"If Eugene were with us now, our condition would be tolerable."
Not long after she saw Eugene coming towards her, with a drooping head, and wings hanging to the ground, and she welcomed him, and put him under the feathers of her breast. Immediately after she saw Fiacra approaching, and she then removed Cornu from beneath her right wing and placed him under her left, and put Fiacra beneath her right wing, where Cornu had been before. She then settled her feathers about them, and said:—
"Severe, my dear brothers, as you have found the last night, you must yet see many more as bad."
The children of Lir continued for a long time in the same condition on the Sruih na Maoile, until one night they suffered so much from the cold and wind and snow, that nothing they had hitherto felt was comparable to it; which made Fingula utter the following words:—
Hard is our life and sharp with ill,
My brethren dear;
The snow so thick, the wind so chill,
The night so drear.
We strive to keep
Sad concert in our songs of pain,