Some more nouns from the ET logbook

XLIII

The guru;

At the bottom of the webpage,

The pay-button.

XLIV

Alchemy;

Hydrogen and oxygen,

Water.

XLV

No payment, no admission;

Hospital,

U.S.A.

Welcome to my weekly blog,  SATURDAY SESSIONS!

In this blog, for the perusal of all our students, past, present and future, I include an extract from our interactive presentation Course, Ireland and its Culture.

If you wish to ask me any question about the text, by the way, just send me an e-mail at greg@bluefeather.ie

                         The legend of the Achilles of Ireland 

CÚCHULAINN

In ancient Ireland, it was not uncommon for women to delay the birth of their child until the day was right to give birth. A mat day was a good or auspicious day; an anm day was a bad or inauspicious day.  Sometimes, these women would consult the druids for advice on the best day to give birth.

One such woman was the mother of Setanta, later to be known as Cúchulainn; she was told by a druid  that her son would die young but that his name would last forever. Indeed, Cúchulainn eventually became the Achilles of Irish mythology.

Cúchulainn means the Hound of Culann.  One day, Setanta went to visit his uncle, Culann. He had his hurley and sliotar with him as he loved hurling and practised his skills at every opportunity.

As he approached the castle, Culann's Irish wolfhound attacked him, but Setanta struck his sliotar down the throat of the dog and killed him.

Culann was very disappointed but Setanta offered to be his 'guard dog' until Culann found a new animal to replace him. From then on he was known as Cúchulainn, the hound of Culann. 

Cúchulainn grew up and became an elite member of the Red Branch Knights of Ulster, the province in the north of Ireland.  A story of epic proportions was about to unfold, not unlike the story of Troy. Unlike Troy, however, this was story of petty jealousy, not the rescue of the beautiful Helen of Troy, but the theft of a bull for no other reason than to satisfy a woman's greed!

At the time, in the west of Ireland, Queen Maeve of Connaught  was restless and unhappy about the fact that her husband was wealthier than she was. In particular, he had a stud bull called Finbhennach which was regarded as one of the best in Ireland.  Cattle was a unit of currency in those days; the more cattle you had, the wealthier you were. Maeve knew that there was a stud bull in Ulster which was as good as Finnbhennach and she was determined to get it, even if it meant going to war.

This momentous event was known as Táin Bó Cuailgne, the Cattle Raid of Cooley. Maeve marched north with her army and succeeded in crossing the border because the man in charge of protecting the Ulster border at the time, Cúchulainn, was in bed with a lover.

In a desperate attempt to delay the approach of Maeve's army into Ulster, Cúchulainn demanded single combat, as was one's right at the time.

Cúchulainn defeated all the best warriors from Maeve's army and was eventually forced to face his best friend and fellow warrior, Ferdia, from Connaught.

The combat lasted for three long days and both men suffered terrible wounds. In a final act of desperation, Cúchulainn reluctantly used his most powerful weapon against Ferdia, the Gae Bolg, a barbed spear that was hurled from one's foot.

Ferdia died from the wound and Cúchulainn, in tears, carried him across the stream where they had fought, to be taken away for burial by his people.

Cúchulainn braced himself for more fighting, but he had lost a lot of blood. 

Eventually, he tied himself to a standing stone in a field and although very weak from his wounds, he was still able to hold his sword. Nobody dared approach him until a raven had landed on his shoulder. It was only then that they were sure that he was dead.

Maeve got her bull and brought him back to Connaught. However, the bull, Donn Cuailgne (The Brown One from Cuailgne), fought in the fields with her husband's bull, Finnbhennach, and killed him; but Donn Cuailgne, like Cúchulainn, died shortly afterwards from his wounds.

A bronze statue of Cúchulainn can be seen at the GPO (General Post Office) in O'Connell St. Cúchulainn was a source of inspiration to the leaders of the 1916 Rebellion which had the GPO as its headquarters.

They say there are two types of people in the world, those who say that there are two types of people in the world and those who don't.

In numerology, there are three: those who believe in numerology (Y); those who don't (N); and then there are the fence-sitters (Y/N).                                                                            

Like me.

Why am I on the fence?

Because of the Golden Ratio, the Fibonacci Sequence, Sacred Geometry... Never heard of these concepts?  Look them up when you have a moment. You will be amazed!!                               

In ancient times, numbers weren't just numbers; they had an energy, a character and a potential all of their own.                                                                                                      

Moulded by the mass-hypnosis of our our 19th century model of education and left-brain thinking and behaviour, our culture in the (industrially) developed world of the 21st century has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. We need hard evidence for everything, even though scientists can't tell us what reality is. They don't even know what consciousness is and they cannot explain how we experience the world around us.

And yet we continue to believe in the superstition of materialism!

That's why I'm firmly on the fence when it comes to a belief in numerology. 

People interested in numerology like to ask the question, what number are you?  Your personal number is simply derived from your birth date, although I'm told that numerologists have numerous other ways of tapping into Mother Nature's secrets using numbers.

You can easily calculate your personal number and how it seems to determine the pattern of your life. You simply add the numbers of your date of birth, i.e. the day, the month and the year, until you eventually arrive at a single-digit number only. The number can only be from 1 to 9.                                                    

For example, if you were born on the sixth of November, 1987,  (06.11.1987),  here's how you get your number:

6 +1+1 +1+9+8+7 = 33...3+3 = 6.  Your number is 6!

Or if you were born on 10th February, 1989, (10.02.1989),

1+0+2 +1+9+8+9 = 30...3+0 = 3.  Your number is 3!

OK, I hear you say. So I'm a 6 or a 3.  What's that supposed to mean?

Ah! I have your interest! You must be a fence-sitter like me! Check it out; you have nothing to lose but your chains!

And if you ever fall off the fence, let's hope you fall into the warm, expansive embrace of the Y rather than onto the sharp, angular elbow of the N !

www.bluefeather.ie

Welcome to my weekly blog,  SATURDAY SESSIONS!

In this blog, for the perusal of all our students, past, present and future, I include an extract from our interactive presentation Course, Ireland and its Culture.

If you wish to ask me any question about the text, by the way, just send me an e-mail at greg@bluefeather.ie

This week, SATURDAY SESSIONS presents The Children of Lir.  It's one of our longer stories (7 pages) so you may need to read it a chunk at a time!

In ancient Ireland, King Lir was Lord of the Sea, like his counterparts Poseidon or Neptune, in Ancient Greece and Rome.

Lir's wife, Eva, gave birth to two beautiful children, Fionnuala and Aodh. The children's favourite pastime was swimming in a small lake near the castle. But Fionnuala and Aodh were no ordinary swimmers; they had gills for breathing and webbed feet! They were, after all, the offspring of the Ruler of the Land Beneath the Waves. 

One day, while they were swimming, a messenger came to them, urging them to return home as quickly as possible. When they got home, they were met by their broken-hearted father who told them that their mother had fallen into a long sleep. The children of Lir couldn't understand what their father meant by a long sleep. The King's wife was a mortal and so Lir tried to explain to the children all about what mortal humans called 'death'.  Eva had died giving birth to twin boys, Fiachra and Conn.

As the children were growing up,  Lir was becoming more and more lonely and depressed until one day he went for a stroll with Aoife, his wife's sister. Aoife had borrowed a magic cloak from her father and used this cloak to win the King's heart. The two fell in love and eventually they got married.

The King was a happy man again and the family thrived. Aoife, however, felt that she could not replace her sister, Eva. The King and his children would never stop talking about their memories of Eva.

Aoife's jealousy affected her sleep and her health in general, so that the palace doctor advised her to stay in bed until she showed some signs of improvement.   

After a year, Aoife recovered from her illness, but the experience had changed her. Staring into the mirror, she saw that her skin had aged and that she had lost her figure and her beauty.
Aoife was a changed woman now. She never laughed and played with the children any more and she and the King slept in different rooms in the echoing palace.

Indeed, her jealousy never left her because now she felt that the King and his children had cut her off from the family, as they hunted and travelled together without her. Like all jealous people, she blamed everybody else for her own failure to live her life with joy and gratitude.

One day, Aoife suggested visiting their grandfather and the children were surprised and delighted that their stepmother was becoming part of the family again.

On the journey, they stopped by a lake and she suggested the children go for a quick swim while she had a rest. The four children played happily in the water, not noticing that their stepmother was now standing at the water's edge, wearing her father's magic cloak. 

'I'm afraid I'm going to have to let you go, dear children. The only way I can get well and recover my self-worth is if I can be with your father again, like it was at the beginning. Look at me! It is you who have brought this sickness upon me, you who came between me, my happiness and my health. I am sorry, I am going to have to let you go!'

The children listened to her in shock and silence.

Then Fiachra said, 'What do you mean by letting us go? What do you mean by that?' 

Then Conn burst out, 'She wants us to die! That's what she means! She wants to kill us!'

 'But she can't do that,' said Fionnuala, about to cry, 'she can't kill us, Conn, because we cannot die!' 

'You mean die like Mom?' asked Fiachra, in his innocence.

'Mom was a mortal,' replied Fionnuala. Then she pointed to Aoife, 'Just like she is!'

'I have no intention of harming you' said Aoife, 'even if I could. But I am going to change you now so that you will not come between me and my husband ever again.'

She bowed her head and started chanting. The children, still in the water, looked at each other in fear as they saw a large red and golden circle floating down onto the lake. Then Aoife opened her cloak from which a great fireball emerged and hurtled towards them.

The fireball hit the water with a loud splash and a hiss and huge billows of steam rose over the children as they gradually lost all feelings in their fingers, hands, arms, toes, feet, legs and bodies.

The eldest boy, Aodh, tried to lift himself out of the water and attack Aoife but he felt as if he was in a dream. His arms flailed about furiously, but nothing happened, nothing except the splashing of water. Then he turned to look at his brothers and sister, only to see that they had all been turned into the most beautiful swans he had ever seen. 

He too had become a swan.

Aoife then told them solemnly that they would spend nine hundred years in their present form as swans; three hundred years on Lough Derravaragh, three hundred year on the Straits of Moyle and three hundred years on the Isle of Inish Glora. But she also told them that the spell would end suddenly one day after the nine hundred years had passed, when out of the blue they would hear the toll of a church bell.

'I am sorry that it has come to this, my dear children,' said Aoife. 'I will leave you know.' 

Lir didn't know where his family had gone, so he mounted his horse and accompanied by his knights, searched all over the palace grounds. When they found Aoife, she told him that the children had been playing in the woods and that they were attacked and killed by wild boars. They had been eaten by the wild animals of the wood by the time she knew what had happened.

This made no sense to the King. He was now tortured with doubt. Could his children, the sons of Eva, have been mortal after all? Could they have really died? And if not, what could have really happened to them? Could Aoife...no, such a thought was insane! Aoife loved the children, even though her illness had kept her away from them for so long.

Time passed and the King had once again fallen into a deep sadness. Nothing in Aoife's power could restore the love they'd once had for one another. Love was her only hope of feeling young and restoring her good looks again, but alas, instead she seemed to be ageing by the day.

One day, the melancholic King was walking with his knights along Lake Derravaragh which was just a few miles from the palace. As he stood in silence by the lakeshore, a beautiful swan gracefully approached him on the water and looked at him lovingly in the eye. The knights could see that the swan was silently communicating with the King. Fionnuala, now in swan form, was telling him what Aoife had done to them.

In a rage, Lir returned to the palace with his knights and had Aoife arrested and banished into exile for the rest of her mortal life.  

Every day, Lir faithfully visited his children and swam and played with them in the lake. He had found some happiness again, although his heart was heavy that he had lost his children, the children of his beloved Eva.

Time passed, and the 300 years of the first phase was over.  The next phase of the terrible spell was about to begin. The swans beat their wings along the water and lifted tearfully into the sky, bound for the Straits of Moyle.  They would never see their father again. 

Their time on the Northern Straits of Moyle was more challenging. There were frequent storms which often separated them for days at a time.

Another 300 years passed and the children of Lir left the cold and windy Straits of Moyle, making their way westwards over Lough Derravaragh, where they had played with their father so many years before. They flew over the land, hoping to find their father's castle, but it was now nothing more than ruins. They wept as they flew because they knew the time of Lir and the Tuatha De Danann was gone. 

On and on they flew until they reached the waters of Inish Glora. It was quieter here but time passed slowly.

One day, an old man named Mochua visited Inish Glora and became friendly with the new and beautiful arrivals on the lake.   Mochua was a holy man and he built a small chapel beside the lake. The swans would waddle up to the chapel where Mochua gave them some bread crumbs. He had been collecting old swords, shields and other bits of metal from around the countryside to make a bell for his little church.

Some years later, Mochua finished making his bell which he mounted outside the front door of the church.

One morning, before the sun rose, he looked out over the lake and could not see the swans. He wondered if, by ringing the bell, he could call them in for some bread crumbs. He decided to wait until sunrise. That's when he would ring his bell for the first time.

As the tip of the great orange disc of the sun slowly rose up over the lake's horizon and shone through the morning mist and the haze, Mochua rang his bell.

Dangggggg....

Suddenly the swans appeared in the sky, landed briskly on the lake and floated rapidly towards the shore.

Time seemed to stand still, as Mochua gazed at a red and golden circle which suddenly transformed into all the colours of the rainbow, followed by a thick, white mist which rose up after it into the blue sky and disappeared.

As all four swans emerged from the water and stood erect on the shore, Mochua fell to his knees as he saw, in awe and shocked astonishment, the webbed feet of the swans change into human feet, and the bodies of the swans transform into human bodies - an old but beautiful woman and three frail, wise-looking old men!

Mochua got on his feet and ran to the shore to embrace them. He helped them make their way to his little church where each of them, like children, took turns to ring his precious bell. Danggggg!....

Then they all went into the church together. Mochua was on his knees praying and the four siblings sat peacefully beside one another on the church pew. 

Then, as a sunbeam shone through the dust from a little hole in the roof, all four children of Lir, the oldest people in the whole world, looked up and smiled, held each other's hand, drew one long deep and final breath, slowly exhaled, and died.

www.bluefeather.ie

18/06/2007, 15.40

In the year two thousand and seven,

On Monday the eighteenth of June,

At approximately twenty minutes to four,

You retUrned

From the dream,

Freed from the illusion of time

And of memories,

Of certificates, licences, passports,  

Records of birth, of marriage, of death,

All the bureaucratic trappings of your identity,

Like unremembered names on railway stations

Sliding past at speed

As you retUrned

From the dream,

Freed from the illusion of time,

At approximately twenty minutes to four,

On Monday the eighteenth of June,

In the year two thousand and seven.

Welcome to my weekly blog,  SATURDAY SESSIONS!

In this blog, for the perusal of all our students, past, present and future, I include an extract from our interactive presentation Course, Ireland and its Culture.

If you wish to ask me any question about the text, by the way, just send me an e-mail at greg@bluefeather.ie  !

The wren is the smallest bird in Ireland but certainly in terms of volume, this songbird is no wallflower!   Here's a haiku from the  ET logbook:                                                                              

The size of a mushroom;
Prima donna of the garden,
The wren.

It is also the king of all birds. On St. Stephen's Day (26th December), the Wren Boys would take to the streets in Ireland going from house to house chanting:

The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,
St Stephen's Day was caught in the furze...etc.

This chant was a reference to the martyrdom of the Christian, Stephen, by the Romans. Apparently, Stephen was hiding in a bush where he startled a wren who flew out of the bush and alerted the Romans who had been searching for him. The chant of the Wren Boys was a ritual hunting of the wren, in revenge for revealing the hiding place of Stephen. (Poor wren! )

There is a similar tradition in Galicia, first recorded in the 15th century. There's also one in the south of France.

But how did such a tiny bird succeed in becoming King? Surely the Golden Eagle of Donegal should be the king of all the birds in Ireland?

Adapted from Aesop and adopted in Ireland, the story goes that long ago, all the birds of Ireland gathered together to see who could fly the highest. Magpies, robins, crows, jackdaws, rooks, ravens, sparrows, blackbirds, thrushes, finches, swallows, swifts, seagulls, and many many more species of birds flocked to take part in the championship.

Among them were the giant Donegal Golden Eagles. And, of course, the wren. But just before the race began, the little wren tucked himself into the plumage of the largest of the eagles who never noticed it.

Up, up into the air they soared, higher and higher, until only the largest eagle remained high up above the clouds. All the other birds had dropped down again out of breath and exhausted.

The tiring eagle had now flown as high as he could go and screeched down to tell the flock that he was the King.

But then, suddenly, the little wren popped out and flew above the eagle, twittering away merrily.

All the birds saw this from below and proclaimed the wren the King of All Birds.

www.bluefeather.ie

More ET snapshots of a puzzling world...

XL

Pixels on a screen;

Equity, inequity,

Money.

XLI

The oncologist;

The nocebo,

The acquiescence.

XLII

The advertisement;

Under hypnosis,

The consumer.

BEWARE OF THE POOKA!

As you may know, it is dangerous to annoy the fairies or disturb a fairy fort or rath.

Look at the fields of Ireland and you will see that the farmers plough around the fairy raths (little fairy forts or hills), never touching them. Engineers divert roads around them.

When the villagers of Allen forgot to do something the fairies had asked them to do (i.e. to replace the lid of a well near a fairy rath), there was a great flood which submerged the village and which is now Lough Allen, a lake on the river Shannon. (In Ireland, we say Lough for lake; in Scotland it's Loch, as in Loch Ness). 

But it is also dangerous to annoy the Pooka, an evil spirit which inhabits the bogs of Ireland. The word comes from the Scandanavian, pook, meaning 'nature spirit'. The Pooka is a shape-shifter. Some people have seen the Pooka look like a shaggy-haired, foul-smelling pony; others have seen it look like a goat. It lies in the traveller's path near the bog and charges between his legs, lifting him up and carrying him at hair-raising speed through the bogs.

The mere sight of the Pooka prevents hens from laying and cows from giving milk. It has the power of speech and if you don't answer when it calls out your name, it will come and vandalise your property, but if you treat it with respect, it can give prophesies or warnings.

It is said that the Pooka can run around all night, laughing an evil laugh, with the traveller on its back, across the bogs, through thorny ditches, up the mountains and down along the tracks and cliff edges, with nothing but the sea below, terrifying the traveller, and finally dumping him onto a smelly part of the bog before the cock crows at dawn!

This is what happened to a man by the name of Tom Dorney, whose farm was near the bog. Tom decided to take revenge on the Pooka and the next time he approached the bog, he was wearing sharp spurs on his boots. 

Sure enough, the Pooka caught him and lifted him away through the bog. But Tom used his spurs on him and beat the Pooka with his stick until the Pooka had to throw him, with an angry curse, off his back.

From that day on, the Pooka never bothered Tom again.

Years later, however, when Tom had become a successful farmer, the Pooka took revenge on him by lifting his cattle and mules and throwing them over the cliffs into the sea. Tom lost everything, couldn't pay his rent to the landlord and was eventually evicted, so that he and his family were forced to become poor travelling people for the rest of their lives.  

P.S.  In Ireland, we have a minority group of c. 40,000 people called the Travellers. They are not gypsies, but Traveller families mostly prefer to stay mobile and generally marry into their own community. Some people say they originated at the time of the Famine (1845) when they were thrown out of their homes because they were too hungry to work and pay the rent. However, the Travelling community may be much older than that. The name they give to the rest of the population is the 'settled' people. Sadly, for generations,Travellers have developed a bad reputation for anti-social behaviour and often become the victims of prejudice and discrimination throughout the country.                                                                            
After many years of campaigning, the Travelling community was formally recognised as an indigenous ethnic minority in Ireland in March, 2017.