IT SEEMS LIKE NOTHING CAN STOP THE BLOODBATH IN PALESTINE; the genocide of a whole nation. We are seeing scenes so horrible that the physical reaction is to turn the head away, and hold on to the gut as it lurches with the horror of children shaking with trauma, silenced, frozen, limbs taken from their perfect bodies, dead children, mothers who want to be buried alive with their babies because death is the only release from the unbearable pain. This can never be unseen, or undone. And yet it continues even under the guise of a ceasefire.
Do they not know that killing children for the sake of power are ancient doings, for example, in the Bible, in Mythology. Remember The Slaughter of the Innocents. In Irish mythology, Balar King of the Fomhóire arranged to have his daughter Eithne’s children thrown into the sea to prevent a prophesy that he would be killed by his own grandson. He had imprisoned her in a tower in Tory Island for her whole life up until the moment nature outwitted him. In fact it was his own greed that caused the beautiful Cian to come to Tory having stolen his beautiful cow. Some, like me prefer the version where Cian not only made love to Eithne but to her handmaidens too, and they all had babies, Eithne bearing three, and all of them were thrown in to the sea by her father’s soldiers.
The stain on humanity repeats itself over and over which makes the repeaters extremely stupid, and we have never been comforted, we will never be comforted. Some of the supporters of war will go to church this Christmas to celebrate the birth of a child. Judaism also values children as the purest form of being created in God’s image. My Irish Curse for them on Christmas Day is that the are caught in the gut by the contradictions they live out. I hope that the hypocrisy of supporting a war created by imbecilic madmen constipates. I hope the baby in the crib screams out in pain, so they see his limbs sever before their eyes, that he looks into their eyes while he hands over a sword for them to pierce his heart, his mother and father’s hearts, then casts blood all over their faces so that they will never be able to it wipe them clean.
I also wish for them to know that Eithne and her handmaiden’s children lived on by changing their shapes to seals, while a Druid called Biroge intervened. She brought one of Eithne’s children to the mainland to the world of his father’s people, The Tuatha Dé Danann. That child was Lugh who went on to fulfil the prophesy. He killed his grandfather Balar at the second battle of Maigh Tuireadh with stone from his sling. And so, to go back to stupidity, it’s not hard to see that some who have a certain interpretation of power are indeed stupid. they learn nothing and will always crumble in the end.
To quote Mahatma Gandhi “The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall.“
by Karina Tynan
See Eithne’s story in my book SÍDH : Stories from the Women in Irish Mythology
Illustration : by Kathy Tynan kathytynan.net 🤍