Seek the Distant Isle
Of which was spoken the sailed to seek
Many ships, families and fighting men,
As generations had sailed before,
They take to the wave again
Destination is unknown
Danger dire is expected
Life and voyages both are a battle
The rudder the boat directed.
The winds were fierce, the seas were high
Some ships and their folk were lost
The Druids chanted to the angry gods
As the boats violently were tossed.
In time the seas calmed, and all was still
Some ships found themselves alone
Some were scattered in the distant sky
More lost neath waves storm blown.
These folk, who names, stories and tongue the same
Each made footfall on different land
Gave to it a place for each legends happening
So their surroundings they’d understand.
When in time it came as clans to be known
And each had to take a name
Though from different lands many centuries since
Their surnames were much the same.
That is why the Silver Arm is known
In Wales, Ireland and further
The Meadow of the Healing Herbs,
Jumping corpses, and battle murder.
There is a Lusmagh in every land
Has somewhere a Moytura too
A local place to give sense to the stories they brought
Before to their shores the storm winds these peoples blew.
Their Gods lived in the otherworld
Neath the ground from which holy wells
Flowed beside Fairy Trees
Offering of which invoked spells
Before Christianity took over,
Made santisied Patterns from Pagan rites…
All is changed, and yet nothing has…
All is just clouded in our sights!
The similarity of the stories of the Irish, Welsh and Galacians, who all have Balor, Nuadha and a story of the Silver Arm, and a battle akin to Moytura, or variants of same, leads me to think they are stories brought to Ireland, Wales and Galacia, and attributed to local areas to give sense to the landscape by future generations of the original settlers who brought the stories. The phenonomen of similar surnames arising hundreds of miles apart within what became seperate cultures by the time surnames arose gives credence to that. It is my theory an original fleet – possibly multiple – sailing seeking the famed Fair Isle in Celtic mythology, got scattered, and landed on different landmasses (West coast of Ireland, North West coast of Scotland are two examples) brought their stories there, and developed as separate peoples. It is my thinking that is how the Celts came to these islands, and the concept is explored in this verse.