I lay me down to rest in vain;
For, through the livelong, sleepless night,
My little lov'd ones, pictured plain,
Stand ever there before my sight.
Finola, once my pride and joy;
Dark Aed, [adventurous] and bold;
Bright Ficra, gentle, playful boy;
And little Conn, with curls of gold;—
Struck down on Darvra's reedy shore,
By wicked Eva's magic power:
Oh, children, children, never more
My heart shall know one peaceful hour.
After this he fared southwards till he arrived at the palace, where he found Eva. And the king, Bove Derg, when Lir had told him what Eva had done, was in great wrath; for he loved those little children. And calling Eva to him he spoke to her fiercely and asked her 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].
And she, being forced to answer truly, said, "A demon of the air."
"That is the form you shall take," said Bove Derg; and as he spoke he struck Eva with a druidical magic wand, and turned her into a demon of the air. She opened her wings, and flew with a scream upwards and away through the clouds; and she is still a demon of the air, and she shall be a demon of the air till the end of time.
After this, Lir and the Dedannans came to live on the shore of the lake, to be near the swans and to speak with them. And so the swans passed their time on the waters. During the day they discoursed lovingly with their father and their friends; and at night they chanted their slow, sweet, fairy music, the most delightful that was ever heard by men; so that all who listened to it, even those who were in grief, or sickness, or pain, forgot their sorrows and their sufferings, and fell into a gentle, sweet sleep from which they awoke bright and happy.
At last the three hundred years[11] came to an end, and Finola said to her brothers:—
"Do you know, my dear brothers, that we have come to the end of our time here; and that we have only this one night to spend on Lake Darvra?"