Leannai Lir.

Once upon a time there was a King who had 4 children. The King's name was Lir. His children were Fionuala, the fair shouldered; Aodh the bright; Fiachra the raven & Conn the chief, who were twins & youngest.


Now Lir was Lord of the sea & everything a king should be: beautiful & strong with plenty of red gold about his wrists & at his throat, a hosting of men to fill his halls & he had to wife Aoibhe, the most beautiful woman in all the world. Not only was Aiobhe beautiful but kindness ruled her tongue & she was well loved by all who knew her. But one day Death came for Aoibhe & stole her away & her children knew her no more.


The children of Lir grieved for Aoibhe until Lir could bear it no longer & took to wife Aoibhe's sister, Aoife the radiant. But Aoife was not as her sister Aoibhe. She had no greatness of spirit, no generosity of heart. Her soul was a crabbed & wizened thing with no pity for the children's grief & only jealousy for the love they had for each other & in her spite she did what ought not to be done. She would have killed the children but she had no courage for that & instead she turned them into wild swans joined together by fine silver chains, condemned to spend 300 years on Lough Derravaragh, 300 years on the Sea of Moyle & 300 years on Innis Gluire until a man from the north mated a woman of the south & the tolling bell foretold the coming of a new God.
A thousand years & more later Hans Christian Anderson told another tale of a spiteful stepmother turning children into wild swans who could only be redeemed by their sister knitting nettles into coats that would restore to them their full humanity.
It used to be one of my favourites but I read it now & am struck by the many layers that have survived the onslaught of Christianity & go unrecognized. There is the geis: the binding & forbidding of a certain thing on a certain person for the sister is not to speak as she weaves her magic or all will be forfeit & her brother's will die. The triple aspect of the goddess survives unrecognised. The Celtic belief in shapechanging remains.


Fairy~tales. We have relegated them to children's picture books but these were never stories just for children. Children do not understand sexual jealousy or the jealousy of an older woman for one far younger & more beautiful. The lessons of courage & loyalty, of love & devotion they may take for granted yet these are often the first stories we tell our children & they are not, & never were, just stories. They were a teaching tool for the long winter nights around the fireside while the wind howled around the thatched roof & the snow came down in great white drifts. They have been passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation long before they were ever written down. The archetypes are ancient & instantly recognizable. Read or told as they were meant to be they are amongst the most frightening literature I know. They reveal a deep understanding of the very nature of Man. They hold a mirror up to our inner selves & reveal that which we keep most carefully hidden from prying eyes & are amongst the most honest literature I know. They are amongst the first stories I ever learnt & will likely be the last to fade from my memory. They should be read with far more caution that most people give them credit for.