" And on this spot stands a pool ofwater until this day.IIITHE SWAN-CHILDREN OF LIRKing Lir of Erin had four young children who were cared for tenderly atfirst by their stepmother, the new queen; but there came a time when shegrew jealous of the love their father bore them, and resolved that shewould endure it no longer. Sometimes there was murder in her heart, butshe could not bear the thought of that wickedness, and she resolved atlast to choose another way to rid herself of them. One day she took themto drive in her chariot:--Finola, who was eight years old, with her threeyounger brothers,--Aodh, Fiacre, and little Conn, still a baby. They werebeautiful children, the legend says, with skins white and soft as swans'feathers, and with large blue eyes and very sweet voices. Reaching a lake,she told them that they might bathe in the clear water; but so soon asthey were in it she struck them with a fairy wand,--for she was of therace of the Druids, who had magical power,--and she turned them into fourbeautiful snow-white swans. But they still had human voices, and Finolasaid to her, "This wicked deed of thine shall be punished, for the doomthat awaits thee will surely be worse than ours." Then Finola asked, "Howlong shall we be in the shape of swans?" "For three hundred years," saidthe woman, "on smooth Lake Darvra; then three hundred years on the sea ofMoyle" (this being the sea between Ireland and Scotland); "and then threehundred years at Inis Glora, in the Great Western Sea" (this was a rockyisland in the Atlantic).
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