other rest."
Fiona Macleod (William Sharp).
Only once during those dreary three hundred years did the children of
Lir see any of their friends. When they saw, riding down to the shore
at the mouth of the Bann on the north coast of Erin, a company in
gallant attire, with glittering arms, and mounted on white horses, the
swans hastened to meet them. And glad were their hearts that day, for
the company was led by two sons of Bodb the Red, who had searched for
the swans along the rocky coast of Erin for many a day, and who
brought them loving greetings from the good king of the Dedannans and
from their father Lir.
At length the three hundred years on the Sea of Moyle came to an end,
and the swans flew to Ivros Domnann and the Isle of Glora in the
western sea. And there they had sufferings and hardships to bear that
were even more grievous than those that they had endured on the Sea of
Moyle, and one night the snow that drifted down upon them from the ice
was scourged on by a north-west wind, and there came a moment when the
three brothers felt that they could endure no more.
But Finola said to them:
"It is the great God of truth who made both land and sea who alone can
succour us, for He alone can wholly understand the sorrows of our
hearts. Put your trust in Him, dear brothers, and He will send us
comfort and help."
Then said her brothers: "In Him we put our trust," and from that
moment the Lord of Heaven gave them His help, so that no frost, nor
snow, nor cold, nor tempest, nor any of the creatures of the deep
could work them any harm.
When the nine hundred years of their sorrowful doom had ended, the
children of Lir joyously spread their wings and flew to their father's
home at Shee Finnaha.
But the house was there no more, for Lir, their father, was dead. Only
stones, round which grew rank grass and nettles, and where no human
creature had his habitation, marked the place for which they had
longed with an aching, hungry longing, through all their weary years
of doom. Their cries were piteous as the cries of lost children as
they looked on the desolate ruins, but all night they stayed there,
and their songs were songs that might have made the very stones shed
tears.
Next day they winged their way back to Inis Glora, and there the
sweetness of their singing drew so many birds to listen that the
little lake got the name of the Lake of the Bird-Flocks. Near and far,
for long thereafter, flew the swans, all along the coast of the
Western Sea, and at the island of Iniskea they held converse with the
lonely crane that has lived there since the beginning of the world,
and which will live there until time is no more.
And while the years went by, there came to Erin one who brought glad
tidings, for the holy Patrick came to lead men out of darkness into
light. With him came Kemoc, and Kemoc made his home on Inis Glora.
At dawn one morning, the four swans were roused by the tinkle of a
little bell. It was so far away that it rang faintly, but it was like
no sound they had ever known, and the three brothers were filled with
fear and flew hither and thither, trying to discover from whence the
strange sound came. But when they returned to Finola, they found her
floating at peace on the water.
"Dost not know what sound it is?" she asked, divining their thoughts.
"We heard a faint, fearful voice," they said, "but we know not what it
is."
Then said Finola: "It is the voice of the Christian bell. Soon, now,
shall our suffering be ended, for such is the will of God."
So very happily and peacefully they listened to the ringing of the
bell, until Kemoc had said matins. Then said Finola: "Let us now sing
our music," and they praised the Lord of heaven and earth.
And when the wonderful melody of their song reached the ears of Kemoc,
he knew that none but the children of Lir could make such magic-sweet
melody. So he hastened to where they were, and when he asked them if
they were indeed the children of Lir, for whose sake he had come to
Inis Glora, they told him all their piteous tale.
Then said Kemoc, "Come then to land, and put your trust in me, for on
this island shall your enchantment come to an end." And when most
gladly they came, he caused a cunning workman to fashion two slender
silver chains; one he put between Finola and Aed, and the other
between Ficra and Conn, and so joyous were they to know again human
love, and so happy to join each day with Kemoc in praising God, that
the memory of their suffering and sorrow lost all its bitterness. Thus
in part were the words of Eva fulfilled, but there had yet to take
place the entire fulfilment of her words.
Decca, a princess of Munster, had wed Larguen, king of Connaught, and
when news came to her of the wonderful swans of Kemoc, nothing would
suffice her but that she should have them for her own. By constant
beseeching, she at length prevailed upon Larguen to send messengers to
Kemoc, demanding the swans. When the messengers returned with a stern
refusal from Kemoc, the king was angry indeed. How dared a mere cleric
refuse to gratify the whim of the queen of Larguen of Connaught! To
Inis Glora he went, posthaste, himself.
"Is it truth that ye have dared to refuse a gift of your birds to my
queen?" he asked, in wrath.
And Kemoc answered: "It is truth."
Then Larguen, in furious anger, seized hold of the silver chain that
bound Finola and Aed together, and of the chain by which Conn and
Ficra were bound, and dragged them away from the altar by which they
sat, that he might take them to his queen.
But as the king held their chains in his rude grasp, a wondrous thing
took place.
Instead of swans, there followed Larguen a very old woman,
white-haired and feeble, and three very old men, bony and wrinkled
and grey. And when Larguen beheld them, terror came upon him and he
hastened homeward, followed by the bitter denunciations of Kemoc. Then
the children of Lir, in human form at last, turned to Kemoc and
besought him to baptize them, because they knew that death was very
near.
"Thou art not more sorrowful at parting from us than we are to part
with you, dear Kemoc," they said. And Finola said, "Bury us, I pray
you, together."
"As oft in life my brothers dear
Were sooth'd by me to rest--
Ficra and Conn beneath my wings,
And Aed before my breast;
So place the two on either hand--
Close, like the love that bound me;
Place Aed as close before my face,
And twine their arms around me."
Joyce.
So Kemoc signed them in Holy Baptism with the blessed Cross, and even
as the water touched their foreheads, and while his words were in
their ears, death took them. And, as they passed, Kemoc looked up,
and, behold, four beautiful children, their faces radiant with joy,
and with white wings lined with silver, flying upwards to the clouds.
And soon they vanished from his sight and he saw them no more.
He buried them as Finola had wished, and raised a mound over them, and
carved their names on a stone.
And over it he sang a lament and prayed to the God of all love and
purity, a prayer for the pure and loving souls of those who had been
the children of Lir.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] The North Channel.
[12] Erris, in Mayo.
[13] A small island off Benmullet.
DEIRDRE
"Her beauty filled the old world of the Gael with a
sweet, wonderful, and abiding rumour. The name of
Deirdre has been as a harp to a thousand poets. In a
land of heroes and brave and beautiful women, how shall
one name survive? Yet to this day and for ever, men will
remember Deirdre...."
Fiona Macleod.
So long ago, that it was before the birth of our Lord, so says
tradition, there was born that
"Morning star of loveliness,
Unhappy Helen of a Western land,"
who is known to the Celts of Scotland as Darthool, to those of Ireland
as Deirdre. As in the story of Helen, it is not easy, or even possible
in the story of Deirdre, to disentangle the old, old facts of actual
history from the web of romantic fairy tale that time has woven about
them, yet so great is the power of Deirdre, even unto this day, that
it has been the fond task of those men and women to whom the Gael owes
so much, to preserve, and to translate for posterity, the tragic
romance of Deirdre the Beautiful and the Sons of Usna.
In many ancient manuscripts we get the story in more or less complete
form. In the Advocates' Library of Edinburgh, in the Glenmasan MS. we
get the best and the fullest version, while the oldest and the
shortest is to be found in the twelfth-century _Book of Leinster_.
But those who would revel in the old tale and have Deirdre lead them
by the hand into the enchanted realm of the romance of misty, ancient
days of our Western Isles must go for help to Fiona Macleod, to
Alexander Carmichael, to Lady Gregory, to Dr. Douglas Hyde, to W. F.
Skene, to W. B. Yeats, to J. M. Synge, and to those others who, like
true descendants of the Druids, possess the power of unlocking the
entrance gates of the Green Islands of the Blest.
Conchubar, or Conor, ruled the kingdom of the Ultonians, now Ulster,
when Deirdre was born in Erin. All the most famous warriors of his
time, heroes whose mighty deeds live on in legend, and whose title was
"The Champions of the Red Branch," he gathered round him, and all
through Erin and Alba rang the fame of the warlike Ultonians.
There came a day when Conor and his champions, gorgeous in their gala
dress of crimson tunic with brooches of inlaid gold and white-hooded
shirt embroidered in red gold, went to a feast in the house of one
called Felim. Felim was a bard, and because not only was his arm in
war strong and swift to strike, but because, in peace, his fingers
could draw the sweetest of music from his harp, he was dear to the
king. As they feasted, Conor beheld a dark shadow of horror and of
grief fall on the face of Cathbad, a Druid who had come in his train,
and saw that his aged eyes were gazing far into the Unseen. Speedily
he bade him tell him what evil thing it was that he saw, and Cathbad
turned to the childless Felim and told him that to his wife there was