im enter; none knew how he had come. And then
it was but putting his spear in his left hand for him, and
putting his right arm about the waist of Etain, and rising
through the air with her, and vanishing through the roof. And
when the men of Ireland rushed out from the hall, they saw two
swans circling above Tara and away, their long white necks yoked
together with a yoke of moon-bright silver.

It was a long time the Gods were ruling in Ireland before the
Milesians came. King after king reigned over them; and there
are stories on stories, a rich literature for another nation,
about the time of these Danaan Gods alone. One of them was Lir,
the Boundless Deep. He had four children by his first wife;
when she died, he married her sister, Aoife by name. Aoife was
jealous of the love he had for his children, and was for killing
them. But when it came to doing it, "her womanhood overcame
her," and instead she put swanhood on the four of them, and the
doom that swans they should be from that out for nine hundred
years: three hundred on Lake Derryvaragh in West Meath, three
hundred on the Straits of Moyle between Ireland and Scotland,
three hundred on the Atlantic by Erris and Innishglory. After
that the enchantment would end.

For that, Bov Derg, one of the Gods, changed her into a demon of
the air, and she flew away shrieking, and was heard of no more.
But there was no taking the fate from the swan-children; and the
Danaans sought them on their lake, and found they had human
speech left to them, and the gift of wonderful Danaan music.
From all parts they came to the lake to talk with them and to
hear them singing; and that way it was for three hundred years.
Then they must depart, Fionuala and her three brothers, the
swan-children, and wing their way to the northern sea, and be among
the wild cliffs and the foam; and the worst of loneliness and
cold and storm was the best fate there was for them. Their
feathers froze to the rocks on the winter nights; but they
filled the drear chasms of the tempest with their Danaan singing.
It was Fionuala wrapped her plumage about her brothers, to keep
them from the cold; she was their leader, heartening them. And
if it was bad for them on the Straits of Moyle, it was worse on
the Atlantic; three hundred years they were there, and bitter
sorrow the fate on them.

When their time to be freed was near, they were for flying to the
palace of Lir their father, at the hill of th