The Children of Lir

The five kings of Ireland once met to decide which of them should be high king over the rest. King Lir of the Hill of the White Field felt sure they would choose him. But when the nobles held their council, they chose Dearg, son of the Daghda, because his father had been such a great Druid and he was the eldest son. Lir walked out of the gathering and went home.

The other kings wanted to ride after him and punish him with spear and sword for refusing to obey the man they had chosen. But Dearg would not allow it. “Let us bind him to us as family instead, so that there is peace in the land,” he said. “Offer him as a wife whichever he likes of the three fairest and best-loved maidens in Ireland, the three daughters of Oilell of Aran, whom I have raised as my own.”

Lir was pleased with the offer. The next day he set out with fifty chariots and came to the Lake of the Red Eye near Killaloe. “Choose whichever maiden you wish,” said Dearg.

“I cannot tell which is the best,” said Lir, “but the eldest is the noblest, so I had better take her.”

“Then it is Ove,” said Dearg, “and she is yours if you want her.”

So Lir and Ove were married and went home to the Hill of the White Field. First twins were born to them, a daughter and a son, called Fingula and Aod, and then two more sons, Fiachra and Conn. But when the youngest two were born, Ove died. Lir grieved so bitterly for her that only his love for his children kept him from dying of sorrow.

Dearg felt for Lir and sent word to him: “We mourn Ove for your sake. But so that our friendship is not broken, I will give you her sister Oifa as your wife.” Lir agreed, and he married Oifa and took her home.

At first Oifa was fond of her sister’s children and treated them with honour, and indeed nobody could see those four children without loving them with all his heart. Lir adored them. They slept in beds in front of his own, and every morning at dawn he would get up and lie down among them. But jealousy pierced Oifa like a dart, and she began to look on the children with hatred.

One day she had her chariot made ready and took the four children with her. Fingula did not want to go, for in the night she had dreamed a dream that warned her against Oifa, but she could not escape her fate. When they came to the Lake of the Oaks, Oifa ordered her servants to kill the children and promised them any reward in the world. They refused, and told her it was a wicked thought. She meant to do it herself, but she could not bring herself to. Instead she sent the children to bathe in the lake, and they did as they were told.

As soon as they were in the water, she struck them with a Druid’s wand of magic, and they turned into four beautiful snow-white swans. “Out you go on the wild waves, children of the king,” she chanted. “From now on your cries shall be among the flocks of birds.”

Fingula answered her. “Witch! We know you for what you are. You may drive us from wave to wave, but sometimes we shall rest on the headlands. We shall find comfort, but you shall find punishment. Our bodies may be on the lake, but our minds will fly home.” Then she asked, “Tell us when this misery will end.”

Oifa laughed. “You shall not be free until the woman from the south is married to the man from the north, until Lairgnen of Connaught weds Deoch of Munster. Nobody will have the power to change you back. Nine hundred years you shall wander over the lakes and rivers of Ireland. This much I will grant you: you shall keep your own speech, and there shall be no music in the world to match the sad music you will sing.” She said this because she had begun to be sorry for the harm she had done. Then she drove off to the hall of King Dearg.

The nobles there asked her where Lir’s children were. “Lir will not trust them to Dearg,” she said. But Dearg suspected she had played some trick, and he sent messengers to the Hill of the White Field.

“Why have you come?” asked Lir.

“To fetch your children.”

“Haven’t they reached you with Oifa?”

“They have not, and Oifa said it was you who would not let them go.”

Then Lir’s heart sank, for he knew Oifa had done his children some harm, and he rode at once towards the Lake of the Red Eye. When the swans saw the riders coming, Fingula told her brothers to move to the shore, for those horsemen could be no one but King Lir and his household.

Lir reached the edge of the lake and heard the swans talking with human voices. He asked them who they were.

“We are your own children,” said Fingula, “ruined by your wife, our own mother’s sister, through her wickedness and jealousy.”

“How long must the spell last?”

“Nobody can free us until the woman from the south and the man from the north come together, until Lairgnen of Connaught weds Deoch of Munster.”

Lir and his people cried aloud in grief, and they stayed by the lake, listening to the swans’ wild music, until the swans flew away. Then Lir went on to Dearg’s hall and told him what Oifa had done. Dearg used his power over Oifa and made her say what shape she would think the worst on earth. She said it would be the shape of a demon of the air. “Then that is the shape I shall give you,” said Dearg, and he struck her with his Druid’s wand. At once she became a demon of the air and flew off, and so she remains.

The children of Lir stayed on the Lake of the Red Eye and delighted the people of Ireland with the sweet fairy music of their songs, until the time came for them to leave. Then Fingula sang goodbye to Dearg, master of Druid lore, and to their dear father Lir. Now they must spend their appointed time far from the homes of people, in the bitter salt current of the Moyle, between Ireland and Scotland. Up they flew, high and light, and away. The people of Ireland grieved to see them go, and it was proclaimed across the land that from then on no swan should be killed.

On the Moyle they were all alone, cold and sad. One day a great storm blew up. “Brothers,” said Fingula, “let us choose a place to meet if the winds blow us apart.”

“Let us meet at the Rock of the Seals, sister,” they said.

The waves rose, the thunder roared, lightning flashed, and the storm swept over the sea, scattering the children of Lir far and wide. When it was calm, Fingula found herself alone. Her wings were frozen to her sides, and she mourned for the three dear ones who used to shelter under her feathers. She flew to the Rock of the Seals, and soon she saw Conn coming, his feathers drenched and his steps heavy, and then Fiachra, cold and wet and faint, too weak to say a word. She gathered them under her wings. “If only Aod would come, we would be happy,” she said. Soon Aod came too, with his head dry and his feathers smooth. Fingula put Aod under the feathers of her breast, Fiachra under her right wing and Conn under her left, and together they sang of their cruel stepmother and of the salt foam that was their only bath and the briny sea that was their only feast.

One day a splendid company on pure white horses came riding towards them. It was the two sons of King Dearg, who had been searching for them. “Dearg and your father Lir are well,” they said, “and live together happily, except that you are not with them, and they do not know where you have gone.”

“We are not happy,” said Fingula, and she sang of the feasting in Lir’s house while his children had only their feathers for blankets and white sand and bitter salt water for food and drink. The sons of Dearg went to Lir’s hall and told him how his children were.

At last the time came for the swans to move on. They flew from the Moyle to the Bay of Erris, and stayed there until their time was up. Then they flew home to the Hill of the White Field. They found it empty and deserted, with nothing but green, roofless ring-forts and forests of nettles. There was no house, no fire, no home at all. The four huddled together and cried out three times in sorrow, and Fingula lamented that there were no hounds, no women and no brave kings there now, no drinking-horns and no merry halls. Their father lived no more, and nobody was left in the house where they were born who knew them.

So the children of Lir flew away to Glory Isle, the island of Saint Brandan, and lived on the Lake of the Birds there. Ages went by, and the holy Patrick came to Ireland, and the holy Mac Howg came to Glory Isle. On his first night on the island, the swans heard his bell ringing for morning prayers. The brothers leapt about in terror and left Fingula alone.

“What is it, dear brothers?” she asked.

“We don’t know what this faint, frightening voice is.”

“It is the cleric’s bell,” said Fingula. “Be thankful that you hear it. He will free you from your pain and bring you away from the rocks and stones.”

Mac Howg came down to the edge of the water. “Are you the children of Lir?” he asked.

“We are indeed.”

“Thanks be to God! It is for your sake that I came to this island, out of all the islands of Ireland. Come ashore now and trust in me.”

They came ashore, and he made them chains of bright white silver, one linking Aod and Fingula and one linking Conn and Fiachra.

Now at this time Lairgnen was prince of Connaught, and he was to marry Deoch, the daughter of the king of Munster. She had heard about the wonderful birds of Glory Isle and loved them, and she said she would not marry until she had them. Lairgnen sent to Mac Howg for the birds, but the saint would not give them up. So Lairgnen and Deoch came to Glory Isle themselves, and Lairgnen went to snatch the birds from the altar.

The moment he laid hands on them, their feathers fell away. The three sons of Lir became three thin, withered old men, and Fingula a frail, withered old woman. Lairgnen was so startled that he hurried away.

Fingula asked the cleric to baptise them. She said she could see their grave, and asked that Fiachra and Conn be laid on either side of her, with Aod, her beautiful brother, in her arms.

So the children of Lir were baptised. Then they died, and they were buried just as Fingula had asked, with Fiachra and Conn on either side of her and Aod facing her. A cairn of stones was raised over them, and their names were carved on it in runes. And that is the fate of the children of Lir.

About this tale

Joseph Jacobs explains in the notes to More Celtic Fairy Tales that he abridged this tale from the Irish text and translation published by the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language in 1883, which followed Professor O’Curry’s version. O’Curry worked from three Dublin manuscripts, none older than the eighteenth century.

Jacobs says the tale is always counted, with “Deirdre” and “The Children of Tuireann,” as one of the Three Sorrowful Tales of Erin. He identifies the Lake of the Red Eye as Lough Derg on the Shannon above Killaloe, places the Hill of the White Field in County Armagh, and explains that Fingula means Fair Shoulder. He also notes that the belief that swans must never be harmed was still alive in Ireland in his day.

In the original, Fingula and Oifa speak many of their words in verse. Here most of those songs are given in plain prose, and the swans’ return to human shape in the last scene is told gently.

Read the original: Joseph Jacobs, More Celtic Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg #34453, The Fate of the Children of Lir)

Suggested for ages 9–12 with an adult: includes a threatened killing of children, prolonged suffering, the loss of their family and the siblings’ deaths after release from the spell.

The same embrace at sea and at the grave

During the storm Fingula gives each brother a place beneath her wings or against her breast. At the end she asks for the same closeness in burial. The repeated arrangement turns a practical act of shelter into the tale’s final image of belonging.

Oifa’s punishment does not undo her victims’ loss. The children remain swans, and their return cannot restore their father or childhood home. Baptism provides the Christian consolation of this telling; the ending remains sorrowful rather than a return to their old life.

Distinguish three kinds of ending

Find the moment Oifa is punished, the moment the swans regain human form, and the moment Fingula chooses how they will be buried. For each, name what changes and what cannot be restored. Compare those answers with the comforting messages the royal visitors bring on the Moyle.

Questions to ask

• How did Fingula look after her brothers during their long years as swans?
• Why do you think Oifa gave the children the gift of speech and music, even after cursing them?
• How did you feel when the swans came home to the Hill of the White Field? Why?

You may also like

• The Selkie Wife — another tale of people living in the shape of sea creatures
• The Voyage of Bran — another ancient Irish tale of a long journey
• The Salmon of Knowledge — another tale from old Irish tradition