The Children of the Children of Lir

JOURNAL ENTRY

 11^th June, Tuesday

“Standing knee deep 
In a green ocean of grass.
The woodpecker’s
Seagull laughter
Tumbles among the trees below.

And here am I
On a summer’s evening,
Skimming stones across the stilled waters 
Of a restless mind.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

It's been a day of thunder and hail too. Slate grey skies and yellow light. There's a brisk westerly wind that jostles along the banks, bending the reeds and flattening the grasses. The rain has eased a little, but there is a lot more to come.  The last light picks and flecks at the troubled surface of the canal.

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the darkness of a wet and windy June night to you wherever you are. 

I am really glad that you could make it tonight. Come inside out of the rain. It's warm and dry in here, the kettle is on the hob, the biscuit barrel is full, thank you for coming and welcome aboard. 

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS  

June, as Miles Hadfield notes in his An English Almanac, can popularly be referred to as ‘flaming June’ and, he goes on, that this title can be justified by looking at the historical records. June, he asserts is, on average, “the sunniest and driest” month of the year, if not the warmest. This perception seems to carry some weight. Hadfield argues that the Anglo Saxon’s named this month ‘the dry month’ although I think there might be some confusion going on here. One name for it was Ærra-Liða-monaþ which can be translated as first travelling (or perhaps sailing) month. July is the second travelling month. By inference, one could argue that these point to calm dry weather – good for travelling.

Well, whatever the case, this June can certainly not be described as either ‘flaming’ or particularly dry. Atlantic fronts are still passing through, building huge cloudscapes of louring light and dumping, sometimes quite heavy, falls of rain. The temperature has dropped on a couple of recent nights to low single figures. Not quite a frost, but fairly close! And although generally it is not particularly cold, there can be a damp and chilly feel. More than a couple of stoves have been lit locally and I have seen multiple posts on social media about the need for a fire, and we have had to resort to putting the central heating on first thing in the morning. All to the grumbled accompaniment of ‘heating on in June!’ In fairness, Hadfield does recognise that weather records show that ground frosts are not uncommon in this month and snow has been known to fall. He also warns that Buchan’s famous (or should that be infamous?) fourth cold spell starts on June 29^th and lasts into July. He also balances his reference to June being a ‘dry and sunny month’ with an observation that some of our most famous rainstorms have occurred in this month and (bearing in mind he was writing in the 1940s) that the wettest UK day on record occurred in Bruton, Somerset on 29^th June 1917.

The swings in temperature and chasing sunshine and rain hasn’t dampened the grass pollen at all. I’m finding hay fever a particular problem at the moment. Last week, we had moored up beside some nettles and for a while I could see small smoke-signal, puffs of pollen rise up from the nettle heads each time the Erica brushed against them. This morning, as Maggie and I were walking along the towpath, out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of what looked like a small fire on the bankside. Thin grey billows lazily lifting into the air. It was strange as the ground was so wet. It was only as I looked closer that I noticed that it, again, was pollen, this time being lifted by the air disturbed by Maggie as she walked past.

Along the canal-side, fruit and berries are beginning to emerge. Hard, tiny, green ball-bearing-like spheres. Blackthorn, hawthorn, apple damson, and plum. Although some of the elders are still decorated with their lace-doily saucer-like blossom, small berries are forming behind the flowerheads too. We’ve not had quite such a dramatic display of blossom this years compared with last year, but it looks like it will be a good year for fruit harvesting. The trees and shrubs, at least, have been appreciating the rain!            

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

THE CHILDREN OF THE CHILDREN OF LIR

There is a story that speaks of the children of Lir which has been told among the mossy stones when wilder winds sang so that the hearth-fires flared and the roar of oak silenced the river song. It’s a wild and untamed story that evades our attempts to lock it within the straitjackets of our notions of literature and or ideas about how stories should behave. It belongs to a different time and no one knows from where it came, or why it was first told, only that it was told, perhaps, on nights a little like this one.

It tells of a time when the gods had grown old and their time ruling the old worlds and wild landscapes of our histories was fraying as all old garments eventually fray – the Gotterdammerung, the twilight of the gods. One group, the Tuatha Dè Dannan lived in what is now called Ireland and among this tribe of gods lived Lir, the god of the salty, white-crested, sea.

As is the way with men and gods, things never run smoothly and, ‘as sparks fly upward’ argument and bad feeling broke among the tuath. Lir took exception to another god being elected as their king and refuse to bow in obeyance to him. The other gods were concerned. The sea is powerful and its threat to life and land are real and so a solution was sought. The king had a beautify daughter, Aoibh, who was gentle and wise, and whose smile could hold back the storm clouds as they tumbled and growled in the west and whose deep brown eyes could heal the deepest wound.

Lir agreed to the marriage and whether it was her smile or her eyes or her wisdom, his anger and resentment was appeased and calmer waters prevailed. It was a marriage of convenience, a marriage construed for political ends, but the tender flame of love managed to kindle and then blaze. And Lir rejoiced in his love for Aoibh and Aoibh rejoiced in her love for Lir, and from that rejoicing grew their children; the children of Lir. Now, some versions say that there were four children. The eldest was their daughter, Fionnghuala, and then there came a boy, Aodh, and then youngest of all, twin boys, Fiacra and Conn. However, other versions say that there were just three children, Fionnghuala and the twins. While the version known, or at least re-told, by John Moriarty, there were three daughters. But then we are dealing with stories born in a different world to ours and which do not know – or, like Lir, refuse to bow the knee – to our rigid expectations of how stories should behave. We are in the world of myth and ancient tales and that world is shadowed and misty. For these are tales born upon and carried by tongue and breath. They morph and change and shape-shift. They cross barriers and boundaries because, like the lands in which they were born, they belong to no-one and no-one can call them their own. They mould themselves on the tongue and in the ear. As fluid as quick-silver and as hard to contain. They are untamed in their telling and to understand them, we need to hold them lightly and wait for them to speak, in their own ways at their own times.

The story goes that in bringing her final child into the world, Aoibh died. Lir was distraught and the pain of his loss rang around the granite cliffs above which the storm-petrels and sheerwaters soared and darkened his eyes. Where was Aoibh and her deep brown eyes that could heal even this deepest of all wounds? But the love for his children grew even as his grief burned and he saw in each the mirror of his love for his beloved Aoibh. And in that, there was enough healing for him to open his eyes each morning and find comfort in the shift of ocean swell that pounded loudly against the cliffs. And so, as naturally and fiercely as flames comes from a fire Lir’s love for his children grew and grew.             

But the other gods were sad for Lir and – who knows, perhaps a little worried that old enmities and resentments might once more ferment – and so the king suggested that Lir marry his other daughter, Aoife. She was just as pretty as Aoibh and could enchant the stars to sing even on nights of biting storms. But it may be said, it was rumoured she was not quite as gentle or wise as her sister Aiobh. But what she lacked in courtly skills she could make up in her knowledge of sorcery and magic.

Lir took her to be his wife. But, we are told, the fullness and the heart-heat of his love was for his children. He rejoiced in their growing and the wisdom that their mother, Aoibh, had given them, and their laughter and songs. And Aoife saw how strong Lir’s love for them was. That it was as strong as the braided twines of nettle stems, and as powerful as the rock-breaking saxifrage, and as enduring as heather.

Sometimes when you hold the power of sorcery and magic in your hands, but do not have as much power as the wise, frustration and envy can begin to fester and after a while Aoife grew envious of Lir’s love for his children and, no matter the enticements and enchantments she employed, recognised that the binding love between him and his children could not be broken. Her envy for that love grew and grew, as the fogs that hang low over the tidal marshes and drain all colour from the world, until even the sun could not penetrate it and it completely shrunk her world and blinded her.

One day she invited the children to travel with her in her chariot to visit some distant lands. However, in reality, she had planned to kill them. After a few miles, they stopped the chariot beside a lake and invited the children to go in for a swim. It is said by those who knew them, that the children loved to swim and so delightedly they ran down into the cool waters of the mirrored lake. As they were swimming, she turned to the warrior who was travelling with her to make sure that she was safe, held out her sword and instructed him to kill the children. Horrified he refused. No one in the entourage would lay a finger on the children of Lir. Angered, she grabbed her sword, but try as she might, she could not kill the children of the man she had married and, in her own true way, loved.

Caught in that moment of shock and frustration, Aoife threw down her sword upon the shingle bay of the lake where it blackened and twisted into the contortions of a hazel wand. Aoife stooped low to pick it up and cast an incantation upon the four children swimming in the mirrored peace of that far off lake, that for 900 years they would be banished from their friends and family and must suffer to live in the swan’s form. However, this one gift she did give to them, they were allowed to keep their human voices. The spell would be broken, it is said, only after they hear the sound of a Christian bell tolling.

For 900 years they lived upon the wild Atlantic storms, wave beaten and wind-blown. For three hundred years, reports arose among the Tuatha Dé Danann about four swans heard among the wild reeds of mountain tarns and salty loughs that sang such beautiful, heart-breaking songs.

News at last reached the heart-broken Lir about what had happened to his four children. In his rage he banished Aoife and turning her into a shrieking wind – that can still be heard today in the lonelier places of Ireland.

Three hundred and three hundred and three hundred more. Even the kingdoms of gods eventually fall and go the way of dust. Still the four children of Lir breasted the Atlantic swell and the rip currents of Malin, Rockall, Irish Sea, Fastnet, Shannon. It is said that little Fionnghuala would gather her brothers close to her to shelter them from the worst of the wind’s ravages and, at times, even allow and Fiacra and Conn to climb upon her back and nestled between her strong wings.           

Three hundred and three hundred and three hundred years more is a long time and even Lir’s name become only the stuff of legend and still they flew on slow breasting wings; One and then three, a silver-white arrow under grey boiling clouds. Those beneath them, looking into the skies to see how far rain was away from them, sometimes stopped and listened. And some, just a few, felt a quickening sorrow in their chest and wondered to themselves why they felt so moved by the wing-song of passing swans. 

Well, after nine hundred years, Christianity had come to Ireland and there was a new way of seeing things and living in this land. It is said that one day, a Christian hermit, living in a hut in the loneliest outpost of Ireland (as is the manner with hermits), rang his Sunday call to prayer bell. Its cracked tones hummed and buzzed across a mountain lake, where there just happened to be four swans swimming. As the bell strikes kept rolling, their feathers fell away and upon the shore lay the emaciated and shrivelled figures of Lir’s beloved children. They shakily stood to their feet and looked out at a world so totally different from the one they had known as children. The father, their friends (and enemies) now long dead and forgotten.

The hermit catching sight of them ran down to meet them…

The story now trifurcates (perhaps even more) – what happens? Is this tale a tragedy or a story of redemption? A morality fable or a fairy tale with a happy ending? Only you can finish this tale off – for that is the purpose of these old stories – well one of them at least. All I know is that the story of the children of Lir helps me understand my relationship with swans a little better.

Each morning our children of the children of Lir swim out of the mists of their myths and stories, breasting the waters of their worlds that I will never understand and am incapable of knowing. Although it is also a world whose sunshine warmth I share, and whose wind that ruffles the down on their necks, ruffles too my hair, and when it rains on them, it rains on me too – and we both hear its kissing hiss as it whips across the water’s surface. The intersection of the sets of the Venn diagram of our two worlds lies in this moment of meeting beside the canal.  

Perhaps it’s their big size or perhaps it is just their big personalities, but the presence of swans here never fails to make an impact. Even those who are not particularly swan lovers – and you have to be a rather forgiving sort to be a swan lover – take them to their heart. Yes, they can be assertive, and because of their size this can be taken for aggression and bad-temper, but they are also very much part of the community here. A few weeks ago, a fishing hook and float was seen stuck in the cob’s (male swan’s) mouth. A number of the boaters, without hesitation, immediately went out to catch him and disgorge the float and hook. It’s not easy catching a full-grown adult swan, particularly one in full protective mode (his partner was on the nest less than fifty yards away). The operation was a success and he’s fine. We might complain about them and find them hard to live with it – particularly at this time of the year – but if they are in trouble, they are there for them. Swans seem to have that effect on people.

I keep talking about ‘our’ swans or swan couple and that reminds me of a question that Lee sent me a few months back. She had noted that a year or so ago a couple of other swans had arrived and there had been a bit of a battle over territory. ‘How do I know which swans are the originals?’ How do I know that this swan couple is the same pair of swans that parented Cyril two years ago? It is a really good question and, no, I don’t have any secret swan recognition powers or am able to tell swans apart. The answer is rather prosaic and I expect a little dull.

When there was the territorial dispute both males were ringed – having what looks like wrist bands you get at concerts or festivals around their legs. Each one is numbered. That meant that I could be pretty confident that the original male swan was the one that remained. He has subsequently lost it, but there is a smaller bluer ring and a couple of other tell-tale marks now that he is older. Because swans partner for life, I could also be pretty sure that the female, the pen, was also the original one. She actually also has a rather distinctive swelling just below her beak which is also helpful in identifying her. So, for the most part, it is the balance of probabilities, plus a few extra, little corroborating pieces of evidence.

The other thing is that, although not so noticeable at the moment as the strain of hatching and rearing means that they change behaviour quite a lot, I can tell ‘our’ two by the way they interact. The male in particular is quite vocal and will usually greet me with a little contact-call snort. Sometimes, I will snort first and he will reply, at others he does it first. I’ve heard them use this between themselves, and particularly when Cyril was growing up into adolescence. For me, this only works with the swan I meet here and so, again, I can be fairly confident that it is the same swans I am meeting. 

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that the cygnets had hatched. Seven of them. I didn’t see the hatching, but we were there the next day to watch them being taken down to the water’s edge for their first swim. I uploaded a short video on social media and will try to upload it in the programme notes on the noswpod website. The first few weeks are particularly risky as the cygnets are still small enough to be carried off by seagulls, magpies, and rooks – as well as the usual prey animals. It makes sense to keep them mobile, build their strength and get them used to water as quickly as possible. Swans seem to keep a tight and well-regimented ship. No quarter is given. The bank to the water by their nest is quite steep. Getting out proved really tricky. The six of the exhausted cygnets barely made it. Alarmingly one couldn’t. It kept struggling up, tiny wings fluttering violently by its side, and then collapsing and sliding back down. Watching these events can be difficult. The mother coaxed it for a while and then, turned her back and left it, cheeping and panting pathetically in the water below. This is what can happen. The ill, injured or just weak are abandoned. There is no place for the weak in a swan’s family. But there is also no place for human moral values. She is not being a bad mother – try to step close to her nest or her brood and you will find out how selflessly she will protect them. She has spent weeks with little to no food, relatively unprotected and open to dangers of night (and day time) predators. She is doing what mother swans need to do. But it is also not easy for us to ignore. Someone got an old gang plank, that had laddered ridges on it and laid it on the bank as a ramp. Fortunately, the little grey fluff ball of a chick, spotted it and made its way up to it. We held our breaths to see if it would be accepted back into the family again – sometimes they are not. This time, it was.

I have to say that I have been surprised by how much the male took part in the nesting stage. Males tend to be the ones to build the nest as the females need to eat us much as possible to build a layer of fat to sustain for long days – and weeks – on the nest. However, what struck me this year, was the number of times he also took turns to sit on the eggs and let his partner go into the water to feed and drink. He also spent a lot more time with her on the nest, mostly sitting beside her, but sometimes he seemed to be sharing the nest. I expected him to have always been somewhere in the vicinity to guard against threats or attacks, but I hadn’t realised how physically close they were. Often rubbing heads and necks or wing and leg stretching together.

The cygnets continue to grow – although there are now only six of them. The seventh (we have no idea if it was the one who struggled to get out of the water or another one) was lost in the second week. Each morning the word goes around the boaters ‘still six’! Mum doesn’t seem quite so amenable to having the chicks ride on her back as she has in previous years. From time to time, they do still do it, but it is just not quite so often.    

And so watching them glide passed, hearing the little cheeps of the cygnets, and the regal, almost haughty, stare of their parents, I am reminded that there is something about swans. Something restless and ancient in the way I see them. the children of Lir have their own children.

SIGNING OFF

This is the narrowboat Erica signing off for the night and wishing you a very restful and peaceful night. Good night.

WEATHER LOG