DeDanaan

Filed by Aine MacDermot

And they stayed at Irrus Domnann till the time they had to spend there was spent. And then Fionnuala said: “The time is come for us to go back to Sidhe Fionnachaidh, where our father is with his household and with all our own people.”

“It pleases us well to hear that,” they said.

So they set out flying through the air lightly till they came to Sidhe Fionnachaidh; and it is how they found the place, empty before them, and nothing in it but green hillocks and thickets of nettles, without a house, without a fire, without a hearth stone. And the four pressed close to one another then, and they gave out three sorrowful cries, and Fionnuala made this complaint: –

“It is a wonder to me this place is, and it without a house, without a dwelling-place. To see it the way it is now, Ochone! it is bitterness to my heart.

“Without dogs, without hounds for hunting, without women, without great kings; we never knew it to be like this when our father was in it.

“Without horns, without cups, without drinking in the lighted house; without young men, without riders; the way it is to-night is a foretelling of sorrow.

“The people of the place to be as they are now, Ochone! it is grief to my heart! It is plain to my mind to-night the lord of the house is not living.

“Och, house where we used to see music and playing and the gathering of people! I think it a great change to see it lonely the way it is to-night

“The greatness of the hardships we have gone through going from one wave to another of the sea, we never heard of the like of them coming on any other person.

“It is seldom this place had its part with grass and bushes; the man is not living that would know us, it would be a wonder to him to see us here.”

However, the children of Lir stopped that night in their father’s place and their grandfather’s, where they had been reared, and they were singing very sweet music of the Sidhe. And they rose up early on the morning of the morrow and went to the Inis Gluaire, and all the birds of the country gathered near them on Loch na-n Ean, the Lake of the Birds. And they used to go out to feed every day to the far parts of the country, to Inis Geadh and to Accuill, the place Donn, son of Miled, and his people that were drowned were buried, and to all the western islands of Connacht, and they used to go back to Inis Gluaire every night.

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