'
"He woke her out of the magic sleep and called all his people
together. Before them all he told her that she should be punished for
her wickedness, and then he changed her, by his Druidic power, into a
gray vulture. Then he said to the people: 'This creature that was my
daughter has laid a wicked enchantment on her husband's children. She
has changed them into swans. They must keep that shape for many
hundreds of years; they must swim in the lakes and the seas and fly
over the land, and they must travel far and must suffer much. But
there is a hope for them. Many, many hundred years will pass away--so
many that even the Druid's eye can scarcely see what is at the end of
them. But at last there shall come strange men across the sea to
Erin--men with shaven heads. They shall build houses and shall set up
tables in the east ends of their houses, and they shall ring bells.
And when the swans that were the children of Lir shall hear the first
sound of these bells, they shall have their human shape again, and
then they shall be happy forever.
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