But at that time[7] there was a queen in Erin who above all other things desired the glory of having these marvellous singing swans as her own. In the olden days men and women were wont to hold the decrees of the gods and of fate in reverence; and more thought was taken of the inner meanings of dreams, marvels, and the strange vicissitudes of life. Has not a wise poet declared that the smaller the soul the greater the tyranny? This queen was Decca, daughter of Finghin, king of Munster, and wife of Lairgnen, the king of Connaught.
It was of these two that Aeifa, long, long ago, had spoken prophetically, but none remembered this save only Fionula, in whose mind dreams and memories floated as water-blooms on a mountain lake—the blooms that float and sink and rise as though a breath sustained or swayed them, the breath out of still, pellucid depths.
At last the desire of Decca overmastered her. She begged Lairgnen to fare westward to Kemoc, and obtain the swans from the saint and bring them to her. But this the king feared to do, nor held it a kingly act. Then Decca gave way to her anger, and left the great house of the king and vowed that she would not sleep there another night till Lairgnen brought her the singing swans.
So the woman fled southward into Munster, her father’s realm.
Lairgnen the Connaught king loved his wife to weakness. He was the slave of her dark eyes and her smiling lips and her selfish heart and her poor will: so he came to evil then, and later. For according as a man’s love is, and as he loves to strength, so shall his life be abased or uplifted.
So Lairgnen sent messengers after Decca, and sought her in the south. Thus was the prophecy fulfilled.
The woman returned, but put a bond upon the king. He was weak, and she made a sport of him as women do who are loved to weakness and not to strength: as with men also, when women love them ignobly, and not as high mate with high mate.
Thus it came about that Lairgnen gave the word to St. Kemoc that he desired the four swans to be sent to him at his royal house in Connaught. Kemoc, however, refused. He served the King of kings, not the king of Connaught.
Full of wrath, Lairgnen set out for the western coast, and at last reached Innis Glora. When he asked Kemoc if he had indeed refused to give up the swans at his command, and was told that this was so, he swore the old pagan oath by the sun and the moon and the wind, and vowed that he would not leave that place without them.
“Doom must be fulfilled, O king,” said Kemoc, “but woe unto that man by whom the evil of a day of the days is wrought.”