At sunrise these innumerable birds would disperse far and wide; some seaward, some inland, some northward to Achill, some as far south as the three rocks known as Donn’s Sea-Rest, some to Inniskea—to this day called the Isle of the Lonely Crane, for there dwells, and has dwelled since the beginning of the world, and shall dwell till the day of flame, a solitary brooding crane. But at night every bird returned to Innis Glora, to hear the slow, sweet, fairy music of the children of Lir.
In this way the years went past.
On a day of the days Fionula called her brothers to listen to her, because of a dream that she had dreamed.
“The Taillkenn[6] has come at last,” she said. “I saw a strange light in the East at midnight. A star rose out of it, and travelled through the gulfs of the sky, and rested over Erin, and sank slowly over this our dear land. Then I heard a smoke of voices rising to the stars, and thence, too, came a chiming sweeter than any chants we have sung in all these thrice three hundred years.”
On the eve of that day a man came forth from the mainland in a coracle. He came to Innis Glora, and alighted there, and kneeled in a strange fashion, and supplicated some god.
It was St. Kemoc.
After nightfall the wild swans were silent, for all were heavy with the strangeness of this man, who was not like unto any Dedannan or even a Milesian, and who prayed on his knees, and supplicated a god set beyond the stars.
In the grey dawn they awoke, trembling. Trembling still, they started and ran bewilderedly to and fro, for strange and dreadful to them was the sound that they heard. It was but a little sound, and faint and afar; but it was the chiming of a bell, and in all the thrice three hundred years and more they had lived they had heard nought like it. The bell was the matin-bell of St. Kemoc, but they knew it not, nor what it meant. Aed and Fiachra and Conn ran wildly and far, but at last when the bell ceased, they returned to Fionula.
“Do you know what this sound is, this faint, fearful sound that has terrified us, dear brothers?”
“No, we have heard the faint, fearful voice, but know not what it is. Is it the voice of the strange man who has come among us, and is he a god?”