The Children of Lir

by Marion Grace Woolley

  “Red sky in morning, heed thy warning,” I muttered to myself, and by midday I was trapped inside the church listening to the downpour against the roof. Had I been Noah, I might have built an ark. Being simply Mochaomhog, I pulled out a bound set of scripture and went about reflecting on the story of Jesus calming the seas and the wind. I wondered whether the rain might obey me, should I ask it.

  I slept much of that day and in the evening, when the rain finally eased, I was met with the most incredible sight. Out along the machair a blanket of birds swathed the green. Their constant calls filled my ears and when I walked among them they were not afraid. Instead of taking flight, they simply parted between my feet to continue their hunt for worms. I sat among them and laughed, for I had never seen such a sight. This is truly God’s island, I thought.

  As the sun set, the birds took their leave – a vast cloud lifting. Yet I remained there, walking across the soft ground, crouching to gaze at the moon’s reflection in the pools of water. It was then that I heard the song. A song so sweet it took command of me.

  For some time I walked, guided only by that sound, which seemed to ensure that my feet found their footing. Some part of me worried at what I might find. There were tales of those who went walking at night beneath the full moon. They met with the fay folk who lived in the barrows, and never returned. Then there were the merrow, which all sailors feared, their soft voices singing ships to wreck upon the rocks.

  I fingered the cross at my neck. It had been given to me by Brendan, who told me Columba himself carved it from a holly branch, its white wood glowing in the dark.

  God of all the world, though the night around me lies, make bright the stars above me now, that they may be my eyes.

  In answer to my prayer a hundred small pools, which a moment before had been black as tar, glittered with stars, as though the very sky had fallen to earth. I felt myself to be standing on the brink of this world and the next. God lit my way with His lanterns, that I might pick my way across the machair without falling.

  On the other side of that mystical river, I saw a rocky promontory. The rough sea split its waves across black rock, crowned by four white swans.

  The swans were singing.

  Fionnuala

  At first, I thought Aibric had returned. As morning came and we stretched our wings, our eyes came to rest upon a man lying face-down on the sand, his arm outstretched towards us.

  “He must have brought more wine with him,” Fiachra said, as we swooped down to take a closer look.

  “It can’t be Aibric,” Aodh said. “Not unless he were one of the ancient race. It’s been so long since he left us, wouldn’t his hair be grey by now?”

  “And Aibric never did smell so good,” Conn said, plucking at the stranger’s salty mane.

  The man’s hair was certainly a shade lighter than Aibric’s, and his beard was far better kempt. He wore a simple tunic with kidskin trousers laced at the side.

  “Who do you suppose he is?” I asked.

  We cast about for signs of a shipwreck, but saw none. Sure that he was alive, we flew to Brendan’s church and saw it to be occupied. There were scorch marks on the bread kiln, and a powdering of flour on the grass. The door had blown open and inside the blankets were freshly laid.

  “It looks as though a Man of God has come to our island,” Aodh said, leafing through the pages by his bed. “Perhaps he is one of Brendan’s brothers?”

  It had been a long time since we had eaten anything other than fish and seaweed. When we found the loaf of freshly baked bread, we fell upon it, leaving not a crumb. In our guilt, we fled the house for the open ocean.

  That night we returned, careful to press ourselves against uneven ground so that our colour would not give us away. The man was there, scribbling by the light of the fire. He used one of our feathers as a quill and seemed to be composing a letter. He murmured to himself softly, scratching out what he had written and throwing more than one sheet to the flames. Eventually, his shoulders sagged and he stared up at the sky. It was a dark night, the moon cloaked in clouds.

  “He must have heard us singing,” I said.

  “He saw us, yet he has not harmed us,” Fiachra agreed.

  Over the next few days we observed him without being observed. He prayed in the morning, ringing the bell before sinking to his knees. In the evenings he walked the coast to watch the birds, and at night he returned to the rocks we had called our home. We knew he was looking for us.

  On the fourth day, we found a fresh loaf of bread there.

  Conn proclaimed it a gift, Fiachra proclaimed it a trap. In the end, the smell won us over and we feasted again.

  “We should thank him,” Conn said. “Perhaps he will bake more?”

  When we eventually took up courage to visit the church again, we found the man sitting outside as though expecting us. There was a bowl of water from the well, and another loaf of bread. When he saw us, he reached for the bread and began tearing pieces from it and throwing them to us.

  “Brendan told me of you,” he said, smiling. “He told me you would keep me company, and that I would be talking to you before long.”

  At this, we came closer.

  “He told you of us?” Conn asked.

  The man’s face lost all colour.

  “Good Lord! My ears deceive me!”

  He dropped the bread and rose to his feet.

  We fled.

  *

  For much of the next moon we played a game of cat and mouse with the priest. For days he went without sleep, walking the island, looking for us. Each time we saw him coming and took flight.

  “Please!” he cried out. “Please, come back!”

  Yet we had been so long without human company. We knew nothing of the mainland or its chiefs. In the years since Aibric had left us, we came to hope our peace there would be eternal. In our child-like way we had called the rocks our castles and the evening birds our subjects. We relived the games of our youth and played at kings and warriors, for there was no one there to observe or to remind us that we were beasts.

  It was the full May moon when he chanced upon me. My brothers had gone to the flats to hunt for worms with the waders, but I was tired and stayed behind. I was resting in the shallows with my head tucked beneath my wing, which is why I had not seen him approach.

  “Excuse me, young maiden,” he called from the shore. The priest stood, up to his ankles in the chill water, with a bannock of bread beneath his arm. “Excuse me, but I am looking for the swans.”

  Mochaomhog

  I had come to believe that nothing on that island was natural. A land ruled by birds, and birds that spoke! Yet neither was I afraid, for I knew then that the twinkle in Brendan’s eye had spoken more of what he knew than his lips, and I knew that he would never send me into danger.

  My heart longed to know more of the beautiful creatures which had sung so sweetly that night, and I made it my mission to seek them out. When I woke on the shore, I believed it to have been a dream. The stress of months at sea, and the poor night’s sleep I’d had. Yet when I returned to my house to find my bread gone and a swan feather left in tribute, I knew there to be more at work than a young man’s imagination.

  When I was a boy beneath Cecilia’s protection, she would tell me stories of children turned to swans. She also told me stories of great kings who lived a thousand years and queens who transformed into crows. So many stories I heard growing up, but only those of the scriptures were told to me as true. The rest I took as folklore from a time long past. A shadowy world which the light of God would one day illuminate, as though wiping sleep from a person’s eyes. I wished then that I could remember the exact words of her stories as clearly as those of the saints.

  On the bright full moon, I baked another loaf and set out in search of those feathered wonders whose song I now heard in my dreams. That night, I chanced upon a quiet inlet, and there beheld a figure upon a rock. The clouds cleared and a shaft of moonlight fell upon the form. W
hen I saw what it was, my breath left me.

  It was the naked figure of a young woman. Her skin was pale as starlight, her long flaxen hair tumbling down her back, swept about her buttocks by the water.

  All my life I had heard the sailors’ stories, and many a time I had chanced to glimpse the ocean’s rarities for myself: fish that could fly, seals with the faces of humans, and horses which charged across the foaming waves. Yet never had I seen a vision so vivid.

  “Excuse me,” I called out, believing her to be a merrow. “I am looking for the swans.”

  Her eyes met mine. For a moment I thought she might speak.

  I took a step towards her, and that is when I caught her reflection in the water. As my eyes rose, her body matched that reflection, becoming a beautiful swan which took flight.

  *

  The next morning, I loaded my boat with a few supplies and rowed for Inishkeeragh. My skin was red from the sun by the time I reached there, and I found Bartholomew in his garden, tending to his beans.

  “Brother, I must speak with you!” I cried.

  After recounting my story, fearful he might think me possessed and order the Devil cast out, he sat back in his chair and smiled.

  “How strange that Brendan never told you himself,” he said. “Have you never heard the story of The Children of Lir?”

  Brigid ingen Cobthaig

  My beloved’s member occasionally caused me pain in the mornings. He was wide of girth and I had yet to loosen with child.

  “Whoever knew that peace could feel so good?” he whispered in my ear, turning me from him and trapping my ankles between his thighs as he pushed into me again.

  “Here’s to a lifetime of peace,” I replied, smiling.

  The South had been fighting the Kings of the North for longer than I had been breathing. Yet now the ringing of metal ceased to wake infants in their sleep. My father had grown weary of the fight, wishing to expand his own kingdom south, but unable to do so due to the army pledged against the north.

  The Uí Néills of the North and South had themselves grown weary of warring, and had started to speak of the idea of unity, though none believed this would come to pass. Too many lives, and too much blood, had gone before to be forgotten.

  He thrust again and I bit into my pillow to stifle a cry, his hand fingering between my clamped legs to feel the wetness there. After he withdrew, I could feel his fullness within me for the rest of the day, lending my stride his strength. I belonged to my kingly love, and I fancied he knew it. Yet that morning, there was something I wished to discuss with him.

  As he lay on his back, brow bathed in sweat, I tenderly kissed his neck and ear until his arm reached about and held me to him.

  “Let me rest, my love. Our subjects await, and I can hardly wake. You would bring about the fall of my kingdom faster than a hundred of your father’s soldiers.”

  I laughed, and teased the hair beneath his belly.

  “Am I?” I asked.

  “Are you what?”

  “Your love?”

  He took me gently by my hair, and pulled my face away that he might better study me. “How can you possibly ask that? Have I ever given you reason to doubt?”

  “No. Not from the moment we met.”

  “And so?”

  “And so, I was wondering—”

  “A dangerous pastime, to be sure.”

  I slapped him playfully across the cheek, then kissed him there.

  “In two moons’ time, I am to be bound to you in front of everyone in Ireland who matters.”

  “My darling, everyone in Ireland matters, both friends and especially foe. We just don’t have room in the halls of Ulster to accommodate them all.”

  “And all will wish to be here, on this historic occasion, when the North and South unite.”

  “And so, again, and so?”

  “And so, shouldn’t we make this a festival none shall forget?”

  “Your beauty and my army are enough that none shall forget. Yet, I sense there is more to your request than a new dress?”

  I rolled onto my back and rested my arm across my forehead. A sign of defeat that never failed to rouse his sympathy in our marital bed.

  “What is it?” he asked, propping himself up on one elbow.

  “Nothing. It’s just that story the poet told.”

  “Which poet?”

  “That Aibric of yours.”

  “The song about the swans?”

  “Don’t you think it would be magical? If those birds were to exist out there on Inis Gluaire?”

  “I suppose,” he replied, frowning.

  “You suppose, and I know. If we were to bring the swans here to sing for our wedding—”

  He laughed at this. “You would have me ride all the way to the coast for a drunken bard’s tale?”

  “No, I would have you ride to the coast for me.”

  “Oh, my sweet love. What folly! To think the High King of Ireland free to chase fairytales.”

  “I am not asking you to chase fairytales, my love. I am asking you to write one.”

  Aodh

  It was a strange bewitchment, that last year before the end. We came to welcome Mochaomhog to our island, none more so than my sister. Even when he was working the soil her eyes were upon him. He had a fine sailor’s body with thick arms and a washerwoman’s board for a belly. Fiachra joked that he was Fianna, perhaps even Cú Chulainn returned from the Summerlands. Through the never-ending knots of death and rebirth, I could not say whether it was that mighty warrior I had so admired. Though one thing was plain to see, it was not Ferdiad he sought.

  Once a month, when the clouds parted to allow the light of the full moon to kiss the shore, I would see the young priest swimming in the sea. There by his side was my sister. As my brothers and I watched, we saw a strangeness about the way they were. When he reached out his hand to her, it stopped half-a-hand from her neck and caressed the air as though caressing skin.

  “It is only on the full moon that he sees me,” she told us. “It is as though we were beneath the waves in Tír fo Thuinn. As though I had taken on my true form. We swim together, and we talk.”

  “What do you talk of?”

  “Our lives. The things we have seen. He has travelled far, and I—”

  “Have lived long,” I completed. “You say all of these things together, naked in the cold water?”

  Had she been able, my sister would have blushed.

  “I don’t like it,” Conn said. We looked at him, for it was unusual to hear him speak anymore. “I do not trust this new god, Fin. I don’t trust this man who speaks on their behalf.”

  “What reason has he given us not to trust him?” I asked.

  My brother simply looked away without reply.

  “I think he is a kind man,” my sister said. “He bakes bread for us in the morning and reads scripture to us at night. He has even offered…” Her voice grew faint.

  “I know what he has offered,” said Conn. “And I say no.”

  She looked to Fiachra, who looked away, and then to me.

  “I remain with my brothers.” I told her. “I do not think it would be wise.”

  “What harm could it do? It’s only a little water, a little wine, a little bread.”

  “We have lived one eternity, would you condemn us to another?” Fiachra asked, his voice harsher than he’d expected. He composed himself and continued, “Conn is right, we know nothing of their Heaven. He asks us to follow him to a new world, when he knows nothing of our old one. Who is he to say which is better, more ‘virtuous’ and ‘holy’? I dislike the language of his books.”

  “We die once, Fin,” I spoke. “Perhaps one day we will be reborn as Christians, in the proper place at the proper time, but until then, our place is with our family in Tír na nÓg. Don’t you want to see our father again? Our mother? Sorcha and Ailbhe?”

  She hung her head and nodded. I realised in that instant that my sister was in love. Those nights she spent
swimming beneath the moon with Mochaomhog, he saw her as she once was, and she saw him as he might someday be – a husband, a father, a protector. I flinched. After all these centuries, why now?

  The waters had grown cooler the past few months. We were not blind to the fact that our time was growing short. Conn still dreamed of the fireside at Sidhe Fionnachaidh. He cried out sometimes in his sleep, calling for another cup of sweet milk or for his pony. Fiachra had taken up my own dream, fighting side by side with the Fianna across the sea to Alba. Whereas my dreams returned each night to Caílte. I still slept soundly upon his chest by Loch Dairbhreach, surrounded by a thousand lamps. Often, when I awoke, I could smell him on me. It took a moment for the rock beneath to grow firm and cold again.

  Yet, my sister. I had never heard her talk in her sleep, and it seemed that she only now thought to hold to a dream. A dream that pulled her further from us with each full moon. I wished Mochaomhog had never come to the island. We only had a little time left. What good did it do to disturb her now? To present her with hope for a future she could never claim?

  Then, what if I was wrong?

  None of us knew what would happen once the curse was lifted. Our father’s fort was long abandoned, that was true, and Mochaomhog’s hut was certainly not big enough for the four of us. But who was to say we couldn’t build other huts? Perhaps return to the mainland and present ourselves to the High King. He would be sure to give us shelter once he learned who we were. Or maybe we could simply slip away, become fishermen, or stablehands, or cowherds and live our lives simple but free.

  Every Sunday Mochaomhog read to us from his sacred book. I listened to those stories carefully, of a man swallowed by a whale, of another, the son of a god, nailed to a post and risen from the dead. Those stories made sense to me. Our own father had been a god. In that respect we were like Jesus of Nazareth. We had been sacrificed for the jealousy of others, Aoife our Pontius Pilate. Our own lives had been story longer than we had been human. Perhaps, if our story were to mirror his own, we, too, might rise from the dead.