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."

So there the swans continued, suffering cold and misery upon the tides
of Moyle; and one while they would be upon the coast of Alba and
another upon the coast of Erinn, but the waters they might not leave.
At length there came upon them a night of bitter cold and snow such
as they had never felt before, and Fionnuala sang this lament:--

"Evil is this life.
The cold of this night,
The thickness of the snow,
The sharpness of the wind--

"How long have they lain together,
Under my soft wings,
The waves beating upon us,
Conn and Hugh and Fiachra?

"Aoife has doomed us,
Us, the four of us,