The Importance Of Stories

"Under the spell of the storyteller's art, the range of what is possible in this world is transended: the world of magic becomes present reality...

When the spell is over the hearers come back 'down to earth', but the earth is less solid as it was, it has been changed,(other possibilities have been viewed) it's cadence of time less oppressive and it's laws have only relative validity...

Myth is not bound by the laws of Nature. It transcends the limitations of common sence, it thrives on paradox.

How do you enter the other world? That place is mydred. Under the wave, or on the sea, islands, benieth the earth, through a sidh-mound, on open plains as a mist wraps and swirls around you. Asleep and awake, the other World is an Enchanted Land awaiting both the explorer and the lost.

The other World lies within and without, next to, between and around. Beyond the horizon, around the corner, sideways to the sun.

It can be reached by perilous journey or in the blink of an eye. By art or by accident. It is called a "land of peace, without grief, without sorrow, without death, without sickness..." but it is also a place of many places. It is the testing ground of lost girls, of orphans, of the quietly virtuous, of Kings to be and Heros, of champions, of great beauty and terrible monstrousities.

It is, you see, a land of paradox, opposits and superlatives. A land of contrairies. which you travel in at your own risk.

The most significant concepts are bound to be complex and enigmatic. A pun can have several answers depending on the answerers depth of knowledge. So too riddles. They both contain pecularities and abnormalities.

The other world contains all of the paradoxes this world cannot contain without upsetting custom and social order. The paradoxes also ground our world in it's reality. Paradox is both the center and the boundary, the place outside of time. Sitting between stasis and chaos. What but puns and riddles can hold reason within unreason?

riddle me this;

• what is faster than the wind?
• what is sharper than the sword?
• How many trees in the forest ?
• How many horses came to Tara?

Through the play of riddle, connections are discovered. Things that at first glance seem different are found to be balanced and share a certain equality of being.

The Fair Folk and Riddle-Masters. They are shape-shifters, mercurial and enigmiatic, and magical. Theirs is formost the power to breech boundaries.

In the world of Myth, Folklore and Fairy Tales right and wrong merge and all things are become possible. It also becomes a Maze that some become lost in .

Time there is fast or slow, sometimes as the fairy tales tell us a day there is 7 years, or 1 year, or 100 years to our world .

This line, this boundary is marked in our world by the power of 'Betweens'. Those times and places and situations that are neither one thing nor the other.

• Dawn..& Twilight... neither day nor night
• the strand of the Sea... between the froth and the water
• Boundry lines/ fences...belonging to niether one or the other.
• May Morning... neither winter nor Spring (a time of beginnings)
• Samhain..neither fall nor summer...(a time of endings)
• Dew... neither rain nor sea; neither from above nor from below, neither river nor well water.
• Mistletoe.. neither shrub nor tree, and grows between the sky and the ground.
• The man/woman not born...(anyone not born in the usual way ..a child come untimely from the mothers womb(Cesecarian) also a child taken from his dead mother.
• A Maze..a protection from and a path to the otherworld.

These are a few of the things defiant of classification and there for free of limitations. They are also 'out of bounds', free from restrictions of convention and culture, yet also outside of the protections of those bounds.

A person between contraries, between paradoxes places themselves in a vulnerable position. Demands can be placed upon them which they cannot refuse.

This tension is what the Hero's of Legend live inside. Myths turn of this paradox. One within reach of salvation and lasting fame is also in reach of annihilation.. in some Sagas this is the Sword Edged Bridge which the true hero must cross.

Read Lady Gregorie's Gods & Fighting Men with a mental note to watch for the entrance and exit of paradox. It's an early part of the Celtic Revival in Ireland.

In those great stories the Heroes & Heroines struggle between honor and glory, unending fame and unavoidable tragedy. They lived if evey they did, long and long ago. They live today and in the eternal tomorrows, for they are part of all of us.

• Meet Cuchullain the Champion of Ulster.
• Journey with Diedre and Naois the fated tragic lovers.
• Connor Mac Nessa born with the chill of the Sea in his heart.
• The Children of Lir, cursed to be Swans and see their whole world fade away.
• Here also is Finn MacCool and the Fianna of Ireland. The Home Guard of the King Of Tara.