The Celtic god Lir - Danaan divinity, the father of the sea-god Mananan
The Children of Celtic Danaan god Lir
Lir
was a Danaan divinity, the father of the sea-god Mananan who
continually occurs in magical tales of the Milesian cycle. He had
married in succession two sisters, the second of whom was named
Aoife.She was childless, but the former wife of Lir had left him four
children, a girl named Fionuala and three boys. The intense love of
Lir for the children made the stepmother jealous, and she ultimately
resolved on their destruction. It will be observed, by the way, that
the People of Dana, though conceived as unaffected by time, and
naturally immortal, are nevertheless subject to violent death either
at the hands of each other or even of mortals.
The Children of Celtic Danaan god Lir
Lir, Danaan, Celtic Divinity
With her guilty object in view,
Aoife goes on a journey to a neighbouring Danaan king, Bōv the Red,
taking the four children with her. Arriving at a lonely place by Lake
Derryvaragh, in Westmeath, she [pg 140] orders her attendants to slay
the children. They refuse, and rebuke her. Then she resolves to do it
herself; but, says the legend, “her womanhood overcame her,” and
instead of killing the Children she transforms them by spells of
sorcery into four white swans, and lays on them the following doom:
three hundred years they are to spend on the waters of Lake
Derryvaragh, three hundred on the Straits of Moyle (between Ireland
and Scotland), and three hundred on the Atlantic by Erris and
Inishglory. After that, “when the woman of the South is mated with
the man of the North,” the enchantment is to have an end.
When the children fail to arrive with Aoife at the
palace of Bōv her guilt is discovered, and Bōv changes her into “a
demon of the air.” She flies forth shrieking, and is heard of no
more in the tale. But Lir and Bōv seek out the swan-children, and
find that they have not only human speech, but have preserved the
characteristic Danaan gift of making wonderful music. From all parts
of the island companies of the Danaan folk resort to Lake Derryvaragh
to hear this wondrous music and to converse with the swans, and
during that time a great peace and gentleness seemed to pervade the
land.
But at last the day came for them to leave the
fellowship of their kind and take up their life by the wild cliffs
and ever angry sea of the northern coast. Here they knew the worst of
loneliness, cold, and storm. Forbidden to land, their feathers froze
to the rocks in the winter nights, and they were often buffeted and
driven apart by storms. As Fionuala sings:
“Cruel to
us was Aoife
Who played her
magic upon us,
And drove us out
on the water—
Four wonderful
snow-white swans.
“Our bath
is the frothing brine,
In bays by red
rocks guarded;
For mead at our
father's table
We drink of the
salt, blue sea.
“Three
sons and a single daughter,
In clefts of the
cold rocks dwelling,
The hard rocks,
cruel to mortals—
We are full of keening to-night.”
Fionuala, the eldest of the four, takes the lead in all
their doings, and mothers the younger children most tenderly,
wrapping her plumage round them on nights of frost. At last the time
comes to enter on the third and last period of their doom, and they
take flight for the western shores of Mayo. Here too they suffer much
hardship; but the Milesians have now come into the land, and a young
farmer named Evric, dwelling on the shores of Erris Bay, finds out
who and what the swans are, and befriends them. To him they tell
their story, and through him it is supposed to have been preserved
and handed down. When the final period of their suffering is close at
hand they resolve to fly towards the palace of their father Lir, who
dwells, we are told, at the Hill of the White Field, in Armagh, to
see how things have fared with him. They do so; but not knowing what
has happened on the coming of the Milesians, they are shocked and
bewildered to find nothing but green mounds and whin-bushes and
nettles where once stood—and still stands, only that they cannot
see it—the palace of their father. Their eyes are holden, we are to
understand, because a higher destiny was in store for them than to
return to the Land of Youth.
On Erris Bay they hear for the first time the sound of a
Christian bell. It comes from the chapel of a hermit who has
established himself there. The swans are at first startled and
terrified by the “thin, dreadful sound,” but afterwards approach
and make themselves known to the hermit, who instructs them in the
faith, and they join him in singing the offices of the Church.
Now it happens that a princess
of Munster, Deoca, (the “woman of the South”) became betrothed to
a Connacht chief named Lairgnen, and begged him as a wedding gift to
procure for her the four wonderful singing swans whose fame had come
to her. He asks them of the hermit, who refuses to give them up,
whereupon the “man of the North” seizes them violently by the
silver chains with which the hermit had coupled them, and drags them
off to Deoca. This is their last trial. Arrived in her presence, an
awful transformation befalls them. The swan plumage falls off, and
reveals, not, indeed, the radiant forms of the Danaan divinities, but
four withered, snowy-haired, and miserable human beings, shrunken in
the decrepitude of their vast old age. Lairgnen flies from the place
in horror, but the hermit prepares to administer baptism at once, as
death is rapidly approaching them. “Lay us in one grave,” says
Fionuala, “and place Conn at my right hand and Fiachra at my left,
and Hugh before my face, for there they were wont to be when I
sheltered them many a winter night upon the seas of Moyle.” And so
it was done, and they went to heaven; but the hermit, it is said,
sorrowed for them to the end of his earthly days.
In all Celtic legend there
is no more tender and beautiful tale than this of the Children of
Lir.
Lir, Danaan, Celtic, father
of the seas,
Lir was a Danaan divinity,
the father of the sea-god Mananan who continually occurs in magical
tales of the Milesian cycle
