Cailín (Lass) (Anam Céile Chronicles) Read Online Free

himself.  
    Aislinn
smirks to herself, yet also feels treacherous for afflicting herself upon this
pitiful, benevolent soul of a creature.  Indeed, behave in a better manner I
should , she thinks, feigning guilt to herself.
    “Let us
hear it then,” he enncourages.
    She
smiles and inhaling deeply, commences her tale.

Chapter Two
     

     
    ‘ T was the year 1690 that I be
born, the very same as the Battle of the Boyne.  I be merely five years of age
when Catholics were banned from participating in public life.  And in 1701, the
Act of Settlement passed dispossessing the Irish of their land in favour of
British Lords.  Fortunately, these corrupt decrees had yet to come to the
west.  Still, a sense of urgency there be— especially fer me father, who
comprehended we indeed were living on borrowed time. 
    ‘Twas
then the year 1702.  A girl of a mere twelve years I be.  Oh, how unaware I be of
the changes me fate soon would rouse.  At that time, the only place in this
vast earth ever I had known be the lands surrounding Ballyvaughan, in County
Clare, in me homeland of the island Éire .   
    Éire
herself is said to have been conjured up, out of the magic mists, from the
lyrics of a poem.  The small village of Ballyvaughan lies at the corner of The Boireann ,
a ruggedly desolate, yet beautiful land along the coast of the Atlantic.
    In this
land seemingly unchanged by the millennia past, our peoples too were impervious
to change.  Still we spoke in the tongue of our native Gaelic, when the culture
of much of the rest of our Éire had been prohibited and acquiesced to speaking
the language of her British captors. 
    I could
scarcely believe the stories I had heard about man, that they could truly be that
cruel and hateful.  And furthermore, I could not understand what reasons there
could be to possibly be so vile to one another.  I have since come to
understand that man’s hatred fer others, his violence, boils down to one
purpose— power and greed. 
    Fortunately,
the rugged, untamed shores of the west, were too far and too bleak fer the
covetous British lords seeking to take over its lush farmlands.  Our people
were able to preserve their culture, fer the time being, that is.  Nonetheless,
these lands could not have been more precious to us, and we would not have left
them fer all the gold in Éireann !
    Enigmas
are abundant in this wondrous place where the very name means ‘Great Rock’.  As
far as the eye could see, there were cliffs of jagged rocks of limestone
jutting out along the shoreline, the white frothed waves crashing unto them in
a perpetual inescapable encounter, the spirit of neither ever to fade.  Much of
the land is covered by the ancient limestone with its unique composition of
fossils of sea creatures from long ago.  Its soft and porous nature allows the
growth of plant-life in its crevices, ranging from native species to tropical
and then to alpine. 
    More
inland, the rich soil of its tranquil valleyslong
ago carved by glaciers proliferate an abundance of dainty wildflowers, creating
with tapestries of colour a seductively magical aura, is caressed by gently
meandering streams. 
    In a
final apex, rising above its landscape, are the Dolmens , the megalithic
tombs of our ancestors, hailing back more than six millennia, even more ancient
than Egypt's pyramids.  Also, there are the clokkens , strange stone huts
that once served as medieval dwellings.
    This
place endured on, unbroken by time or man, where one’s innate sense of
spiritual reconciliation may flourish.  One could stand witness in awe of the
utter magnificence of it all; or just as certainly, one could feel immersed in
their own smallness amidst the enduring wildness surrounding.  There, one could
walk endlessly to escape the reality of their life, and also realise the
genuine aloneness of their existence in this world.
    The
realm of me childhood this was.  In that place, I too flourished, wild and
free.  Though,