The Tale of the Children of Lir is one of the most enchantingly tragic tales from the Irish
Invasion Myths.
It concerns the God Lir, father of the more well known God Mananan.
Lir had married two sisters in sucession, the second of which was named Aoife (Eefa). Aoifa
was childless, but this did not bother Lir for he already had four children from his previous
wife, Aoifa's sister, one girl and three boys.
The intense love of Lir for his children drove Aoifa mad with jealously and so she resolved
to have them destroyed. She takes them on a visit to the neighbouring Danaan King, Bov the
Red. Arriving on the way at a lonely place by Lake Derryvaragh in Weatmeath she orders her
attendants to murder the children. The servants refuse and rebuke Aoifa, but she resolves
to do it herself; but, as the legend says, "her womanhood overcame her" and so instead of
slaying the children she transforms them by spells of sorcery into four white swans, and lays
on them the following doom: three hundred years they are to spend on the waters of Lake
Derryvaragh, three hundred more on the Straits of Moyle and then three hundred more on the
Atlantic by Erris and Inishglory. After that, "when the woman of the South is mated with the
man of the North", the enchantment will have an end...
When she arrives at the place of Bov without the children her guilt is discovered and so Bov
turns her into a demon of the air, never to be heard from in this tale again.
Lir and Bov seek out the Swan-Children and discover that they have both human speech and the
natural Danaan gift for making beautiful music. For many years companies of Danaan folk came
to listen to the music of the swans and to converse with them, and for a time there seemed
only to be peace in the land. But at last came the day when they had to leave their own kind
and and take up their lives by the wild cliffs and angry seas of the north coast. Here they
knew the worst of lonliness, cold and storm.
Fionuala is the eldest of the children and takes the lead in all that they do, sheltering the
boys in her plummage during the long cold nights. At last comes the time to move on once
more, into their final period of doom.
Here also they suffer much hardship, but the Milesians have now come into the land and a young
farmer by the name of Evric finds out who and what they are and befriends them. To Evric they
tell all their tales and it is supposedly through him that the tales have been preserved.
When the final period of their suffering is close at hand they resolve to fly towards the
palace of their father Lir, who dwells at the Hill of the White Field in Armagh to see how things
have fared with him.
When they arrive they are shocked to find only green mounds and whin-bushes and nettles where
once stood, and still stands although they cannot see it, the palace of their father. Their
eyes are holden because a higher destiny was in store for them than to return to the Land
of Youth.
On Erris Bay they hear for the first time the sound of a Christian bell, which comes from the
chapel of a hermit who has established himself there. After overcoming the fear of the 'thin
whining sound that comes from the hermits bell, they appraoch the hermit and make themselves
known to him. He instructs them in the faith and they join him in singing the offices of the
Church.
Now it happens that a princess of Munster, Doeca (the woman of the South) became betrothed to a
Connacht chief named Lairgnen, and begged him as a wedding gift to procure the four wonderful
singing swans whose fame had come to her. He asks of the hermit who refuses to give them up,
whereupon the 'man of the North' siezes them violently by the silver chains by which the
hermit had coupled them, and drags them off to Doeca. This is their last trial.
Arrived in her prescence, an awful transformation befalls them. Their plummage falls off, and
reveals not the radient forms of the Danaan divinities, but four withered, snowy haired, and
miserable beings, shrunken in the decrepitutde of their vast old age.
Lairgnen flies from the place in horror, but the hermit prepares to administer baptism at once
, as death is rapidly approaching them.
"Lay us in one grave," says Fionuala, "and lay Conn at my right hand and Fiachra at
my left, and Hugh before my face, for there they were wont to be when i sheltered them many
a winter night upon the seas of Moyle."
And so it was done, and they went unto heaven; but the hermit, it is said, pined for them to
the end of his earthly days.
And so ends the story of the Children of Lir.
