Ireland, land of the children of the Lir

It has been the greatest time to live in Ireland. Time of love, endurance, hardship, beauty, excitement and survival. The art of living must have been invented right there. 
I´ve always had this land of leprechauns and fairies connected just with that, but after having lived there for tenth of the century, I´ve discovered there is much more to it. 
I´ve come to love and adore the old Irish folks whose memory hasn´t failed and who could sit down and talk for hours in their peculiar Irish brogue. Well, such opportunities were pretty rare, but even to taste it, to try it - was fascinating. 
The nature, oh well. The nature was such a powerful recharger. I loved the green scenery evereywhere you looked, the old grey stone houses, the smoke coming from the chimney pots, the large and never ending fields  parted by the stone walls, the white sheep on the pastures and curious cows wondering around. The air was full of warm and moist flavour, eventhough the winds could be strong and the rain used to fall down like hot lava. There was something about the Irish air. It was fresh for sure. But also damp. And when there was a summer, it was never hot enough,the mildness of the climate was omnipresent. The reason to wonder at the beauty were the mulitcoloured rainbows that leant from one side of the island onto the other and often doubled as the rain was everywhere. What surprised me the most was the unusual green palette that Ireland kept showing off over and over through each season. There weren´t just three kinds of green. There were thousands of its shade going from slight greenish tint to a deep dark green, with dozens of midtones. The whole island looked like a giant green lap in which you could just fall into and sleep a billion years. I wasn´t bit surprised the land gave a rise to so many legends and ghost stories, or even the old celtic fairytales that have sprung up out of nowhere. The mists of Eire were quite similar to those of once forgotten Avalon, and who knows if it wasn´t the same place after all. 
I had my beloved pack of swans coming down to the river every day. The swans were said to be the original people of Ireland, called children of Lir, as the legend goes. I always had this story at the back of my mind whenever I went down to feed them. These animals somehow belonged there. Beautiful, gracious and spiritfull, same like I´d imagine old irish tribe before they turned into something else - perhaps the Celtic tiger, whose fame has ended as fast as it started. 


"Out with you upon the wild waves, Children of the King!
Henceforth your cries shall be with the flocks of birds"