Okay, we were driving in the Beara Peninsula (in the southwest of Ireland; just below the much more famous Kerry Peninsula) on our way back from a day-trip to Dursey Island when we came across one of those nifty little signs for sightseers…this one reading MYTHICAL SITE - CHILDREN OF LIR.
Cool. How often do you get to pull over for a MYTHICAL SITE? So we bumped down a rough country lane for a mile or two until we arrived at…a flat round stone at the edge of a field. On top of the stone were a number a coins of small denomination, several of which were bent in half. No signs. No markers. No explanations.
Luckily I have enough of Lady Gregory’s books rattling around my head to have been able to tell my kids about Cormac, Fionn, Liban, and Maeve, and how the evil Queen Aiofe changed them into swans, about the whale Jasconius, and about the Man from the North joining to the Woman from the South.
“So…I guess this is where they were turned into swans! Or maybe it’s where they turned back into the Princes and Princesses! Or it’s where King Lir went mad with grief! Or…something.”
After doing a little more research, I find that Lir’s kingdom was way the hell in the north of Ireland, and that the swans lived on a small island called Inniskeel off the coast of Donegal (there’s a stone slab there carved with the images of four swans, two men, and two women).
So…what’s the deal with the MYTHICAL SITE all the way down in county Cork? Why the bent coins? What does it all mean?