UK 011 Children of Lir

So long long ago, um there was a king and a queen and they had four children. The children were called the Children of Lir, because the king was King Lir.

And then sadly his wife died. And he was very worried about how he would bring up all his children without a wife, so he remarried. But his new wife was jealous of how much he loved his children. And she was always trying to find a way to um to... to.. divide him from his children or to... to.. come between his children. 

And um one day um she told the children that she was gonna take them to a nearby lake, to have a swim in the summer. So she told the children to take off all their clothes to get in to the lake. And while the children were in the lake swimming, she used a magic spell on the children. And, and she turned the four children in to four swans.

So they were swimming on the lake and obviously there were terrified of what was happening to them. And she told them that the.. she put a curse on them, to turn them in to swans. And they would be on this lake for three hundred years. 

And after they had been on the lake for three hundred years they would be they would be, they would have to move to the Atlantic coast of Ireland where itfs very harsh and windy and cold and bitter weather and they would have to be there for three hundred years. And then finally they would be on the n.. n.. Irish sea, on the... on the eastern cost of Ireland for three hundred years. so the children wept and wept and wept. Because they knew that they could never be able to tell their father what had happened to them.

But um, there was nothing that they could do. So they lived in great sadness on the lake for three hundred years, and then they moved on to the wild Atlantic coast of Ireland  for further three hundred years. And it was so cold one evening, they were all um they um gathered on a rock and it was so cold that it seemed that the sea would freeze and um when they had been sitting, had.. sitting or standing on the rock for a long time, they realized that their feet had frozen to the rock. And near where I live on the west coast of Ireland, there is actually a rock which has the... the shape of swans feet imprinted on it. So people often take children to see these feet. 

So than finally after three hundred years on the Atlantic coast, they flew to the Irish sea the cost of the Irish sea and they lived there. 

And finally after nine hundred years um one day, the spell was broken. And they found themselves transformed in to very very old people. And as they looked around every body that they had known had of course died, And everything had changed. And um, they died, with great sadness knowing that they had never been able to explain to their father where they had gone.