Legendary fictions of the Irish Celts

278
Fictions of the Irish Celts.
children ; but he was deaf to her entreaties, and she
was obhged to enact the part of executioner herself.
Fionula, with a girl's acuteness, sorely distrusted her
stepmother ; and when they arrived at the edge of a
lake, and she and her brothers were commanded to get
down and bathe, she refused in the most decided manner
for them and herself However, Aoife', with assistance
from her retinue, forced them into the water, and then
and there, by a stroke on the head of each with a wand,
the wicked Druids gift, she changed them into four
beautiful swans.
On arriving at her father's palace, he made inquiry
about his grandchildren, and suspecting that her representation
of their being in health at home was not true,
he cast her into a druidic sleep, and made her reveal her
wickedness. Restoring her to her ordinary state, he
bitterly reproached her in the presence of the court,
changed her into a grey vulture by a stroke of his wand
of power, and doomed her to live in the cold, and windy,
and sleety air, while time was to endure.
All repaired to the lake where the enchantment was
effected, and were kept in a state of delight listening to
the magic songs of the birds. The chariots stood by
the shore, and the steeds consumed their provender, and
the knights and ladies still listened entranced, night and
day, until by the power of Aoife"s words, they were
obliged to rise in the air, and direct their flight to Loch
Derg. There through the mildness of summer, and the
harsh winds and ice of winter, they abode three hundred
years;—Fionula pressing her dejected and shivering
brothers to her side, covering them with her wings, and
cheering them with her grandfather's prophecy—that
when men with shaved heads came over the sea, set up
their tables in the east ends of their houses, and rung
their bells, the first sound would again restore their
human form.
Three hundred years being gone, they once more were
obliged to take their flight to the sea of Moyle, between