Class 2 News

Come away O human child

To the waters and the Wild

With a fairy, hand in hand,

For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

(From “The Stolen Child” W.B Yeats)

Class 2 have begun the year with Celtic Tales and the above excerpt from Yeats’ poem gives a picture for the stage of development the class 2 child enters into. In Class One the child exists in the land of the fairy tale, all is one, magic is real, fairies and angels are all around. This starts to change in Class Two often referred two as the time of occasional magic. A veil between the material world and the spiritual world has appeared and there are questions as to the reality of that which was previously accepted. Along with this there may be a feeling of loss for the child (and possibly the parent) as the land of “Tir-nan-og” (the land of the ever young) starts to fade from sight.

The Celtic stories reflect this stage of development well as we hear in the story of King Lir’s children who are changed into 4 swans and cannot re-enter Tir-nan-og but must find another life, eventually the swans are transformed and make their way back home in their true form, but not as material beings. So, it is in the timeless land of the ever young, only spirit can reside there and here on Earth life involves change and death. This stage is a pre-cursor to the 9-year-old crossing in Class Three. 

Along the way we have learnt via the medium of story about the Ancient Celtic Gods and their battles such as the great battle between light and dark where Lugh (Sun God) battles Balor (God of Darkness) where in the end the sun god is victorious but only whole when he integrates the darkness. We are beings of light and dark not one or the other but both.

The wisdom and strength of the Goddess Bridgit who as well as a divine mother is also a battle Goddess and makes prophecies of the future that is to come when the first human inhabitants come to Innisfail (Ireland) do battle with the Gods and are seen as worthy so given permission to remain. The Gods then don the cloak of invisibility, and so once more the world of spirit is hidden or at least partially hidden from human eyes. The children have performed some wonderful short plays re-enacting some of these archetypal images and themes.

Andreas