For Paul Brookes’ challenge, the image I chose to write to is a painting of the Children of Lir. You can read all the poems here and see the images that inspired them.
Fionnuala
How did you manage alone in the wilds
and three young boys who would never be men?
How did you know with no stars in the sky
to steer them from one sheltered nest to the next,
when the winter came fierce and the ocean swelled high?
How did you live with a twice-broken heart
cast out from your home to never return
and the years that weighed down on your father’s head
till they buried him under a cairn on the hill?
Time flew for those that you loved, and you flew
in the guise of a swan in the path of the storm,
as the world turned, forgetting the old ones and you.
Who would have known of your journey at all
had it not had a moral to be twisted and torn
like the neck of a swan in the teeth of the storm?
Jane Dougherty Writes 
The ending is so sad and poignant. Swans seem to show up in lots of old stories and myths.
This is another one I didn’t know.
The Children of Lir is a classic. It was one of the first stories I read on my own. There are several endings, not all Christian ones.
Yes, swans are magical birds.
I can’t say I ever remember reading the story, but I agree that swans are magical.
I asked my husband just out of curiosity and he hadn’t heard of it either. I was astonished. Shows how cultural differences exist even with people living side by side.
Interesting! Perhaps your family was more interested in the old stories than his was.
No, it’s because he is English and the English don’t have a mythology. There are local folk stories but he wouldn’t even know those. I was brought up on Irish myths and stories and I assumed they were general knowledge, but husband says the English don’t know them at all unless they’ve made a special search for them. So close, but with not many points in common!
Oh, I thought he was Irish, too!
I kind of wonder now if my mother’s grandmother told her any folktales.
No, he’s English on his mother’s side and his father has obscure Jewish origins. His mother was not exactly thrilled that her only son was living with an Irish.
I bet she did, but it was things like that, that are so important that got lost along the way to integration.
I love the “obscure Jewish origins.” 🙂
Interesting that his mom felt that way.
Some of my husband’s family weren’t thrilled about him marrying me.
His grandfather had his son (my father-in-law) baptised as a Christian and nobody ever talked about the ancestors, or even where they came from. He changed his own name from Samuel to Jack. The English were pretty antisemitic, so it was probably for that reason.
What intrigues me is that husband’s father and both his parents had jet black hair. I have (had) black hair like both my parents, yet none of our children have black hair. Where did it go?
That is funny and interesting. Obviously someone in the ancestry had lighter hair. 🙂
Husband’s mother. They all had mid-brown fairish hair I think. Shame none of them had red hair. That’s all lost too.
Who knows? It could show up. My husband’s hair is medium brown. Mine was dark brown, but in the summer had gold and red natural highlights. Our daughter (younger child) had blonde hair till she was about 6. It was straight, then it became super-curly with puberty. The curly hair comes from my side. My family and husband’s all have various shades of brown with some blond and red, too.
Maybe black hair is recessive, like red hair. The English used to have colouring that reflected the different ethnic groups they included, from the very fair Viking types to the black and red Celtic types, but today they are sort of uniformly mid-brown.
Reblogged this on The Wombwell Rainbow.
Thanks Paul.
Fragments sailing on the wind…caught and retold to suit the teller of the tale. (K)
Yes, and I have have my agenda too.
We all do.
This is beautiful and very graphic 💜
Thank you, Willow xxx