Next day Lir took leave of his children and went on to the palace of
Bóv the Red. Bóv reproached him that he had not brought with him his
children. "Woe is me," said Lir, "it was not I that would not bring
them; but Aoife there, your own foster-child and their mother's
sister, put upon them the forms of four snow-white swans, and there
they are on the Loch of Derryvaragh for all men to see; but they have
kept still their reason and their human voice and their Gaelic."

Bóv the Red started when he heard this, and he knew that what Lir had
said was true. Fiercely he turned to Aoife, and said, "This treachery
will be worse, Aoife, for you than for them, for they shall be
released in the end of time, but thy punishment shall be for ever."
Then he smote her with a druid wand and she became a Demon of the Air,
and flew shrieking from the hall, and in that form she abides to this
day.

[Illustration: "They made an encampment and the swans sang to them"]

As for Bóv the Red, he came with his nobles and attendants to the
shores of Loch Derryvaragh, and there they made an encampment, and the
swans conversed with them and sang to them. And as the thing became
known, other tribes and clans of the People of Dana would also come
from every part of Erinn and stay awhile to listen to the swans and
depart again to their homes; and most of all came their own friends
and fellow-pupils from the Hill of the White Field. No such music as
theirs, say the historians of ancient times, ever was heard in Erinn,
for foes who heard it were at peace, and men stricken with pain or
sickness felt their ills no more; and the memory of it remained with
them when they went away, so that a great peace and sweetness and
gentleness was in the land of Erinn for those three hundred years that