A Book of Myths, by Jean Lang - Umnet

their love. To them in course of time were born a twin son and a
daughter. The daughter they named Finola and the son Aed, and the
children were as beautiful, as good, and as happy as their mother.
Again she bore twins, boys, whom they named Ficra and Conn, but as
their eyes opened on the world, the eyes of their mother closed on
pleasant life forever, and once again Lîr was a widower, more bowed
down by grief than before.
The tidings of the death of Eve brought great sorrow to the palace of
Bodb the Red, for to all who knew her Eve was very dear. But again the
king sent a message of comfort to Lîr:
"We sorrow with thee, yet in proof of our friendship with thee and our
love for the one who is gone, we would give thee another of our
daughters to be a mother to the children who have lost their mother's
care."
And again Lîr went to the palace at Loch Derg, the Great Lake, and
there he married Eva, the second of the foster-daughters of the king.
At first it seemed as if Eva loved her dead sister's children as though
they were her own. But when she saw how passionate was her
husband's devotion to them, how he would have them to sleep near him
and would rise at their slightest whimper to comfort and to caress them,
and how at dawn she would wake to find he had left her side to see that
all was well with them, the poisonous weed of jealousy began to grow
up in the garden of her heart. She was a childless woman, and she knew
not whether it was her sister who had borne them whom she hated, or
whether she hated the children themselves. But steadily the hatred grew,
and the love that Bodb the Red bore for them only embittered her the
more. Many times in the year he would come to see them, many times
would take them away to stay with him, and each year when the
Dedannans held the Feast of Age--the feast of the great god Mannanan,
of which those who partook never grew old--the four children of Lîr
were present, and gave joy to all who beheld them by their great beauty,
their nobility, and their gentleness.
But as the love that all others gave to the four children of Lîr grew, the