As she touched Fionula, Lir’s fair young daughter became a beautiful snow-white swan.
To face p. 33.]
The Tale of the Four
White Swans
The story that I will tell you now is one of the most famous among all the peoples of the Gael. It is called sometimes “The Tale of the Four White Swans,” sometimes “The Fate of the Children of Lir,” sometimes simply “Fionula,”[1] because of the beauty and tenderness of Lir’s daughter.
The tale is of the old far-off days. It was old when Ossian was a youth, and Fionn heard it as a child from the lips of grey-beards. Often I have spoken to you, Peterkin, of the Danann folk, the Tuatha-De-Danann who lived in the lands of our race before the foreign peoples came and drove the ancient dwellers in Ireland and Scotland to the hills and remote places. When men allude to them now in this late day, they speak of the Dedannans (as they are often called) as the Hidden Folk, the Quiet People, the Hill Folk, and even as the Fairies. It is natural, therefore, that years are as dust in the chronicles of this lost race. They live for hundreds of years where we live for ten; and so it is that the foam of time is white against the brief wave of our life, when against the mighty and long reach of theirs it is but flying spray.
You have heard Eilidh singing the song of the Four White Swans. It is a music that hundreds of tired ears have heard. It is so sweet, Peterkin, that old men grow young, and old women are girls again, and weary hearts ache no more, and dreams and hopes become real, and peace puts out her white healing hand.
“Have you heard that singing, Ian?”