The unit I chose for this week is More Celtic Fairy Tales. My favorite story is The Fate of the Children of Lir. This was a three-part story in the weekly readings.
This story was quite different than all the previous stories I have read from the earlier weeks in this class. I like how the story was written in regards to the chosen King wanting to keep peace with Lir even though Lir wanted to become King and was upset about not being chosen as the new King. Instead of fighting and/or killing Lir, the new King chose to keep the peace with Lir by offering him one of his daughters to be his wife.
Lir had a happy life with many children born to them until his wife died after having his last child. Both Lir and the new King were devastated by her death, but the Kind wanted Lir to have happiness again so he gave him another one of his daughters to marry. They were all happy for a while, but then the story takes a dark turn with the new wife becoming jealous of Lir's children.
The new wife takes the children to a lake and casts a spell on them to turn them into swans for 500 years. This is where the story starts to remind me of the story and movie called The Swan Princess. An evil sorcerer turned her into a swan. The new wife reminds me of the evil sorcerer and the children remind me of Odette, the Swan Princess.
Even though the story started out very happy, it ended in a very sad way with Lir's children never seeing their father again. It wasn't until 500 years later when a man from the North married a woman from the South that the spell was broken. After the spell was broken, the children turned back into humans, but they were no longer children anymore. Lir's children were very old, fragile humans who ended up dying just a day or two later after the spell was broken.
I really enjoyed the story overall even though it had a very sad ending for everyone. I tend to enjoy stories with a happy ending better though. I probably would have preferred that the children be reunited with their father, but that is not the way the story was written. Maybe I'll retell this story and put it as my next retelling of a story in my Portfolio. I could change it to have a happier ending.
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