“Tell me, art thou not Irbir the Harper?”
“It is Irbir the Harper I am, the chief harper of Bove Derg, that was King of the Dedannans before the Fairy Host faded away from the meadows and pastures of Erin. And if indeed ye be the children of Lir, know I am that Irbir who sang the birth-song at the birthing of ye, Fionula and Aed, and at the birthing of ye, Fiachra and Conn.”
Thereupon the old harper embraced the four swans, tears running down his face the while.
While he was yet embracing them, his wildered mind began to wander, and he talked idly of vain things.
Nevertheless, they learned from him that more than a hundred years back, and maybe thrice a hundred, the Tuatha-De-Danann had fought a last great battle with the Milesians and had been utterly defeated. They were now a dispersed and hidden people, some deathless, others living to the thousand and one years of the old-world folk, and some with a new and terrible mortality upon them. As for Bove Derg and all the Fairy Host, the wild thistle waved over their nameless graves. Lir lay beneath the grass outside his great dun of Shee Finnaha. His last words had been: “I hear the beating of wings. O wild swans, I hear the beating of thy wings.”
Thereafter Irbir the Harper moved aimlessly away, and with him passed the shadow of the greatness that was gone.
The children of Lir now spoke wearily among themselves of what they should do. At the last they decided to go back to the Isle of Glora, and there await the fulfilment of their doom.
One more night they spent at Shee Finnaha, mourning over the grey sorrow of Lir, and over the desolation of that noble place, and over the ruin of the Dedannan folk. So wild and mournful was their singing that night that the beasts of the forest congregated round the ruined dun, and from the crags of the hills thronged the cliff-hawks and the eagles. In the heart of the woods Irbir, the old harper, died, dreaming that he was in Tir-nan-Og, the Land of Youth, and was listening again to the voices of Love.
On the morrow the children of Lir flew sorrowfully away from Shee Finnaha and returned to Innis Glora. They alit at a small lake in the heart of that isle, and there began once more to sing their slow, sweet, fairy music.
So wonderful was their singing, with all its added pain and the mystery of years, that the birds of all the regions round were wont to collect daily, and gather in flocks round about the singing swans. Thus it was that the little lake came to be called the Lake of the Bird Flocks.