were driven apart by the violence of the storm, and when at last
the wind fell and the seas grew calm once more, Fionnuala found
herself alone upon the ocean-tide not far from the Seal Rock. And thus
she made her lament:--

"Woe is me to be yet alive!
My wings are frozen to my sides.
Wellnigh has the tempest shattered my heart,
And my comely Hugh parted from me!

"O my beloved ones, my Three,
Who slept under the shelter of my feathers,
Shall you and I ever meet again
Until the dead rise to life?

"Where is Fiachra, where is Hugh?
Where is my fair Conn?
Shall I henceforth bear my part alone?
Woe is me for this disastrous night!"

Fionnuala remained upon the Seal Rock until the morrow morn, watching
the tossing waters in all directions around her, until at last she saw
Conn coming towards her, and his head drooping and feathers drenched
and disarrayed. Joyfully did the sister welcome him; and ere long,
behold, Fiachra also approaching them, cold and wet and faint, and the
speech was frozen in him that not a word he spake could be understood.
So Fionnuala put her wings about him, and said, "If but Hugh came now,
how happy should we be!"

In no long time after that they saw Hugh also approaching them across
the sea, and his head was dry and his feathers fair and unruffled, for
he had found shelter from the gale. Fionnuala put him under her
breast, and Conn under her right wing and Fiachra under her left, and
covered them wholly with her feathers. "O children," she said to them,
"evil though ye think this night to have been, many such a one shall
we know from this time forward."

So there the swans continued, suffering cold and misery upon the tides
of Moyle; and one while they would be upon the coast of Alba and
another upon the coast of Erinn, but the waters they might not leave.
At length there came upon them a night of bitter cold and snow such
as they had never felt before, and Fionnuala sang this lament:--

"Evil is this life.
The cold of this night,
The thickness of the snow,
The sharpness of the wind--

"How long have they lain together,
Under my soft wings,
The waves beating upon us,
Conn and Hugh and Fiachra?

"Aoife has doomed us,
Us, the four of us,
To-night to this misery--
Evil is this life."

Thus for a long time they suffered, till at length there came upon the
Straits of Moyle a night of January so piercing cold that the like o