heads; that they should build houses and set
up tables in the east ends of their houses, and that they should ring
bells; and when the swans should hear the first sound of those bells
they should have their human shape again, and then they should be
happy forever.

"For three hundred years they were at Loch Derg, and then, by the
power of their enchantment, they were compelled to leave it. They flew
to the sea of Moyle, and there they stayed, through the summer's heat
and the winter's cold, for three hundred years more. Still the sister
told her brothers of the strange men who were to come to Erin and of
the bells that were to free them. But they could not be comforted. The
strange men were too long in coming.

"When the three hundred years were past they had to fly away again to
another sea. As they flew, they passed over the spot where their
father's castle had stood and where they had been happy children
together. Not a stone of the beautiful castle could they see. It had
all crumbled down, and the grass had grown over it for many a year.
They saw the fox that had its hole where their father's bright hearth
fire had been, and they saw the ditch of dirty water where their
father used to welcome kings and bards and wise men at his gate. They
kept their way through the air and saw no more; yet they had seen all
that there was to see. It gave the poor swans only a little ache at
the heart, for they were past hope now. They had suffered too much to
believe anything or to think of anything but the suffering that was
past and the more suffering that was to come.

"The end of their journey came and they swam in a new sea. Again the
sister tried to cheer her brothers, but they could not be cheered. The
strange men with the shaven heads would never come, they thought. They
had waited for them too long.

"But the hundreds of years that had passed had done more than to bring
sorrow to the poor swans. In lands far away a new faith had grown up,
not like the Druids' faith. And at last across the sea to Erin came
the holy St. Patrick. He brought monks with him, and they had shaven
heads. They went about the island and preached, and built chapels. In
the east end of each chapel they set up an altar, and they said masses
and rang bells. And they built a chapel on the island that has since
been called the Isle of Glory.

"And so, one bright morning, Fair-shoulder and her brothers were
swimming near the Isle of Glory, when, of a