The Boy Who Knew What the Birds Said  by Padraic Colum

The Sea-Maiden Who Became a Sea-Swan

Part 2 of 2

Down he went to the Kingdom-Under-Wave and he came to the black mansion where lived the Seven Spinning Women of the Sea. He spoke as speaks a King who has a hard thing to do. "A law has to be broken," said he, "What law, Lord?" said the Spinning Women. "The law that saves our Maidens from taking part in the stormy lives of men." "We would rather that anything else but this should happen, Lord," said the Seven Spinning Women. "This thing must happen," said Mananaun, "and the Maiden Eevil must go to Branduv the King." "She must be prepared for this," said the Seven Spinning Women.

They came to me and they told me that the man whose shadow I had seen on the rock now claimed me for his wife and that Mananaun would not gainsay him. When I heard this, O my listeners, the life nearly left me.

This comfort the Seven Spinning Women gave me: I was to stay on his island so that I might become used to the earthly kingdom, but that I was not to see Branduv until the green had left my hair and the brown that the sun makes had come into my cheeks. So I came to Branduv's island. I lived by the sea-shore and the women of the island attended me.

How different was this earthly land from the Kingdom-Under-Wave. With us there was but the one mild season, the one mild light. Here there was glaring day and terrible darkness, bitter winds and hot beams of the sun. With us there were songs and tales, but the songs were about love or about the beautiful things we had seen. Here the tales and songs were about battles and forays and slaying with the sword. What they told of their loves was terrible, so much violence and unfaithfulness was in them.

The soft green tints were going out of my hair and the sun was putting brownness in my cheeks. Soon my hair would be wheaten-colored like the hair of the women of the islands and my cheeks would be brown like theirs. And then the day would come when I should have to be with the man whom I looked upon as my enemy.

I used to stay by the shore and speak with the birds that came in from the sea, for I knew their language. Never again could I go back to the Kingdom-Under-Wave. Green shade after green shade left my hair, brown tint after brown tint came into my cheeks, and what could I do but envy the birds that could make their flight from the islands of men. And when the green had nearly gone altogether from my hair I thought of a desperate thing I might do.

I sent a message to my sisters, and I sent it by many birds, so that if they did not get it by one they might get it by another. And I asked in my message that they send me a draft from the Well under the Sea, and that they send it in the cup that the Seven Spinning Women guarded. It would be terrible for any of my sisters to come to Branduv's island with the draft and the cup, but I begged that they would do it for me.

The days went by and the green color was now only a shade in my hair, and brownness was on my cheeks, and the women said "Before this old moon is gone our King will come here to wed you."

Then one day I found on the shore the cup that my sisters had brought and the draft from the Secret Well was in it. I took the cup in my hands and I brought it where I lived. "Come to us," said the women, "so that we may undo your hair and tell the King when he may come to wed you." They loosened my hair and then they said "there is no shade of green here at all. Bid the King come as early as he likes to-morrow."

I lay that night with the cup beside me. When I rose I knew that day I should drink from the cup my sisters had sent me—drink the draft that would change me into what I wished to be—a bird of the sea.

And while I sat with the cup beside me and my hair spread out, Branduv, the King of the Island, came to the door of the house. It may have been that I was becoming used to the sight of people of the earthly kingdoms, for, as I looked upon him he did not seem terrible to me. He looked noble, I thought, and eager to befriend me and love me. But the cup was in my hands when he came to the door. I put it to my lips when he entered the house. I drank it when he took a step towards me. And thereupon I became what I had wished to be—a Sea-Swan.

O my listeners! Maybe it would have been well for me if I had wed that King, and be now as the women of the islands. For now as I fly over the sea the King's look comes before me, and I think that he was eager to befriend me and eager to love me. So I am not content when I am flying over the sea. And I am lonely when I am on these islands, for I am now a Swan, and what has a Swan to do with the lives of men?

Such was the story that the Sea-Swan told the pigeons of the rock, and the Boy who knew what the Birds said heard it all, and remembered every word of it.