A Book of Myths, by Jean Lang - Umnet

what her servants had scorned to do. But she lacked strength to carry
out her own evil wish, and so they journeyed onwards. They came to
Lake Darvra at last--now Lough Derravaragh, in West Meath--and
there they all alighted from the chariot, and the children, feeling as
though they had been made to play at an ugly game, but that now it was
over and all was safety and happiness again, were sent into the loch to
bathe. Joyously and with merry laughter the little boys splashed into the
clear water by the rushy shore, all three seeking to hold the hands of
their sister, whose little slim white body was whiter than the
water-lilies and her hair more golden than their hearts.
It was then that Eva struck them, as a snake strikes its prey. One touch
for each, with a magical wand of the Druids, then the low chanting of
an old old rune, and the beautiful children had vanished, and where
their tiny feet had pressed the sand and their yellow hair had shown
above the water like four daffodil heads that dance in the wind, there
floated four white swans. But although to Eva belonged the power of
bewitching their bodies, their hearts and souls and speech still belonged
to the children of Lîr. And when Finola spoke, it was not as a little
timid child, but as a woman who could look with sad eyes into the
future and could there see the terrible punishment of a shameful act.
"Very evil is the deed that thou hast done," she said. "We only gave
thee love, and we are very young, and all our days were happiness. By
cruelty and treachery thou hast brought our childhood to an end, yet is
our doom less piteous than thine. Woe, woe unto thee, O Eva, for a
fearful doom lies before thee!"
Then she asked--a child still, longing to know when the dreary days of
its banishment from other children should be over--"Tell us how long a
time must pass until we can take our own forms again."
[Illustration: ONE TOUCH FOR EACH, WITH A MAGICAL WAND
OF THE DRUIDS]
And, relentlessly, Eva made answer: "Better had it been for thy peace
hadst thou left unsought that knowledge. Yet will I tell thee thy doom.
Three hundred years shall ye live in the smooth waters of Lake Darvra;