Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
The Fate of the Cildren of Lir (Author: Unknown)

section 49

‘They are well; in one place [i. e. assembled together],’ said they, ‘in the house of your father, in Sioth Fionnachaidh, and the Tuatha Dé Danann along with them there, consuming the Feast of Age, merrily and happily, without fatigue and without

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uneasiness, except for being without you, and not having known where ye had gone to from them, from the day upon which ye left Loch Dairbhreach.’ ‘That is not the record of our lives,’ says Fionnghuala, ‘for much indeed of evil and suffering and misery have we endured on the tide of the current of the Maoil to this day;’ and she recited the lay: —

    Fionnghuala

    1. Happy this night the household of Lir!
      Abundant their mead and their wine;
      Though there be this night in a cold home,
      A company of the king's pure-born children.
    2. Our faultless bed-clothes are [but]
      The covering of our bodies of wreathed feathers; —
      [Though] often ere now have we been clad
      In purple, while drinking the cheerful mead.
    3. There is our food and our wine, they are
      The white sand and bitter brine; —
      [Yet] often drank we hazel mead.
      From round cups with four lips [i. e. corners.]
    4. hese are our beds, and bare [beds] they are, [but]
      Rocks above the violent waves; —
      [Yet] often have been spread for us,
      Beds of the breast-feathers of birds.

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    5. Though it be now our work [though now we have] to swim in the frost,
      Upon the current of the heavy resounding Maoil, —
      Often a cavalcade of the sons of kings
      Was following us to Sioth Buidhbh.
    6. It is this that has wasted my strength, —
      To be going and coming over the Maoil,
      As I was never accustomed to be;
      And that no more I enjoy the sun in a soft plain.
    7. Fiachra's bed, and Conn's place,
      Is to nestle under the cover of my wings upon the Maoil.
      A place under the shelter of my breast hath Aodh;
      The four of us side by side.
    8. The teaching of Manannan without guile,
      The conversation of Bodhbh Dearg over Drom Caoin,
      The voice of Aongus, the sweetness of his kisses, —
      I was wont to be without grief by their side.