next day they came to the lough-side to speak with Bov the Red and with their father, and to bid them farewell, and Fionnuala sang to them her last lament.  Then the four swans rose in the air and flew northward till they were seen no more, and great was the grief among those they left behind; and Bov the Red let it be proclaimed throughout the length and breadth of Erin that no man should henceforth presume to kill a swan, lest it might chance to be one of the children of Lir.

Far different was the dwelling-place which the swans now came to, from that which they had known on Loch Derryvaragh.  On either side of them, to north and south, stretched a wide coast far as the eye could see, beset with black rocks and great precipices, and by it ran fiercely the salt, bitter tides of an ever-angry sea, cold, grey, and misty; and their hearts sank to behold it and to think that there they must abide for three hundred years.

Ere long, one night, there came a thick murky tempest upon them, and Fionnuala said, “In this black and violent night, my brothers, we may be driven apart from each other; let us therefore appoint a meeting-place where we may come together again when the tempest is overpast.”  And they settled to meet at the Seal Rock, for this rock they had now all learned to know.

By midnight the hurricane descended upon the Straits of Moyle, and the waves roared upon the coast with a deafening noise, and thunder bellowed from the sky, and lightning was all the light they had.  The swans 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.”