e of the daughter
was Fair-shoulder, and beautiful and good children were they all. Lir
was visiting once at the castle of Bogha Derg, the King of Conacht,
and he saw the daughter of the King, and he fell in love with her and
married her.

"For a time they were happy, and then the new wife began to be jealous
of the love of her husband for his four children. It troubled her so
much that she began to lose her beauty and her health, and at last she
took to her bed and did not leave it for a year. And after that time
there came a great Druid to visit her. You know who and what the
Druids were, I think. They were the priests of the old religion of
Ireland, before St. Patrick came and made the people Christians. They
were powerful in magic; they could bring storms and could drive them
away; they could foretell the future; they could work powerful
enchantments on people and beasts, and trees and stones, and they
could do many other marvellous things.

"This Druid talked with the wife of Lir for a long time alone. He made
her tell him all that troubled her, and then he told her what she
could do to be rid of her husband's children. He gave her a magic wand
and went on his way.

"Then she rose from her bed and took the four children with her in her
chariot and set out for her father's castle. On the way she ordered
the driver of the chariot to kill the children, but he refused. Then
they passed near a lake, and the step-mother told the children to go
into the water and bathe. But Fair-shoulder believed that she meant
them some harm, and she refused to go, and begged her brothers not to
go. So the step-mother called her men, and she and they forced the
children out of the chariot and pushed them into the water. Then she
touched each of them on the head with the Druid's wand, and they were
changed into four beautiful white swans.

"After she had done that, she went on to her father's castle. When her
father had welcomed her, he said, 'Where are your husband's children?'

"'They are at home,' she answered, 'in their father's castle.'

"'And are they well?'

"'They are well.'

"Now the King himself was a Druid, and more powerful than the one who
had given his daughter the wand. More than that, he was a good man,
and the other was a wicked one. He did not believe what his daughter
told him about the children, and so he put her into a magic sleep.
When she was asleep he said to her, 'Where are your husband's
children?'