A Story that Grows in the Telling

I think a legend, at its base, is a true story that grows in the telling, resonating more and more with the audience, while it grows less and less true to its origin.  A legend, to a storyteller, is too good to pass up.  In fact it is opportunity after opportunity to tell it plain, but instead, the bard, or skald, or elder decides to tell it so they see eyes grow wide, eyes that are rivetted on the storyteller. 

Fables have lessons and often talking animals, Myths explain gods and their interactions with people, Epics follow a series of critical events.  Epic Fable?  Mythological Epic?  Lore applies to the collected stories of a people, perhaps they are the stories that make them a people.  All these words are words to describe stories of different flavors, but all that, in someway, provides cultural cohesion.  Don’t you think?

J. R. R. Tolkien set out to provide what he felt his people lacked, a mythos for the British people.  It was Epic, it was Mythical, it spoke to me and continues to speak.  As a reader, I hated to see it end, but it did.  There is a small enough corpus of polished Tolkien fiction.  I have to say that I have felt the lack.  I think Dennis L. McKiernan expressed a similar sentiment.  I’m no JRR Tolkien and neither is Dennis.  Personally I much prefer Morgan Llywelyn to McKiernan,  or Parke Godwin or George Martin (George’s Website) or. . . almost anyone, (sorry Dennis, in fairness I need to read something more recent of yours because I think I read your first high fantasy book and felt it was derivative, but then you said right up front what I’ve always felt that there needs to be more high fantasy like JRR and you tried to fill that massive void, good for you.)

And since Dennis has ventured forth into Heroic, Epic, High Fantasy I feel that I may too, perhaps with even less success, venture to add my bit to the void.  To that end I have conceived of Tir na Nua.

I am in the process of writing several novels, but on the way to that I offer these thoughts, insights, resources, and diversions of interest to me and, I hope, to you.  Here I hope to gather legends and lore, notes on antiquity, and present day reality. At some point perhaps I will offer items of commercial value.   For now, welcome and please tell me what you like or you don’t.  I value your insights; I value your eyes, riveted, grown wide.

A Story Told (and told and told)

I’m a man with a story.  Even my name, O’Neill, has tales attached to it (like this one of the Hand Gules that is prominent in our heraldry,) but don’t we all?  I love old tales, tales of heroes, tales of real people in strange times and strange people in real times.  I have wanted to write such tales and, prodded by my friend, Jeffery, I have. 

I’ve just completed the first draft of a short story.  In the end Concerning The Deer Riders wandered a bit farther than I had anticipated.  Legendary wanderings?  You can read Concerning the Deer Riders yourself and see what you think.

I’ve also begun a novel.  At least that is my intent.  Considering changes to my schedule I think I may progress differently than I did for the Deer Riders.  I intend to get it done before my birthday.  A bit of a gift to me.  But we shall see.  As such, considering the time, with my available time, without a history of being able to work that quickly expect IF I DO that it will be very raw.  Dear reader, I am a new novelist and at present I believe that my best chance of developing is getting something out there.  If you disagree please tell me, perhaps I will progress on several tracks. putting out raw very rough drafts and going back through past stories to sharpen and polish them.  Here is the novel beginnings: Intro to and  Beginning of The Abbot and the Djinn. Follow my progress HERE.

Tir na Nua

I have imagined a world apart.  A land out of time.  Now, on Earth, there is little doubt about some things which have happened, have passed into history.  These things are written.  Before and between the stone of what is written are legends of things not written, but perhaps true none-the-less. 

Tir na Nua is neither and both.  Have you wished that there was a land where the Celtic world did not fall beneath the Roman?  Have you wondered what that world might have been?  Such things have happened in the new land and we have word of it, remembered by bards, lineage by rote, History in mind and on their lips.  I bring these stories.

At one time folk we identify now as Celtic dominated much of Europe. Except for ruins, and votive offerings, and the words of enemies, and a very few scratchings on stones we have nothing left of these people.  To imagine a Celtic world like insular Ireland one must imagine the real, because there is little enough to instruct us as to what that real, Earthly world was like.  Enter the legend maker, the storyteller, the bard. 

I have had an interest in the real Celts, Gauls, Britons, Welsh, all the diverse tribes of a people who shared a way of life and an asthetic sense and language if not blood.  I want to gather material, post what I find, and get your reactions to topics of Antiquity, Celts in general, Insular Ireland, and of course my stories.

Sometimes I wish I dwelled in Tir na Nua, but instead I live in a much less misty, more pedestrian, and I would say, far less noble world.  Some things that come to my attention must not pass without comment.  I will comment on current events. (sorry if this is a buzz kill, please feel free to ignore all political rants of the author and return to escapist literature.) 

Content

I am working to put some of my scratchings, secreted away in numerous notebooks, into a form more conducive to your perusal and consumption.

Here is a bit of that ever expanding effort? work? uh, drekk? Hopefully fascinating fiction.

I have in mind to collect many things here, but I want to produce for you stories of places outside of your experience (or anyones) and yet true and recognizable. You are welcome to browse as it accretes (I think this may be another Steveism. I should really look for it in some authoritative Dictionary.*) I will update metatags and such to reflect the sites altered state. It will never be done…

I pray I have not taxed your resources too much. Enjoy! Comment! Dispute! Encourage! Correct! Guide! Request!

Welcome to this,

LSO

PS. * ac·crete (-krt)

2. To grow or increase gradually, as by addition.

source

Lugh sat comfortably beneath the spreading oak.  He’d found the perfect spot, between two roots and the moss, soft, but not at all wet.  His oak sat a little rise that overlooked a lovely meadow.  There were wildflowers in profusion, butterflies, and swallows were busy swooping over the tangle.

This was a fine place he had to admit, and he congratulated himself for not believing what he had heard about the North.  “Oh, its all snow and ice, you don’t want to go there. No, no, its full of Giants and pixies with poison darts, you’d be mad to go there, all you will find is dry grass and the herd deer that eat it, both of them brown.”

There had been a time when that was so.  Lugh had seen the great ice wall, he’d known the Norfolk, lived with them when it wasn’t safe for him in the South.  As to giants, it seemed to him that they were fanciful.  No, the plains were beautiful in the Long Summer, and he was happy to be here enjoying it.

A family of herd deer walked into sight.  There was a breeze in his face so Lugh guessed that they wouldn’t catch his scent, he sat quietly in the deep shadow of the tree so he knew they’d not be spooked by the sight of him either.  All the deer, but the young ones had antlers, but the obvious king of the family was a big buck with an amazing spread of a rack that looked about to tip him.  For a moment Lugh thought about trying to take the big animal, but he was far too comfortable and didn’t want to spoil the day with a lot of work.

Suddenly the king put his nose in the air and his ears back.  He bellowed a challenge or a warning and his harem gathered, their noses snuffling for the same scent.  The does and the calves all jogged in Lugh’s direction, but the buck bellowed again and stood stiff legged facing away from Lugh and toward whatever had given him alarm.  The king pawed the earth, tearing up large divots before snorting his displeasure and jogging away after his herd.

Well, if the king was worried, perhaps Lugh ought to be too.  He took the precaution of stringing his bow and loosening the arrows in his quiver.  He stood and tossed his pack up into the lower branches of the tree and planned a good route of climb if that should become necessary.  Precautions taken, Lugh waited to see what might come that had so unsettled the herd deer.

He had to laugh when a small girl with a goat wandered out of the young saplings at the edge of the clearing and strolled nonchalantly into the meadow.  She had bright blond hair and lovely summer browned skin. 

Much like the Deer Riders, the thought that I might do a little vignette has burgeoned into a whole story in my mind.  I thought to do it all in one post, but that isn’t going to happen at all.  Again, this involves the deer riders, the Norfolk, as I’ve named them, but I also introduce another of the long lived humans, this one of the true original “Children of Dana” intended by Dana to be the gods of Tir na Nua.  Oatey Moss, the little Norfolk woman (she looks young for her age) is involved with giants and so there are three major revelations about Tir na Nua in this one story.

LSO

I was back in the dark hole of the sidhe.  It was cool, but in the pit of my stomach there was colder ice.  I was afraid for my people and afraid for myself.  If they were truly gone I, who was familiar with being alone from time to time, was not just alone I was lost.

I scrambled to my feet.  There was light from the hole I had collapsed in the false roof of the sidhe.  I don’t know why I’d been so stupid.  There was dry wood aplenty in the wreckage.  I had steel and flint, I had my tinderbox.  It was the work of a few moments and I had a fire started.  I reserved a manageable branch for a torch.  Moments later I could again clearly see the inside of the sidhe.  There were still metal items that had caught the light, tarnish dulled, they had suffered from inattention.

With torch in hand I walked to the entrance of the tunnel that Jella called the souterrain.  I found the loose otter stone and its cache of lamp and oil.  My first instinct was to go as quickly as possible to find my people. 

On a moments reflection I remembered my seeing.  My visions were true.  My visions of Jella, the lamp and oil, this pendant with flint and steel that I held was proof enough.  I had seen our camp overrun, I couldn’t go there.  It was too late to warn, my duty and my hope was to find.  So I put the lamp in my pack, and I put the pendant around my neck.  I walked back into the great hall of the sidhe to see if there was something, anything, that would help us. . .”

“Did you find your people Grand-father?”  asked the youngest.

The elder boys elbowed the youngest. “He’s here isn’t he?”

“I did find our people.  Most of them.  Some of the other lads who had gone out before didn’t come back, but warning arrived before I knew of the danger.  We had to run and sneak and we didn’t have deer or horses to ride either.  We got food from the secret place which supplied us for our flight south, but our warring with the evil hordes cost us plenty.”

There was a yawn, and another.  “Well, that’s pretty much what I know about the deer-riders.  Maybe you three aught to go find your beds.”

The boys looked at each other and didn’t move as fast as they usually did he thought.  “Of course you can help yourself to what’s left of dinner.  Can’t have good bread go to waste.”

The boys dug in and murmured thanks as they parcelled out the last of supper.  Mouths still full, the boys exited the tent.  They were mounted in a flash, almost before the old man could make it out of his tent.

The eldest turned back before he and the others rode off, “Thank you Grand-father.” His fellows mumbled their thanks around their last mouthfuls.

“Off with you then my lads.  You’re likely to scare the Deer Riders off if you’re around making noise and chewing so loudly.”

“Right, scare off the deer-riders, “Laughing, they waved and pelted off toward the main camp leaving the old man alone with his thoughts. 

He closed his eyes.  Perhaps from long practice or because he was older now and the veil between life and death was thinner for him now, but he could see so much easier now.  As forgetful as he was becoming he could imagine walking away from his body and just never coming back.  Perhaps that was what dying was.  The man felt sure he would know someday soon.

But tonight he flew above the world.  He saw from above the herd deer’s approach.  He saw the stream of tawny bodies and clattering horn.  They were coming.  The moon was often his guide, somethings do not change.  Now he felt the rush of the herd through his feet.  His old horse nickered.  He breathed deep. Was that the deer he smelled?

He walked briskly to the spot he had chosen.  On a little knoll above his camp there was a tree with roots sunk into the rocky hill top.  He had almost left himself short.  He turned just in time to see the first of the herd deer burst over the nearby rise.  His hand found purchase on the tree for stability and comfort.  He could hear the coming of the deer now as well as feel it. 

The herd cleared the rise before him on a broad front and it split to pass his place by the tree.  The beasts were running blind for the most part now.  But the tree was a big enough obstruction. 

He had old eyes in an old body, but eyes aren’t the only way to see, he knew.  And so he saw.  On the back of a deer, a bit larger than most, was a person he knew. He smiled, it was good to see old friends, a bit sad to remember others. “Heyaah!  Oren,” He yelled.

“Heyaah Dream-Walker,”  The deer-rider called and waved as he thundered past among the tawny deer.

She was asleep on the ground.  Around her were arrayed bags and travois, bales of hide and smaller lumps, like a play fort you might make.  At first it seemed she slept there alone.  I only had eyes for my friend.  I knew her face, but there was something quite different about it, longer and with sharper angles.  “Jella?”

She gasped and sat up, “Dream-walker?”  A couple of the lumps around her stirred and one sat up.  Oddly, this one looked almost as much like the Jella I remembered as did the one I had first identified as my friend.  Eerily this younger Jella pointed at me and laughed.  The little one spoke her strange tongue and was answered by my friend and yet not my friend. 

Jella threw back her covering of sleeping skins and rose.  I was not so young that I couldn’t tell that this was now not the girl I had first seen, but a woman.  She quickly covered the shift she slept in with buckskin and colorful woolens.

She looked me in the eye, and a smile twitched the corner of her mouth. Her generous lips did not move more than that, but I heard in my head, “You haven’t changed in all these years, I wasn’t sure I’d see you again.”

I’m fairly certain I frowned, because I saw one reflected on her smooth adult face, “Ah, are you still in the sidhe?  But I left you the lamp and the flint. . .” I suspect my frown turned to a blush, because her smile returned and she said, “did you forget?”  She tsked, and I was uncomfortably reminded of my own mother, ” It should be right there at the beginning of the souterrain.”

“The tunnel thing?  I forgot that too.” I felt heat on my face and neck and was sure now that if I wasn’t blushing before I was now.  “It is so dark.”

“Well, the sun should be rising.  It may not light your way much, but it should help you find the center.  At mid-day the light should point you toward the souterrain as it is due north.”

I mumbled thanks.  She smiled.  Her hair was much longer than before.  It was braided in thick ropes with bits of bright bead and bright cloth or leather, I wasn’t sure.  I thought her very lovely.

“Dream-walker, meet my children.”  She reached over and roused the lump on the other side from the little Jella who stared at me with big blue eyes.  A tossle-haired boy sat up.  “My children, Oren and Joy.”

“How is it that you have lived your life and I am still in this hole?” I thought to her.

“I can’t say,” She looked puzzled, “Perhaps you can walk through time as well as through. . .” She shrugged.  “. . .You would know better than I.  Mostly I see the dead, you were the first living spirit I ever saw.  And until now the last as well.”

“You see the spirits of the dead?” I asked her as if I had not just heard her say so.  I blushed again.

She nodded, but otherwise took no notice of the question, “If you were outside of your time when first we met I wonder what time you are in now?  We have not lived in a sidhe in a six-year and more.  I think that one has been sealed for eleven years since I saw you that night.  There may have been another clan that took refuge, but we have avoided the old secret places, riding with the deer, to keep them safe and ourselves free.”

“To keep yourself free?  What threatens you?”

Her face was pale from sleep, but she paled still more, “Could you possibly have not met the foul ones, the devourers?” Jella frowned not in anger but with concern.  “Why are you alone in the sidhe, why haven’t your people come for you Dream-Walker?”

“I’m a scout, a searcher, I seek out new places for my people.  We have been at a great river to the south.”

“Are you saying that your people are not in the secret place?  They are still at the River?  In the open?”

“My people always live in the open. . .”

“No no, they must not.  The hordes of foul ones will kill and feed.  You should not have come into the north.  It has not been safe since before the giants came, and they are the worst of all.

“I can see you live on the land.  Why can you do it but my folk can not?”

“You do not know.  We track them, we watch.  We herd the deer away to the far north.  Dream-Walker, your folk must be warned.  There is a great gathering of the foul ones.  They are on the march.  It is all we can do to keep the herds from them, to stay alive and free from them.  If they find you they will gather and kill you all.  They are made to destroy man, we are food to them.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“We have gone into the far north.  That as much as any reason is why we left the sidhe that sheltered us during the long winters.  This new plague of monsters and giants is worse than that of ice.  You must warn your people, Dream-walker, you must warn everyone that the dark hordes will come and they must flee or die.” Jella’s face hardened, “Go to your people Dream-Walker.  It may be too late already. . .”

And as if her words had the power I was snatched away.  My friend and her family shrunk to a tan blotch among the smaller blotches of the herd and then they were gone. As I rose I saw the great whiteness of the frozen wastes beyond.  I flew across mountains, watching the white, ice-locked peaks dwindle.  I saw below me the stony knob and the hidden place in the bramble wood with its sidhe where I guessed I lay, but I did not stop nor slow though I drew near the ground. 

Along the river I saw a man.  He strode along the banks and suddenly I saw that he was immense.  He dwarfed the trees.  The giant man had hair of red and he looked at me as if he saw me.  I rushed along the river, there were creatures among the trees.  I saw an army of them, armored, and armed for battle. 

Then I was in our camp.  The creatures, foul ones Jella had called them, were all throughout it.  The morning sun cast evil glints off their cruel looking weapons dazzling my eyes.  My people were gone.  I looked to the sun.

The night was dark save for one star.  I breathed and felt much pain.  My voice echo in the hollow earth when I cried out.  I had fallen into a sidhe and there I lay atop a mound of broken timbers and sod.

There was no flying out of this, nor could I climb up the walls as if it were a well.  Panic gripped me, I confess, my breath came too quickly and as sod was still drifting down I breathed so much I began to cough.  I struggled to my hands and knees.  The fight to breath focused me.  I was not dead, nor even that injured.  I was in the home of my friend, the girl who had laughed, Jella.

At first this was small comfort.  I was in darkness and knowing that none of my folk would ever find me here brought rising panic again.  I tried to remember the place in my dream, it had been lit in the middle and around the perimeter. In truth it wasn’t that large.  I walked down off the pile I had ridden to the floor and promptly tripped over something hard and sprawled on stone flagging covered with more of the result of my descent.

I rose again, walking like a blind man, arms waving, I headed off in what I thought a straight line toward the wall of the place.  Eventually I must find it, surely.  Before I did, I found a wall of stone.  I followed it to a quick turning and felt along one side to the back.  Reaching, I found a screen richly carved with images my fingers could not puzzle out, but I followed it to stone again.  Now I hurried, trusting this was a back wall and was rewarded with slamming my knee into something hard.  I fell into more hard edged items and then the stone floor.  In agony I clutched my knee.

Light was gone from my world.  I was lost.  Lost in a big room, not much more, but it was frighteningly strange for a boy who had always lived with not much more than some leather between himself and the sky.  I felt stiffled in the dusty hole.  I cried out for the only friend who I thought could help, “Jella!” Echoes died quickly and silence mocked me, “Jella, where are you? I need you now.”

I felt my way back to the wall and was too wounded in spirit and frightened by the dark to try to find my way.  I leaned back against the wall and stared, marvelling that eyes opened or closed it made no difference.  “Jella!” I closed my eyes.

The sun was rising where she was.  I saw it color the clouds before it mounted into the sky.  There were herd deer everywhere.  The north deer all have antlers and they are all colored alike, I could not tell which was male and which female, I was in a sea of tawny, antlered, steam breathed herd deer.  There were snorts and a bellow and the creatures shied from where I was.