Again and again they were embraced by the two chiefs of the Fairy Host, as the Dedannan warriors were called—Aed the keen-witted, and Fergus the chess-player, the two sons of Bove Derg, king of the Tuatha-De-Danann.
With joy the children of Lir learned that their father was still alive, and was even then celebrating at his house at Shee Finnaha, along with Bove Derg and the chiefs of the Dedannans, the Feast of Age. As for Aed and Fergus and all their following, they wept when they heard the tale of the misery of these lost years, when Fionula and Aed and Fiachra and Conn were the sport of the winds.
While eagerly and lovingly they were conversing, none noticed that the sun was sinking upon the low wavering line of the ultimate wave. But when at last Fionula saw this, she uttered a sad cry of warning to her brothers, and all four rose on their white wings and made ready to fly back to the bleak and desolate sea of Moyle. And sad, sadder than ever, was the heart of Fionula, for she knew that they could not be there till nightfall, and that the penalty of this would be that they should not again see the face of their kind, either on the shores of Erin or Alba, until the end of the three hundred years on the wastes of the Moyle.
As they circled in the air, she sang this song, the last of the swan-songs heard of any of the Dedannans who were in that company:
Happy our father Lir afar,
With mead, and songs of love and war:
The salt brine, and the white foam,
With these his children have their home.
In the sweet days of long ago