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IEISn MELODIES. |
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THE SONG OF FIONNUALA. *
Silent, oh Moyle, be the roar of thy water,
Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose, While, murmuring mournfully, Lir's lonely daughter
Tells to the night-star her tale of woes. When shall the swan, her death-note singing,
Sleep, with wings in darkness furl'd ? When will heaven, its sweet bell ringing,
Call my spirit from this stormy world ?
Sadly, oh Moyle, to thy winter-wave weeping,
Fate bids me languish long ages away; Yet still in her darkness doth Erin lie sleeping,
Still doth the pure light its dawning delay. When will that day-star, mildly springing,
Warm our isle with peace and love ? When will heaven, its sweet bell ringing,
Call my spirit to the fields above ? |
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* To make this story intelligible in a song would require a much greater number of verses than any one is authorised to inflict upon an audience at once j the reader must therefore be content to learn, in a note, that Fionnuala, the daughter of Lir, was, by some" supernatural power, transformed into a swan, and condemned to wander for many hundred years over certain lakes and rivers in Ireland, till the coming of Christianity, when the first sound of the mass-bell was
to be the signal of her release___I found this fanciful fiction among
some manuscript translations from the Irish, which were begun under the direction of that enlightened friend of Ireland, the late Countess of Moira. |
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