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!
Lir then departed, and travelled south-west till he arrived at the king's palace, where he was welcomed; and Bove Derg began to reproach him, in presence of Eva, for not bringing the children.
"Alas!" said Lir; "it was not by me that the children were prevented from coming. But Eva, your own foster child, the sister of their mother, has played treachery on them; and has changed them by her sorcery into four white swans on Lake Darvra."
The king was confounded and grieved at this news; and when he looked at Eva, he knew by her countenance that what Lir had told him was true; and he began to upbraid her in a fierce and angry voice.
"The wicked deed thou hast committed," said he, "will be worse for thee than for the children of Lir; for their suffering shall come to an end, and they shall be happy at last."
Again he spoke to her more fiercely than before; and he 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."[XVIII.]
"That is the form you shall take," said Bove Derg; and as he spoke he struck her 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.
Then Bove Derg and the Dedannans assembled on the shore of the lake, and encamped there; for they wished to remain with the birds, and to listen to their music. The Milesian people[XIX.] came and formed an encampment there in like manner; for historians say that no music that was ever heard in Erin could be compared with the singing of these swans.