It was at the edge of winter when Fionula and her brothers reached the wild bleak seas of the Moyle.
At first there was no too bitter cold or too fierce tempestuousness to make their evil lot still more hard to bear; but sad indeed were their hearts as day after day they saw nothing but the same grey skies, the same grey wastes and dark sullen waves, the same bleak, rocky coasts inhabited only by the cormorant and the sea-mew. Never to see a familiar face, never to hear a familiar voice: to dwell from morning dusk till evening dark in loneliness and sorrow—that, indeed, was a hard fate upon the four children of Lir. From hunger and cold, too, they suffered much. No longer could they be cheered as they were on Lough Darvra, and often and often they lamented that their doom could not have permitted them to remain as swans indeed, but as swans on that now dear and home-sweet inland sea of Darvra.
Day after day passed, but while their misery and want did not grow less they were not yet tortured by wintry storms and bitter frosts.
But one forlorn afternoon a terrible congregation of clouds, black and heavy and flanked with livid gleams, appeared above the horizon and slowly invaded the whole west, and then all the sky northward and all southward.
Fionula saw that a great tempest was nigh, so she called Aed, and Fiachra, and Conn, to come to her side.
“Dear brothers,” she exclaimed, “the storm that will soon be upon us will be worse than any we have yet known. Hardly can we hope not to be driven far apart. Let us agree, therefore, to meet somewhere, if so be that we are not utterly destroyed. For though Aeifa, our cruel stepmother, doomed us to these long ages of suffering, it may well be that even her potent spell is not strong enough against death: and death may come to us through famine, or cold, or in the drowning wave.”
At first the brothers could answer nothing. Then Aed spoke. “Thou art wise, dear Fionula. Let us, then, fix upon the rocky isle of Carrick-na-ron, as that place is well known to each of us, and can be descried from a great way off.”
Thus it was that Carrick-na-ron was made their place of meeting, if so be that in the blind fury and confusion of the tempest they should be driven the one from the other.
This was well: for that night, with the darkening of the night into a hollow of starless blackness, a terrible tempest swept over the seas, and lashed them into foam and into vast heaving, rolling, swaying billows. Amid the noise of the waves, and behind the screaming of the wind, the four weary rain-drenched bewildered swans could hear the crashing of the thunder and see the wild fitful blue glare of savage lightnings.
Before midnight they were whirled this way and that by the fierce paws of the gale. Soon they were separated, and with despairing cries, each swept solitary through the night. In the heart of each of the children of Lir there was little hope of any morrow. All nearly died of weariness and despair. Nevertheless dawn broke at last, and with the first coming of light the tempest passed away.