The Monday Buzzzzz…

Monday again, buzzing into the new week. We have some nice stuff to start things off with..
Gwyllm
On The Table

The Links

Steve Tibbets – Marc Anderson – Choying Drolma

Additional Linkage

The Fate of the Children of Lir

All Things Will Die: Alfred Lord Tennyson

Art: John Duncan

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The Links:

Medical Marijuana Measure Falls With Connecticut Governor’s Veto

Into the Mystic

Judge Criticizes Warrantless Wiretaps

Pagans Demonstrate Outside Of The Whitehouse July 4th!

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Steve Tibbets – Marc Anderson – Choying Drolma

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Additional Linkage Thanks To Padrice & Miss Amanita:

Steve Tibbetts, Marc Anderson and Choying Drolma

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The Fate of the Children of Lir
IT happened that the five Kings of Ireland met to determine who should have the head kingship over them, and King Lir of the Hill of the White Field expected surely he would be elected. When the nobles went into council together they chose for head king, Dearg, son of Daghda, because his father had been so great a Druid and he was the eldest of his father’s sons. But Lir left the Assembly of the Kings and went home to the Hill of the White Field. The other kings would have followed after Lir to give him wounds of spear and wounds of sword for not yielding obedience to the man to whom they had given the over-lordship. But Dearg the king would not hear of it and said: “Rather let us bind him to us by the bonds of kinship, so that peace may dwell in the land. Send over to him for wife the choice of the three maidens of the fairest form and best repute in Erin, the three daughters of Oilell of Aran, my own three bosom-nurslings.”
So the messengers brought word to Lir that Dearg the king would give him a foster-child of his foster-children. Lir thought well of it, and set out next day with fifty chariots from the Hill of the White Field. And he came to the Lake of the Red Eye near Killaloe. And when Lir saw the three daughters of Oilell, Dearg the king said to him:
“Take thy choice of the maidens, Lir.” ” I know not,” said Lir, “which is the choicest of them all ; but the eldest of them is the noblest, it is she I had best take.” ” If so,” said Dearg the king, “Ove is the eldest, and she shall be given to thee, if thou willest.” So Lir and Ove were married and went back to the Hill of the White Field.
And after this there came to them twins, a son and a daughter, and they gave them for names Fingula and Aod. And two more sons came to them, Fiachra and Conn. When they came Ove died, and Lir mourned bitterly for her, and but for his great love for his children he would have died of his grief. And Dearg the king grieved for Lir and sent to him and said: “We grieve for Ove for thy sake; but, that our friendship may not be rent asunder, I will give unto thee her sister, Oifa, for a wife.” So Lir agreed, and they were united, and he took her with him to his own house. And at first Oifa felt affection and honour for the children of Lir and her sister, and indeed every one who saw the four children could not help giving them the love of his soul. Lir doted upon the children, and they always slept in beds in front of their father, who used to rise at early dawn every morning and lie down among his children. But thereupon the dart of jealousy passed into Oifa on account of this and she came to regard the children with hatred and enmity. One day her chariot was yoked for her and she took with her the four children of Lir in it. Fingula was not willing to go with her on the journey, for she had dreamed a dream in the night warning her against Oifa : but she was not to avoid her fate. And when the chariot came to the Lake of the Oaks, Oifa said to the people : “Kill the four children of Lir and I will give you your own reward of every kind in the world.” But they refused and told her it was an evil thought she had. Then she would have raised a sword herself to kill and destroy the children, but her own womanhood and her weakness prevented her; so she drove the children of Lir into the lake to bathe, and they did as Oifa told them. As soon as they were upon the lake she struck them with a Druid’s wand of spells and wizardry and put them into the forms of four beautiful, perfectly white swans, and she sang this song over them:
“Out with you upon the wild waves, children of the king!

Henceforth your cries shall be with the flocks of birds.”
And Fingula answered:
“Thou witch ! we know thee by thy right name !

Thou mayest drive us from wave to wave,

But sometimes we shall rest on the headlands

We shall receive relief, but thou punishment.

Though our bodies may be upon the lake,

Our minds at least shall fly homewards.”
And again she spoke : “Assign an end for the ruin and woe which thou hast brought upon us.”
Oifa laughed and said ” Never shall ye be free until the woman from the south be united to the man from the north, until Lairgnen of Connaught wed Deoch of Munster; nor shall any have power to bring you out of these forms.
Nine hundred years shall you wander over the lakes and streams of Erin. This only I will grant unto you: that you retain your own speech, and there shall be no music in the world equal to yours, the plaintive music you shall sing.” This she said because repentance seized her for the evil she had done.
And then she spake this lay
“Away from me, ye children of Lir,

Henceforth the sport of the wild winds

Until Lairgnen and Deoch come together,

Until ye are on the north-west of Red Erin.
“A sword of treachery is through the heart of Lir,

Of Lir the mighty champion,

Yet though I have driven a sword.

My victory cuts me to the heart.”
Then she turned her steeds and went on to the Hall of Dearg the king. The nobles of the court asked her where were the children of Lir, and Oifa said : ” Lir will not trust them to Dearg the king.” But Dearg thought in his own mind that the woman had played some treachery upon them, and he accordingly sent messengers to the Hall of the White Field.
Lir asked the messengers “Wherefore are ye come? “
“To fetch thy children, Lir,” said they.
“Have they not reached you with Oifa ?” said Lir.
They have not,” said the messengers; “and Oifa said it was you would not let the children go with her.”
Then was Lir melancholy and sad at heart, hearing these things, for he knew that Oifa had done wrong upon his children, and he set out towards the Lake of the Red Eye. And when the children of Lir saw him coming Fingula sang the lay :
“Welcome the cavalcade of steeds

Approaching ‘the Lake of the Red Eye,

A company dread and magical

Surely seek after us.
“Let us move to the shore, O Aod,

Fiachra and comely Conn,

No host under heaven can those horsemen be

But King Lir with his mighty household.”
Now as she said this King Lir had come to the shores of the lake and heard the swans speaking with human voices. And he spake to the swans and asked them who they were. Fingula answered and said : “We are thy own children, ruined by thy wife, sister of our own mother, through her ill mind and her jealousy.” “For how long is the spell to be upon you?” said Lir. “None can relieve us till the woman from the south and the man from the north come together, till Lairgnen of Connaught wed Deoch of Munster.”
Then Lir and his people raised their shouts of grief, crying, and lamentation, and they stayed by the shore of the lake listening to the wild music of the swans until the swans flew away, and King Lir went on to the Hall of Dearg the king. He told Dearg the king what Oifa had done to his children. And Dearg put his power upon Oifa and bade her say what shape on earth she would think the worst of all. She said it would be in the form of an air-demon. “It is into that form I shall put you,” said Dearg the king, and he struck her with a Druid’s wand of spells and wizardry and put her into the form of an air-demon. And she flew away at once, and she is still an air-demon, and shall be so for ever.
But the children of Lir continued to delight the Milesian clans with the very sweet fairy music of their songs, so that no delight was ever heard in Erin to compare with their music until the time came appointed for the leaving the Lake of the Red Eye.
Then Fingula sang this parting lay
“Farewell to thee, Dearg the king,

Master of all Druids lore

Farewell to thee, our father dear,

Lir of the Hill of the White Field
“We go to pass the appointed time

Away and apart from the haunts of men

In the current of the Moyle,

Our garb shall be bitter and briny,
“Until Deoch come to Lairgnen.

So come, ye brothers of once ruddy cheeks

Let us depart from this Lake of the Red Eye,

Let us separate in sorrow from the tribe that has loved us.”
And after they took to flight, flying highly, lightly, aerially till they reached the Moyle, between Erin and Albain.
The men of Erin were grieved at their leaving, and it was proclaimed throughout Erin that henceforth no swan should be killed. Then they stayed all solitary, all alone, filled with cold and grief and regret, until a thick tempest came upon them and Fingula said: “Brothers, let us appoint a place to meet again if the power of the winds separate us.” And they said : ” Let us appoint to meet, O sister, at the Rock of the Seals.” Then the waves rose up and the thunder roared, the lightning’s flashed, the sweeping tempest passed over the sea, so that the children of Lir were scattered from each other over the great sea. There came, however, a placid calm after the great tempest and Fingula found herself alone, and she said this lay:
“Woe upon me that I am alive

My wings are frozen to my sides.

O beloved three, O beloved three,

Who hid under the shelter of my feathers,

Until the dead come back to the living

I and the three shall never meet again ! “
And she flew to the Lake of the Seals and soon saw Conn coming towards her with heavy step and drenched feathers, and Fiachra also, cold and wet and faint, and no word could they tell, so cold and faint were they: but she nestled them under her wings and said: “If Aod could come to us now our happiness would be complete” But soon they saw Aod coming towards them with dry head and preened feathers : Fingula put him under the feathers of her breast, and Fiachra under her right wing, and Conn under her left: and they made this lay:
“Bad was our stepmother with us,

She played her magic on us,

Sending us north on the sea

In the shapes of magical swans.
“Our bath upon the shore’s ridge

Is the foam of the brine-crested tide,

Our share of the ale feast

Is the brine of the blue-crested sea.”
One day they saw a splendid cavalcade of pure white steeds coming towards them, and when they came near they were the two sons of Dearg the king who had been seeking for them to give them news of Dearg the king and Lir their father. “They are well,” they said, “and live together happy in all except that ye are not with them, and for not knowing where ye have gone since the day ye left the Lake of the Red Eye.” “Happy are not we,” said Fingula, and she sang this song:
“Happy this night the household of Lir,

Abundant their meat and their wine.

But the children of Lir – what is their lot?

For bed-clothes we have our feathers,

And as for our food and our wine –

The white sand and the bitter brine,

Fiachra’s bed and Conn’s place

Under the cover of my wings on the Moyle,

Aod has the shelter of my breast,

And so side by side we rest.”
So the sons of Dearg the king came to the Hall of Lir and told the king the condition of his children.
Then the time came for the children of Lir to fulfil their lot, and they flew in the current of the Moyle to the Bay of Erris, and remained there till the time of their fate, and then they flew to the Hill of the White Field and found all desolate and empty, with nothing but unroofed green raths and forests of nettles-no house, no fire, no dwelling-place. The four came close together, and they raised three shouts of lamentation aloud, and Fingula sang this lay:
Uchone ! it is bitterness to my heart

To see my father’s place forlorn –

No hounds, no packs of dogs,

No women, and no valiant kings
“No drinking-horns, no cups of wood,

No drinking in its lightsome halls.

Uchone ! I see the state of this house

That its lord our father lives no more.
“Much have we suffered in our wandering years,

By winds buffeted, by cold frozen;

Now has come the greatest of our pain –

There lives no man who knoweth us in the house where we were born.”
So the children of Lir flew away to the Glory Isle of Brandan the saint, and they settled upon the Lake of the Birds until the holy Patrick came to Erin and the holy Mac Howg came to Glory Isle.
And the first night he came to the island the children of Lir heard the voice of his bell ringing for matins, so that they started and leaped about in terror at hearing it; and her brothers left Fingula alone. “What is it, beloved brothers?” said she. “We know not what faint, fearful voice it is we have heard.” Then Fingula recited this lay:
Listen to the Cleric’s bell,

Poise your wings and raise

Thanks to God for his coming,

Be grateful that you hear him,
“He shall free you from pain,

And bring you from the rocks and stones.

Ye comely children of Lir

Listen to the bell of the Cleric.”
And Mac Howg came down to the brink of the shore and said to them “Are ye the children of Lir?” “We are indeed,” said they. “Thanks be to God!” said the saint; “it is for your sakes I have come to this Isle beyond every other island in Erin. Come ye to land now and put your trust in me.” So they came to land, and he made for them chains of bright white silver, and put a chain between Aod and Fingula and a chain between Conn and Fiachra.
It happened at this time that Lairgnen was prince of Connaught and he was to wed Deoch the daughter of the king of Munster. She had heard the account of the birds and she became filled with love and affection for them, and she said she would not wed till she had the wondrous birds of Glory Isle. Lairgnen sent for them to the Saint Mac Howg. But the Saint would not give them, and both Lairguen and Deoch went to Glory Isle. And Lairgnen went to seize the birds from the altar: but as soon as he had laid hands on them their feathery coats fell off, and the three sons of Lir became three withered bony old men, and Fingula, a lean withered old woman without blood or flesh. Lairguen started at this and left the place hastily, but Fingula chanted this lay:
Come and baptise us, O Cleric,

Clear away our stains

This day I see our grave –

Fiachra and Conn on each side,

And in my lap, between my two arms,

Place Aod, my beauteous brother.”
After this lay, the children of Lir were baptised. And they died, and were buried as Fingula had said, Fiachra and Conn on either side, and Aod before her face. A cairn was raised for them, and on it their names were written in runes. And that is the fate of the children of Lir.

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All Things Will Die: Alfred Lord Tennyson

All Things Will Die

Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing

Under my eye; Warmly and broadly the south winds are blowing

Over the sky. One after another the white clouds are fleeting;

Every heart this May morning in joyance is beating

Full merrily;

Yet all things must die.

The stream will cease to flow;

The wind will cease to blow;

The clouds will cease to fleet;

The heart will cease to beat;

For all things must die.

All things must die.

Spring will come never more.

O, vanity!

Death waits at the door.

See! our friends are all forsaking

The wine and the merrymaking.

We are call’d–we must go.

Laid low, very low,

In the dark we must lie.

The merry glees are still;

The voice of the bird

Shall no more be heard,

Nor the wind on the hill.

O, misery!

Hark! death is calling

While I speak to ye,

The jaw is falling,

The red cheek paling,

The strong limbs failing;

Ice with the warm blood mixing;

The eyeballs fixing.

Nine times goes the passing bell:

Ye merry souls, farewell.

The old earth

Had a birth,

As all men know,

Long ago.

And the old earth must die.

So let the warm winds range,

And the blue wave beat the shore;

For even and morn

Ye will never see

Thro’ eternity.

All things were born.

Ye will come never more,

For all things must die.

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The Ballad of Oriana

My heart is wasted with my woe,

Oriana.

There is no rest for me below,

Oriana.

When the long dun wolds are ribb’d with snow,

And loud the Norland whirlwinds blow,

Oriana,

Alone I wander to and fro,

Oriana.
Ere the light on dark was growing,

Oriana,

At midnight the cock was crowing,

Oriana;

Winds were blowing, waters flowing,

We heard the steeds to battle going,

Oriana,

Aloud the hollow bugle blowing,

Oriana.
In the yew-wood black as night,

Oriana,

Ere I rode into the fight,

Oriana,

While blissful tears blinded my sight

By star-shine and by moonlight,

Oriana,

I to thee my troth did plight,

Oriana.
She stood upon the castle wall,

Oriana;

She watch’d my crest among them all,

Oriana;

She saw me fight, she heard me call,

When forth there stept a foeman tall,

Oriana,

Atween me and the castle wall,

Oriana.
The bitter arrow went aside,

Oriana:

The false, false arrow went aside,

Oriana;

The damned arrow glanced aside,

And pierced thy heart, my love, my bride,

Oriana!

Thy heart, my life, my love, my bride,

Oriana!
O, narrow, narrow was the space,

Oriana!

Loud, loud rung out the bugle’s brays,

Oriana.

O, deathful stabs were dealt apace,

The battle deepen’d in its place,

Oriana;

But I was down upon my face,

Oriana.
They should have stabb’d me where I lay,

Oriana!

How could I rise and come away,

Oriana?

How could I look upon the day?

They should have stabb’d me where I lay,

Oriana–

They should have trod me into clay,

Oriana.
O breaking heart that will not break,

Oriana!

O pale, pale face so sweet and meek,

Oriana!

Thou smilest, but thou dost not speak,

And then the tears run down my cheek,

Oriana.

What wantest thou? whom dost thou seek,

Oriana?
I cry aloud; none hear my cries,

Oriana.

Thou comest atween me and the skies,

Oriana.

I feel the tears of blood arise

Up from my heart unto my eyes,

Oriana.

Within thy heart my arrow lies,

Oriana.
O cursed hand! O cursed blow!

Oriana!

O happy thou that liest low,

Oriana!

All night the silence seems to flow

Beside me in my utter woe,

Oriana.

A weary, weary way I go,

Oriana!
When Norland winds pipe down the sea,

Oriana,

I walk, I dare not think of thee,

Oriana.

Thou liest beneath the greenwood tree,

I dare not die and come to thee,

Oriana.

I hear the roaring of the sea,

Oriana.

—-
Demeter and Persephone

(IN ENNA)
Faint as a climate-changing bird that flies

All night across the darkness, and at dawn

Falls on the threshold of her native land,

And can no more, thou camest, O my child,

Led upward by the God of ghosts and dreams,

Who laid thee at Eleusis, dazed and dumb

With passing thro’ at once from state to state,

Until I brought thee hither, that the day,

When here thy hands let fall the gather’d flower,

Might break thro’ clouded memories once again

On thy lost self. A sudden nightingale

Saw thee, and flash’d into a frolic of song

And welcome; and a gleam as of the moon,

When first she peers along the tremulous deep,

Fled wavering o’er thy face, and chased away

That shadow of a likeness to the king

Of shadows, thy dark mate. Persephone!

Queen of the dead no more–my child! Thine eyes

Again were human-godlike, and the Sun

Burst from a swimming fleece of winter gray,

And robed thee in his day from head to feet–

‘Mother!’ and I was folded in thine arms.

Child, those imperial, disimpassion’d eyes

Awed even me at first, thy mother–eyes

That oft had seen the serpent-wanded power

Draw downward into Hades with his drift

Of flickering spectres, lighted from below

By the red race of fiery Phlegethon;

But when before have Gods or men beheld

The Life that had descended re-arise,

And lighted from above him by the Sun?

So mighty was the mother’s childless cry,

A cry that rang thro’ Hades, Earth, and Heaven!

So in this pleasant vale we stand again,

The field of Enna, now once more ablaze

With flowers that brighten as thy footstep falls,

All flowers–but for one black blur of earth

Left by that closing chasm, thro’ which the car

Of dark Aïdoneus rising rapt thee hence.

And here, my child, tho’ folded in thine arms,

I feel the deathless heart of motherhood

Within me shudder, lest the naked glebe

Should yawn once more into the gulf, and thence

The shrilly whinnyings of the team of Hell,

Ascending, pierce the glad and songful air,

And all at once their arch’d necks, midnight-maned,

Jet upward thro’ the mid-day blossom. No!

For, see, thy foot has touch’d it; all the space

Of blank earth-baldness clothes itself afresh,

And breaks into the crocus-purple hour

That saw thee vanish.

Child, when thou wert gone, I envied human wives, and nested birds,

Yea, the cubb’d lioness; went in search of thee

Thro’ many a palace, many a cot, and gave

Thy breast to ailing infants in the night,

And set the mother waking in amaze

To find her sick one whole; and forth again

Among the wail of midnight winds, and cried,

‘Where is my loved one? Wherefore do ye wail?’

And out from all the night an answer shrill’d,

‘We know not, and we know not why we wail.’

I climb’d on all the cliffs of all the seas,

And ask’d the waves that moan about the world

‘Where? do ye make your moaning for my child?’

And round from all the world the voices came

‘We know not, and we know not why we moan.’

‘Where’? and I stared from every eagle-peak,

I thridded the black heart of all the woods,

I peer’d thro’ tomb and cave, and in the storms

Of Autumn swept across the city, and heard

The murmur of their temples chanting me,

Me, me, the desolate Mother! ‘Where’?–and turn’d,

And fled by many a waste, forlorn of man,

And grieved for man thro’ all my grief for thee,–

The jungle rooted in his shatter’d hearth,

The serpent coil’d about his broken shaft,

The scorpion crawling over naked skulls;–

I saw the tiger in the ruin’d fane

Spring from his fallen God, but trace of thee

I saw not; and far on, and, following out

A league of labyrinthine darkness, came

On three gray heads beneath a gleaming rift.

‘Where’? and I heard one voice from all the three

‘We know not, for we spin the lives of men,

And not of Gods, and know not why we spin!

There is a Fate beyond us.’ Nothing knew.

Last as the likeness of a dying man,

Without his knowledge, from him flits to warn

A far-off friendship that he comes no more,

So he, the God of dreams, who heard my cry,

Drew from thyself the likeness of thyself

Without thy knowledge, and thy shadow past

Before me, crying ‘The Bright one in the highest

Is brother of the Dark one in the lowest,

And Bright and Dark have sworn that I, the child

Of thee, the great Earth-Mother, thee, the Power

That lifts her buried life from gloom to bloom,

Should be for ever and for evermore

The Bride of Darkness.’

So the Shadow wail’d. Then I, Earth-Goddess, cursed the Gods of Heaven.

I would not mingle with their feasts; to me

Their nectar smack’d of hemlock on the lips,

Their rich ambrosia tasted aconite.

The man, that only lives and loves an hour,

Seem’d nobler than their hard Eternities.

My quick tears kill’d the flower, my ravings hush’d

The bird, and lost in utter grief I fail’d

To send my life thro’ olive-yard and vine

And golden grain, my gift to helpless man.

Rain-rotten died the wheat, the barley-spears

Were hollow-husk’d, the leaf fell, and the sun,

Pale at my grief, drew down before his time

Sickening, and Ætna kept her winter snow.

Then He, the brother of this Darkness, He

Who still is highest, glancing from his height

On earth a fruitless fallow, when he miss’d

The wonted steam of sacrifice, the praise

And prayer of men, decreed that thou should’st dwell

For nine white moons of each whole year with me,

Three dark ones in the shadow with thy King.

Once more the reaper in the gleam of dawn

Will see me by the landmark far away,

Blessing his field, or seated in the dusk

Of even, by the lonely threshing-floor,

Rejoicing in the harvest and the grange.

Yet I, Earth-Goddess, am but ill-content

With them, who still are highest. Those gray heads,

What meant they by their ‘Fate beyond the Fates’

But younger kindlier Gods to bear us down,

As we bore down the Gods before us? Gods,

To quench, not hurl the thunderbolt, to stay,

Not spread the plague, the famine; Gods indeed,

To send the noon into the night and break

The sunless halls of Hades into Heaven?

Till thy dark lord accept and love the Sun,

And all the Shadow die into the Light,

When thou shalt dwell the whole bright year with me,

And souls of men, who grew beyond their race,

And made themselves as Gods against the fear

Of Death and Hell; and thou that hast from men,

As Queen of Death, that worship which is Fear,

Henceforth, as having risen from out the dead,

Shalt ever send thy life along with mine

From buried grain thro’ springing blade, and bless

Their garner’d Autumn also, reap with me,

Earth-mother, in the harvest hymns of Earth

The worship which is Love, and see no more

The Stone, the Wheel, the dimly-glimmering lawns

Of that Elysium, all the hateful fires

Of torment, and the shadowy warrior glide

Along the silent field of Asphodel.