Children of Lir

There are very few myths about Lir, the god of the sea. Even in the story about his children in Oidheadh Chlainne Lir (Death of the Children of Lir), Lir had very little role in the tale, beyond marrying two sisters and fathering four children. This tale is one of three in the Three Sorrows of Storytelling, written in the 16th century.

Lir had four children by his second wife Aeb. Their names were Fionuala, a girl, and three boys – Aed, Fiachra and Conn. When Aeb died, Lir married Aeb's sister Aiofe. Aiofe, who was childless, became jealous of Lir's love for his children.

One day, pretending to take the stepchildren to visit her foster father Bodb Derg, Aiofe transformed the children into beautiful swans. Aiofe also placed a terrible geis on her stepchildren, so they would wander through Ireland and Britain for nine hundred years before they could be restored to their original human forms.

When Bodb Derg discovered Aiofe's action against her stepchildren, Bodb turned her into a demon.

(Please note that there was another Aiofe, who was the wife of Manannán, who was transformed into a crane. I am uncertain if both Aiofes are one and the same person.)

For nine hundred years, the swan-children wandered throughout Ireland and Britain, suffering from hardship, but they became famous because of their beautiful singing. Even though they were transformed into swans, the children of Lir retained their human voices. The Danann would often come to them and listen to their songs.

They finally found refuge from a hermit named Mo Cháemóc, before they were transformed back into their human forms. By this time the children of Lir were old and wrinkled; they were dying from old age. The hermit immediately baptised them before their deaths and had the children of Lir buried together in a single grave.

The Oidheadh Chlainne Lir has one of the typical themes found in myths and folklore - that of the wicked stepmother. The magical transformation of a person into an animal is also typical in a fairy tale, except here, there was no happy ending, unless the moral of the story was of converting one from paganism to Christianity.