The children of Lir

By Helen Rooney

The Characters

• King Lir

• The step wife Aoife

• Fionnuala and her three brothers Aodh, Conn and Fiachra

• The monk

Costumes

• Scarves

• Cloak or a long coat

• Boots

• Tights

• Shorts

• Crown

• Wand

• White tops and trousers

The Plan

• The idea is to have a narrator tell the story and for the characters to act it out.

• The characters would then say important lines such as ‘ when the Christian bell heralds a new age the spell will be broken’ which was said by Aoife.

• Some students will have to act as two characters.

The Play

Once upon a time in Ireland, there lived a king named Lir and his stepwife Aoife as well as his four children, Fionnuala, Aodh,Conn and Fiachra.

King Lir loved his children dearly but Aoife didn’t. She thought that King Lir loved the children more than he loved her and so she was very jealous of them. She wanted to get rid of them so she hatched a plan.

Aoife brought the children to the lake and while she was there she put a spell onto the children and she turned the children into swans

‘I have put a spell on you. You must spend nine hundred years as swans, three hundred on Lough Derravaragh, three hundred on the Straits of Moyle and three hundred on the Isle of Inish Glora. When the Christian bell heralds a new age the spell will be broken

Aoife then returned to the castle and she told King Lir that the children had drowned. King Lir immediately ran down to the lake to find his children but all he could see were four beautiful swans swimming towards him. Then one of them spoke. ‘Father, it is Fionnuala’.


The King was shocked to hear the swan speak. When Fionnuala had told him what had happened, he was so angry he turned Aoife into a moth.


The King spent many hours down at the lake bringing the children food and teaching them new songs but one day he didn’t come. The King had passed away and now the children were alone.

Once three hundred had passed the children then flew to the rough sea of Moyle. Once another three hundred years had passed, they then made their last flight to Inish Glora where they spent their last three hundred years.

One morning they heard a bell ringing. They swam to the shore where they saw a monk ringing a bell. ‘Is that a Christian Bell?’, Fionnuala asked.
The monk was surprised to hear a swan speak so Fionnuala told him their story.

While Fionnuala was telling her story, their was a bright light and the children were turned into people again.

The children returned to Lough Derravaragh where they lived happily ever after

The End