The Children of Lir

Come join for an evening of myth and magic, as the multi talented Joanna Ryan–Purcell performs a dramatic reading of her book of prose poetry, Children of Lir – The Journey Through the Curse.

One of Ireland's best known tales, it tells the story of King Lir and his four children. After their mother died, Lir married her sister Aoife. However, his new wife soon grew jealous of Lir's affection for his children and cast a spell on them which turned them into four white swans. They spent the nest nine hundred years living on various lakes around Ireland, with the curse only being lifted when they heard the ringing of a church bell. They were changed back into old men and women and died on the lakeshore where they were baptised and buried by Caomhag, the monk who had rung the bell.

Joanna's book is an imaginative retelling of the myth from an eco/psychological perspective. It looks at what happened to the land after the curse, and follows the children as they go on their personal journeys of isolation through the darkness of the human mind, until the transformative moment when the characters finally find break the curse and find their way out of the darkness and into the light.