he Taillkenn [**] should come to Erinn,
bringing the light of a pure faith, and until they should hear the voice
of a Christian bell. They were allowed to keep their own Gaelic speech,
and to sing sweet, plaintive, fairy music, which should excel all the
music of the world, and which should lull to sleep all who listened to
it. We could hear it, we three, for we loved the story; and love opens
the ear as well as the heart to all sorts of sounds not heard by the
dull and incredulous. You may hear it, too, any fine soft day if you
will sit there looking out on Fair Head and Rathlin Island, and read the
old fairy tale. When you put down the book you will see Finola, Lir's
lovely daughter, in any white-breasted bird; and while she covers her
brothers with her wings, she will chant to you her old song in the
Gaelic tongue.

** A name given by the Druids to St. Patrick.

'Ah, happy is Lir's bright home today
With mirth and music and poet's lay;
But gloomy and cold his children's home,
For ever tossed on the briny foam.

Our wreath-ed feathers are thin and light
When the wind blows keen through the wintry night;
Yet oft we were robed, long, long ago,
In purple mantles and robes of snow.

On Moyle's bleak current our food and wine
Are sandy seaweed and bitter brine;
Yet oft we feasted in days of old,
And hazel-mead drank from cups of gold.

Our beds are rocks in the dripping caves;
Our lullaby song the roar of the waves;
But soft, rich couches once we pressed,
And harpers lulled us each night to rest.

Lonely we swim on the billowy main,
Through frost and snow, through storm and rain;
Alas for the days when round us moved
The chiefs and princes and friends we loved!'+

+Joyce's translation.

The Fate of the Children of Lir is the second of Erin's Three Sorrows
of Story, and the third and greatest is the Fate of the Sons of Usnach,
which has to do with a sloping rock on the north side of Fair Head, five
miles from us. Here the three sons of Usnach landed when they returned
from Alba to Erin with Deirdre--Deirdre, who was 'beautiful as Helen,
and gifted like Cassandra with unavailing prophecy'; and by reason of
her beauty many sorrows fell upon the Ultonians.

Naisi, son of Conor, king of Uladh, had fled with Deirdre, daughter of
Phelim, the king's story-teller, to a sea-girt islet on Lough