The Message of Lir

There is nothing like a visit to the place where it happened to bring a story to life.

I was passing Lough Derravaragh in the ‘Lakeland of Ireland’ (aka Westmeath) when I saw a road side totem pole-like figure of the legendary King Lir.  He was the father of the famous Children of Lir.

In case you have forgotten, the story goes back to the time when the defeated Tuatha De Danaan retreated to the hilly mounds where they now live. They elected a new king, Bodb Dearg, who gave his daughter Aoibh as bride to his great rival, Lir, to seal an alliance. The couple lived happily together and had four beautiful children. When Aoibh died suddenly Lir was heartbroken but to keep his relationship with Bodh Derg agrees to marry Aoibh’s sister, Aoife. 

Aoife soon realised that Lir loved his children more than her and when one day she took them to swim in Lough Derravaragh she turned them into swans and doomed them to wander the lakes and shores of Erin for 900 years.

Their misery is described at length in the 39-page manuscript, ‘The Fate of the Children of Lir’.

Toward the end of their 900 years Christianity had arrived in Ireland and a monk named Mochaomhog came looking for them. He heard them singing on a lake and became their friend. However when the time came for them to return to human form ‘the sons became three withered, bony old men and the daughter a lean, withered old woman, without blood or flesh’.

In a final poem the daughter, Fionnuala, asked Mochaomhog to baptise them and gave him precise instructions as to how her brothers were to be buried around her.

This story began in the magical world of the Tuatha de Danaan but was written in the 14^th century with a Christian message. Rather than blaming cruel fate for the sorrows of life, Christian faith gives purpose and hope in coping with suffering.

Interesting, the Irish were among the few who had no trouble combining their past beliefs with a contrasting Christian worldview.       

Today one of the few access roads to Lough Derravaragh is at Knockleyon. At least until the 17^th century, on the ‘first Sunday of the harvest’ local people gathered on the nearby ‘Hill of St Eyon’ (Knockleyon), to celebrate ‘St Eyon’s Fire’. It was a Christianised version of the ancient harvest Festival of Lughnasadh, also dating from the Tuatha De Danaan,

Passing the entry today you might not be aware that the Tuatha De Danaan’s Lir and Lugh (after whom Lughnasadh is named) mix peacefully there with the Christian St Eyon.

It’s a very Irish thing.