There are many poems based on the Children of Lir legend, which I discuss here.

There’s one by Yeats’s friend “AE”, but it followed a later version of the story, and I’m not going to use it. 

This is from Twenty-One Poems by Katharione Tynan, selected by WB Yeats. So it’s not Yeats, but there is a Yeats connection. It’s an image of their last days as swans, shortly before they transform back to human form and die. 

THE CHILDREN OF LIR

Out upon the sand-dunes thrive the coarse long grasses;
Herons standing knee-deep in the brackish pool;
Overhead the sunset fire and flame amasses
And the moon to eastward rises pale and cool.
Rose and green around her, silver-gray and pearly,

Chequered with the black rooks flying home to bed;
For, to wake at daybreak, birds must couch them early:
And the day’s a long one since the dawn was red.

The children transforming into swans

On the chilly lakelet, in that pleasant gloaming,
See the sad swans sailing: they shall have no rest:
Never a voice to greet them save the bittern’s booming
Where the ghostly sallows sway against the West.
‘Sister,’ saith the gray swan, ‘Sister, I am weary,’
Turning to the white swan wet, despairing eyes;
‘O’ she saith, ‘my young one! O’ she saith, ‘my dearie !’
Casts her wings about him with a storm of cries.

Woe for Lir’s sweet children whom their vile stepmother
Glamoured with her witch-spells for a thousand years;
Died their father raving, on his throne another,
Blind before the end came from the burning tears.
Long the swans have wandered over lake and river;
Gone is all the glory of the race of Lir:
Gone and long forgotten like a dream of fever:
But the swans remember the sweet days that were.

Hugh, the black and white swan with the beauteous feathers,
Fiachra, the black swan with the emerald breast,
Conn, the youngest, dearest, sheltered in all weathers,
Him his snow-white sister loves the tenderest.
These her mother gave her as she lay a-dying;

To her faithful keeping; faithful hath she been,
With her wings spread o’er them when the tempest’s crying,
And her songs so hopeful when the sky’s serene.

The silver chain that binds them

Other swans have nests made ‘mid the reeds and rushes,
Lined with downy feathers where the cygnets sleep
Dreaming, if a bird dreams, till the daylight blushes,
Then they sail out swiftly on the current deep.
With the proud swan-father, tall, and strong, and stately,
And the mild swan-mother, grave with household cares,
All well-born and comely, all rejoicing greatly:
Full of honest pleasure is a life like theirs.

But alas ! for my swans with the human nature,
Sick with human longings, starved for human ties,
With their hearts all human cramped to a bird’s stature.
And the human weeping in the bird’s soft eyes.
Never shall my swans build nests in some green river,
Never fly to Southward in the autumn gray,
Rear no tender children, love no mates for ever;
Robbed alike of bird’s joys and of man’s are they.

From 1901: half woman, half swan

Babbles Conn the youngest, ‘Sister, I remember
At my father’s palace how I went in silk,
Ate the juicy deer-flesh roasted from the ember,
Drank from golden goblets my child’s draught of milk.

Once I rode a-hunting, laughed to see the hurry,
Shouted at the ball-play, on the lake did row;
You had for your beauty gauds that shone so rarely.’
‘Peace’ saith Fionnuala, ‘that was long ago.’

‘Sister,’ saith Fiachra, ‘well do I remember
How the flaming torches lit the banquet-hall,
And the fire leapt skyward in the mid-December,
And among the rushes slept our staghounds tall.
By our father’s right hand you sat shyly gazing,
Smiling half and sighing, with your eyes a-glow,
As the bards sang loudly all your beauty praising. ‘
‘Peace,’ saith Fionnuala, ‘that was long ago.’

‘Sister,’ then saith Hugh ‘most do I remember
One I called my brother, one, earth’s goodliest man,
Strong as forest oaks are where the wild vines clamber,
First at feast or hunting, in the battle’s van.
Angus, you were handsome, wise, and true, and tender,
Loved by every comrade, feared by every foe:
Low, low, lies your beauty, all forgot your splendour.’
‘Peace,’ saith Fionnuala, ‘that was long ago.’

The children suddenly ageing, back in human form

Dews are in the clear air and the roselight paling;
Over sands and sedges shines the evening   star;

And the moon’s disc lonely high in heaven is sailing;
Silvered all the spear-heads of the rushes are.
Housed warm are all things as the night grows colder,
Water-fowl and sky-fowl dreamless in the nest;
But the swans go drifting, drooping wing and shoulder
Cleaving the still water where the fishes rest.

This is going to be a series, about the weird sexual mythology surrounding swans and humans. There’s the swans in Swan Lake, who finally take on human female form. 

But the most famous shape-shifting swans are male. They include Zeus, with Leda, and Gottfried, brother of Elsa von Brabant, who in swan form carries Lohengrin, knight of the Grail, from Montsalvat in Northern Spain to one of the rivers that passes through Brabant in what is now Belgium. (Frankreich, back then.) That’s an epic journey for a river-based creature, and someone should write an opera about it. 

One interesting thing about swans is that they have penises, unlike most birds.

Anyway, with the help of my lovely model, and Amazing Special Effects, my Sinful Sundays are going to be taken up for a while with stories and poems about the whole human-swan connection.

Take it away, Mr Yeats!

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
                    Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

I like red. Usually, I see red by giving percussive caresses to women’s asses. But these two girls I met on the way to St Petersburg are among the reddest sexy people I’ve met.

I like the way the image clarifies briefly into two pretty musicians, and then explodes into great red abstracts.

My love on the carpet. Beauty and elegance, in that happy aftermath. 

Peace. Sleep. My tired girl.

The light so soft on her glowing skin. 

I feel so tender.

Moe, e toku hoa aroha.

This always feels right, to me. 

Beneath the sexiness of spanking, which I’ve discussed here, there’s something very comforting in being spanked, for many submissives. 

I read somewhere that one of the reasons it’s so emotionally soothing is that it has sensual links to something that human, chimp and bonobo mothers all do. A common form of comforting is when the mother holds the baby against their body, and almost absent-mindedly smacks the baby’s bottom. Gently, while swaying or rocking back abd forwards, up and down. 

The meaning of this gesture, it’s been suggested, is:

Hand on bottom: It’s okay, I’ve got you.

Hand away: But there’s no emergency, you’re safe, so I don’t have to hold you tight.

Hand back on bottom: But if there were danger, I’d hold you tight and protect you.

Hand away: But there’s no need.

Hand back on bottom: Still, I’m here.

And so on. Not quite forever, but it can go on for quite a while.

So this kind of comforting still carries a sort of physical memory for the submissive. He or she is being looked after, and they’re ok.

Anyway, my girl will be back in this position as fast as possible, once she’s cleared Customs.

To wait is to have arrived. To be bound is to be free. 

It’s Sunday morning, and luckily there’s nothing much to do. Except wait.

There will be the sound and the bite of the leather paddle. And eventually he will fuck her. Sometyimes he lets her hands free, when they fuck, so she can caress him. Sometimes he doesn’t. Both are good, and she couldn’t say which is her favorite.

But she does like not having the choice.

We’re settling in for a long, disciplinary session, Arethusa and I. This is a later view of the scene introduced here. 

She’d been late with a university essay, and it was the third time. I’d finished up helping her to write the thing. But I was sick of past-the-last-second panics, where it took serious intervention from me to get anything handed in at all. So I decided it was also necessary to take severer measures. So I’d told her what to expect, and to be waiting, naked and bent over my table until I got home. 

Once I arrived I fixed her cuffs to the table, and after that it was simply her job to endure. We started with the lighter cane, and at the time this shot was taken there was still the tawse, the birch and the heavier cane to go.

And then, before uncuffing her, there would be the fuck that tells her she’s a good girl again, and that her Master can’t keep his hands off her or his cock out of her. Not for long. 

But the whole process, from discipline to expiation in sex, took nearly three hours.

Note the cushion she’s bent over, and the box of tissues. That’s one of the ironies about punishing a girl you love. You want to be considerate. 

Taken to a dungeon. Spanked, whipped, fucked. And… fast asleep. 

It’s one of the most satisfying moments for a dom, I think, when your sub is too tired even to get into the bed. Simply crawls some of her body onto the bed and drops deep asleep. It makes me feel powerfully tender, seeing her like that. It’s a different kind of surrender. It makes me happy.

And if she ever dreamt of being in a dungeon, in her cosy home in Antarctica, what is she dreaming of when she’s in a dungeon?

She hears him return, though he says nothing. Her wait is nearly over. There will be pain. Two canes, medium and heavy, lie innocently beside her body, over the desk. And the tissues, because there will be tears. And afterwards, there will be lust and need, his body against hers, and the turbulent blaze of sex.

And his sexual fluids will mix with hers, and churn.