Children of Lir

Oidheadh ​​Chlainne Lir ( "The history of children Lir " ) is an Irish legend, the one in Ireland the common property. She belongs with Aided Chlainne Tuirenn ( " The Death of the Children Tuirenns " ) and Longas mac nUislenn ( " The Exile of the Sons Uislius " ) to the tragic Irish stories.

Content

Lir loves his four children from his first marriage with Aobh so much that her stepmother Aoife is mad with jealousy. One day she turns the children into swans at Lough Derravaragh that must eke out their existence in various waters of Ireland for 900 years. As soon as she spoke the spell, she is tormented by remorse and gives the swans the gift of supernaturally beautiful singing.

Lir has that in Ireland no swan should be killed - an offense that is punishable by up today. The end of the 900 -year period coincides with the arrival of Christianity. The children gain their human form, however, were aged and die shortly thereafter. In a popular version they are to be redeemed, when a woman from the south of Ireland, marries a man from the north.

Effect

The design of the four swans found in the painting, on pub signs and tapestries, as brooches, on stamps, as stained glass in the Franciscan monastery of Multyfarnham and the Ulster Museum Belfast, as well as a sculpture in a square in Castlepollard. The most famous representation is the sculpture " Lir children" ( The Children of Lir ) by Oisin Kelly ( 1915-1981 ) in the Garden of Remembrance, the memorial to the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin. The three large wind turbines on Rathlin Iceland hot after the swan boys Aedh, Conn and Fiachra. The present day story is derived by linguistic features from the 15th or 16th century, so it is a relatively recent revision of old motifs.

The Irish composer Hamilton Harty created in 1938, the tone poem The Children of Lir.