Lir was a Danaan divinity, the father of the sea-god Mananan who continually occurred in magical tales of the Milesian cycle. He had married in succession to sisters, the second of who was named Aoife. She was childless, but the former wife of Lir had left him four children, a girl named Fionuala and three boys. The intense love of Lir for the children made the stepmother jealous, and she ultimately resolved on their destruction. It will be observed by the day that the People of the Dana though conceived as unaffected by time and natural immortal are nevertheless subject to violent death either at the hands of each other or even of mortals.

With her guilty object in view, Aoife goes on a journey to a neighboring Danaan King, Bov the Red, taking the four children with her. Arriving at the lonely place by Lake Derryvaragh, in Westmeath, she orders her attendants to slay the children. They refuse and rebuke her. Then she resolves to do it herself, but days the legend " her womanhood overcame her, and instead of killing the children she transformed them by spells of sorcery into four white swans, and lays on them the following doom. Three hundred years they are to spend on the waters of lake Derryvaragh, three hundred years on the straits of Moyl, between Ireland and Scotland, and three hundred years on the Atlantic by Erris and Inishglory. After that, when the woman of the south is mated with the man of the north, the enchantment is to have an end.

When the children fair to arrive with Aoife at the palace of Bov her guilt is discovered and Bov charges herinto a demon of the air. She flies forth shrieking and is heard of no more in the tale. But Lir and Bov seek out the swan-children and find that they have not only human speech but have preserved the characteristic Danaan gift of making beautiful music. Fromall parts of the island companies of the Danaan folk resort to the Lake of Derryvaragh to hear this wondrous music and to converse with the swans, and during that time a great peace and gentleness seemed to pervade the land.

But at last the day came for them to leave the fellowship of their kind and take up their life by the wild cliffs and ever angry see of the northern coast. Here they knew the worst and loneliness, cold and storm. Forbidden to land, their feathers froze to the rocks in the winder nights and they were often buffeted and driven apart by the storm, as Fionuala sings :

Fionuala, the eldest of the four, takes the lead and all their doings, and mothers the younger children most tenderly wrapping her plumage round them on nights of frost. At last the time comes to enter the last period of their doom, and they take flight for the western shores of Mayo. Here too they suffer much hardship but the Milesians have now come into the land and a young farmer named Everic dwelling on the shores of Erris Bay finds out who and what the swans are, and befreinds them. To him they tell their story and through him it is supposed to have been preserved and handed don. When the final period of their suffering is close at hand they resolve to fly toward the palace of their father Lir, who dwells we are told at the hill of the white field in Armagh, to see how things have fared for him. They do so but not knowing what has happened on the coming of the Milesians they are shocked and bewildered to find nothing but green mounds and whin-bushed and nettles where once stood and still stands, only they cannot see it, the palace of their father. Their eyes holden, we are to understand because a higher destiny as in store for them then to return to the land of youth.

On Erris Bay they hear for the first time the sound of a Christian bell. It comes from a chapel of a hermit who had established himself there. The swans are at first startled and terrified by the thin dreadful sound, but afterward aproching and make themselves know to the hermit who instructs them in the faith and they join him in singing the offices of the Church.

Now it happens that a princess of Munster, Deoca, (the woman of the south) became betrothed to a Connacht chief named Lairgnen and begged him as a wedding gift to procure for her the four wonderful singing swans whose fame had come to her. He asked the of the hermit, who refused to give them up, whereupon the man of the north seized them violently by the silver chains with which the hermit had coupled them, and drags them off to Deoca. This was their last trial. Arriving in her presence an awful transformation begalls them. The swan plumage falls off and reveils not indeed the radiant forms of the Danaan divinities, but four withered snowy-haired and miserable human beings, shrunken in the decrepitude of their vast old age. Lairgnen flies from the place in horror, but the hermit prepares to administer baptism atonce as death is rapidly approching them. "Lay us in one grave" says Fionuala, "and place Conn at my right hand and Fiachra at my left, and Hugh before my face for there they were wont to be when I sheltered them many a winter night upon the seas of Moyle". And so it was done, and they went to heaven, but the hermit it is said sorrowed for them to the end of his earthly days.

In all Celtic legend there is no more tender and beautiful then this of the Children of Lir.

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