And they came early on the morrow to speak with their father and with their foster-father, and they bade them farewell, and Fionnuala made this complaint:—­

“Farewell to you, Bodb Dearg, the man with whom all knowledge is in pledge.  And farewell to our father along with you, Lir of the Hill of the White Field.

“The time is come, as I think, for us to part from you, O pleasant company; my grief it is not on a visit we are going to you.

“From this day out, O friends of our heart, our comrades, it is on the tormented course of the Maoil we will be, without the voice of any person near us.

“Three hundred years there, and three hundred years in the bay of the men of Domnann, it is a pity for the four comely children of Lir, the salt waves of the sea to be their covering by night.

“O three brothers, with the ruddy faces gone from you, let them all leave the lake now, the great troop that loved us, it is sorrowful our parting is.”

After that complaint they took to flight, lightly, airily, till they came to Sruth na Maoile between Ireland and Alban.  And that was a grief to the men of Ireland, and they gave out an order no swan was to be killed from that out, whatever chance there might be of killing one, all through Ireland.

It was a bad dwelling-place for the children of Lir they to be on Sruth na Maoile.  When they saw the wide coast about them, they were filled with cold and with sorrow, and they thought nothing of all they had gone through before, in comparison to what they were going through on that sea.

Now one night while they were there a great storm came on them, and it is what Fionnuala said:  “My dear brothers,” she said, “it is a pity for us not to be making ready for this night, for it is certain the storm will separate us from one another.  And let us,” she said, “settle on some place where we can meet afterwards, if we are driven from one another in the night.”

“Let us settle,” said the others, “to meet one another at Carraig na Ron, the Rock of the Seals, for we all have knowledge of it.”

And when midnight came, the wind came on them with it, and the noise of the waves increased, and the lightning was flashing, and a rough storm came sweeping down, the way the children of Lir were scattered over the great sea, and the wideness of it set them astray, so that no one of them could know what way the others went.  But after that storm a great quiet came on the sea, and Fionnuala was alone on Sruth na Maoile; and when she took notice that her brothers were wanting she was lamenting after them greatly, and she made this complaint:—­

“It is a pity for me to be alive in the state I am; it is frozen to my sides my wings are; it is little that the wind has not broken my heart in my body, with the loss of Aodh.

“To be three hundred years on Loch Dairbhreach without going into my own shape, it is worse to me the time I am on Sruth na Maoile.