d, and greeted him in the glad voices of his own
dear children. All that night he stayed beside them, and when they had
told him their piteous tale and he knew that no power could free them
till the years of their doom were accomplished, Lir's heart was like
to break with pitying love and infinite sorrow. At dawn he took a
tender leave of them and drove to the house of Bodb the Red. Terrible
were the words of Lir, and dark was his face as he told the king the
evil thing that Eva had done. And Eva, who had thought in the madness
of her jealousy that Lir would give her all his love when he was a
childless man, shrank, white and trembling, away from him when she saw
the furious hatred in his eyes. Then said the king, and his anger was
even as the anger of Lir:

"The suffering of the little children who are dear to our souls shall
come to an end at last. Thine shall be an eternal doom."

And he put her on oath to tell him "what shape of all others, on the
earth, or above the earth, or beneath the earth, she most abhorred,
and into which she most dreaded to be transformed."

"A demon of the air," answered the cowering woman.

"A demon of the air shalt thou be until time shall cease!" said her
foster-father. Thereupon he smote her with his druidical wand, and a
creature too hideous for men's eyes to look upon, gave a great scream
of anguish, and flapped its black wings as it flew away to join the
other demons of the air.

Then the king of the Dedannans and all his people went with Lir to
Lake Darvra, and listened to the honey-sweet melodies that were sung
to them by the white swans that had been the children of their hearts.
And such magic was in the music that it could lull away all sorrow and
pain, and give rest to the grief-stricken and sleep to the toil-worn
and the heavy at heart. And the Dedannans made a great encampment on
the shores of the lake that they might never be far from them. There,
too, as the centuries went by, came the Milesians, who succeeded the
Dedannans in Erin, and so for the children of Lir three hundred years
passed happily away.

Sad for them and for Lir, and for all the people of the Dedannans, was
the day when the years at Darvra were ended and the four swans said
farewell to their father and to all who were so dear to them, spread
their snowy pinions, and took flight for the stormy sea. They sang a
song of parting that made grief sit heavy on the hearts of all those
who listened, and the m