Page:Irish Fairy Tales (Stephens).djvu/265

II brow set downwards and her chin set upwards and her mouth squeezed sidewards, so that her face looked like a badly-disappointed nut.

"And we are worth seeing," Cuillen continued, and the disappointment that was set in her sister's face got carved and twisted into hers, but it was worse in her case.

"That is the truth," said Iaran in a voice of lamentation, and her face took on a gnarl and a writhe and a solidity of ugly woe that beat the other two and made even her father marvel.

"He cannot see us now," Conaran replied, "but he will see us in a minute."

"Won't Fionn be glad when he sees us!" said the three sisters.

And then they joined hands and danced joyfully around their father, and they sang a song, the first line of which is:

Lots of the people in the Shí learned that song by heart, and they applied it to every kind of circumstance.