Our stepmother sent us here,
And misery well we know:—
In cold and hunger and fear;
Our life is a life of woe!
Another year passed away on the Sea of Moyle; and one night in January, a dreadful frost came down on the earth and sea, so that the waters were frozen into a solid floor of ice all round them. The swans remained on Carricknarone all night, and their feet and their wings were frozen to the icy surface, so that they had to strive hard to move from their places in the morning; and they left the skin of their feet, the quills of their wings, and the feathers of their breasts clinging to the rock.
"Sad is our condition this night, my beloved brothers," said Finola, "for we are forbidden to leave the Sea of Moyle; and yet we cannot bear the salt water, for when it enters our wounds, I fear we shall die of pain."
And she spoke this lay—
Our fate is mournful here to-day;
Our bodies bare and chill,
Drenched by the bitter, briny spray,
And torn on this rocky hill!
Cruel our stepmother's jealous heart
That banished us from home;
Transformed to swans by magic art,
To swim the ocean foam.
This bleak and snowy winter day,
Our bath is the ocean wide;
In thirsty summer's burning ray,
Our drink the briny tide.
And here 'mid rugged rocks we dwell,
In this tempestuous bay;
Four children bound by magic spell;—
Our fate is sad to-day!
They were, however, forced to swim out on the stream of Moyle, all wounded and torn as they were; for though the brine was sharp and bitter, they were not able to avoid it. They stayed as near the coast as they could, till after a long time the feathers of their breasts and wings grew again, and their wounds were healed.
After this they lived on for a great number of years, sometimes visiting the shores of Erin, and sometimes the headlands of Alban. But they always returned to the sea-stream of Moyle, for it was destined to be their home till the end of three hundred years.