glad were their hearts that day, for
the company was led by two sons of Bodb the Red, who had searched for
the swans along the rocky coast of Erin for many a day, and who
brought them loving greetings from the good king of the Dedannans and
from their father Lir.

At length the three hundred years on the Sea of Moyle came to an end,
and the swans flew to Ivros Domnann and the Isle of Glora in the
western sea. And there they had sufferings and hardships to bear that
were even more grievous than those that they had endured on the Sea of
Moyle, and one night the snow that drifted down upon them from the ice
was scourged on by a north-west wind, and there came a moment when the
three brothers felt that they could endure no more.

But Finola said to them:

"It is the great God of truth who made both land and sea who alone can
succour us, for He alone can wholly understand the sorrows of our
hearts. Put your trust in Him, dear brothers, and He will send us
comfort and help."

Then said her brothers: "In Him we put our trust," and from that
moment the Lord of Heaven gave them His help, so that no frost, nor
snow, nor cold, nor tempest, nor any of the creatures of the deep
could work them any harm.

When the nine hundred years of their sorrowful doom had ended, the
children of Lir joyously spread their wings and flew to their father's
home at Shee Finnaha.

But the house was there no more, for Lir, their father, was dead. Only
stones, round which grew rank grass and nettles, and where no human
creature had his habitation, marked the place for which they had
longed with an aching, hungry longing, through all their weary years
of doom. Their cries were piteous as the cries of lost children as
they looked on the desolate ruins, but all night they stayed there,
and their songs were songs that might have made the very stones shed
tears.

Next day they winged their way back to Inis Glora, and there the
sweetness of their singing drew so many birds to listen that the
little lake got the name of the Lake of the Bird-Flocks. Near and far,
for long thereafter, flew the swans, all along the coast of the
Western Sea, and at the island of Iniskea they held converse with the
lonely crane that has lived there since the beginning of the world,
and which will live there until time is no more.

And while the years went by, there came to Erin one who brought glad
tidings, for the holy Patrick came to lead men out of darkness into
ligh