Week Thirteen Reading Notes Part A - More Celtic Tales

Source Story: More Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs, with illustrations by John D. Batten (1895). Web source.

• "The Fate of the Children of Lir"
• King Lir is angry because the council elects King Dearg to be the head king instead of him, so Dearg offers him the choice of three beautiful sisters for a wife as a peace offering. Lir marries the eldes, Ove, and they have four beautiful children before Ove dies. At her death, Dearg gives Lir Ove's sister, Oifa, who becomes jealous of the children and turns them into swans, banishing them to the waves. Lir realizes Oifa has done wrong by his children.
• "The Fate of the Children of Lir (cont.)"
• King Lir discovers that the children are now swans, and they tell him in their human voices that his wife has cursed them thusly until a certain man from the north marries a certain woman from the south. Lir tells Dearg, who turns Oifa into an air-demon forever. The children sing for the people for a long time, then fly away. They get separated by a storm, but they find each other again afterwards.
• "The Fate of the Children of Lir (end)"
• The swans fly back to their father's land after a long while, only to find it deserted completely. Saint Patrick finds them and takes them in, and connects them to each other with chains. The man and woman whose wedding is to mark the end of the curse are finally set to wed, and they try to get the swans from Saint Patrick, but when they try to take them, the swans turn back into the children of Lir, only now they are extremely old. Patrick baptises them and then they die.
• "The Vision of MacConglinney"
• King Cathal was a good king, but then a monster came to live in his belly that made him eat the land out of house and home. A scholar named MacConglinney decides to help, and ends up tying the king up and eating lots of food in front of him, then telling him about a vision he had about a house made of food
• "The Vision of MacConglinney (cont.)"
• MacConglinney tells more of his vision, where he sails on a food boat across a milk pond and meets a Wizard Doctor. Then he holds food in front of King Cathal, and the monster in Cathal's stomach comes up through his mouth, then jumps out to get the food. The monster disappears and the king is cured, and MacConglinney gets a rich reward.
• "Dream of Owen O'Mulready"
• Owen O'Mulready has never had a dream, but really wants to. He follows his master's instructions to have one, but it's a nightmare. He never wants to dream again.
• "The Story of the McAndrew Family"
• A rich man has seven stupid sons, and when he gives them all some cows, they get tricked into selling them for almost nothing, then waste the little bit they do get. When the father dies, the oldest son goes into town to waste his inheritance and gets tricked into buying a "mare's egg," which is really a painted barrel.
• "The Story of the McAndrew Family (cont.)"
• The brothers roll the "mare's egg" down a hill, and it frightens a rabbit out of hiding, which they assume is the foal but cannot catch. By and by, their neighbors trick them out of all their land, fields, and house, and they become homeless beggars.

Image of a swan from Wikipedia