[Skerry's Scrapbook] Musings of an English Student

[Skerry]

Well as far as I know there are tonnes of those sorts of legends but a lot of them wouldn't be very well known anymore. Faeries are a major thing though. A banshee is "bean sí" in Irish and the sídhe were fairy mounds so hence banshee means "woman of the fairy mounds". Leprechauns are fairies too. Apparently they can grant three wishes to you if you catch them but as far as I remember if you look away from them even for a second they vanish. They're supposed to try to trick people into looking away so they can escape.

Most Irish legends are hero legends though. Fionn Mac Cumhaill who ate the Salmon of Knowledge and then went on to do great deeds with his followers the Fianna. There's also a legend that he was a giant and that he created the Giant's Causeway as stepping stones to reach Scotland. His son Oísin went to Tír na n-Óg, the land of youth and lived there for 300 years I think. There's also the legends about Cúchulainn including the one about how he got that name which actually translates as "Hound of Culann".

Sorry I think I'm going off on a little tangent there. If you want to ask any specific questions on that then I can try to answer. I think I've forgotten a lot of the old stories unfortunately

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[Harrier]

Tir na n-Og? That sounds a lot like the Peter Pan story; I wonder if it has its developmental roots in that legend.

(c) Absy

[Skerry]

Could be but eternal youth is a common subject of legend. 

The version of the story I know is that the Fianna were coming back from a battle when they were met by a woman, Niamh Chinn Óir (Niamh of the Golden Hair). She tells them that she is the daughter of the king of Tír na n-Óg, a land where there is no disease or age or death. She claims to have heard stories of the bravery and the good looks of Oísin, the son of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, the leader of the Fianna. She says that she has fallen in love with him and that she has placed him under a geas which means that he must come with her or else he will disgrace himself so he agrees. 

So the two travel on horseback across the sea and pass through other lands until they reach the Land of Youth where they married and are happy for 300 years and have 3 children,  2 sons Conchubhar (Conor) and Fear (Man) and a daughter Plúr na mBan (Flower of Women).

Oísin however misses the Fianna and Ireland. He has no idea how much time has passed and so has no idea that the Fianna are dead. Niamh is reluctant about him leaving but she allows him to use her horse though she warns him 3 times that he must not put a foot on Ireland or he won't be allowed back into Tír na n-Óg. 

When he returns he goes to the old haunt of the Fianna only to discover that everything is overgrown as if no one has been there for a long time. He rides around on his horse until he comes across 300 men trying to lift a boulder. Taking pity on them, Oísin leans over and throws it easily out of the way but in so doing he falls from the horse and it bolts. As soon as he touches Irish soil he ages 300 years that he was away and becomes a blind and decrepit old man who laments that his beauty and strength and his comrades are gone. He's brought to Saint Patrick to whom he tells his story and is baptised before passing away.

There are quite a few versions of this because for years the story was told rather than written down so it has been changed and embellished a lot over the years.

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[Skerry]

So today I decided that I'd just be lazy and look up memes instead of actually writing anything for my scrap. So I give you one of the most quoted things in Ireland from the TV show "Father Ted".

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[Skerry]

Today I'm just going to rant. There is the most irritating person ever in my course. Nobody likes him, I mean no one and it isn't surprising. He's an attention whore, coughing loudly and dramatically and showing off what a wonderfully well informed person he is. Okay if you want to give us a fact about something we're discussing ten yeah that's fine every once in awhile. However, if you want to talk about something vaguely related to what we're doing and waste valuable time then that's a no no. Worse still he doesn't know it himself, he looks it up on Wikipedia on his laptop and just pretends that he knows it! I have seen it done.

Just ugh! He wouldn't shut up today! It was so irritating. Plus when we're in tutorials he always uses his laptop. In a lecture a laptop is fine for writing notes and stuff. When you're in a little room with a handful of people all sitting around a table trying to discuss something, you do not want a laptop bang in the middle of it! You're trying to voice a point: tappity tap, tappity tap. Silence while people are trying to think: tappity tap, tappity tap. We asked him to put it away today but would he do it? Nooo.

Got another thing aside from being rude and sarcastic, he's also a hypocrite. One lecture, while the lecturer was going off on a rant about something unrelated to what we we're doing, I looked up something on Mizahar for two seconds. I just wanted to check if I had messages. Two seconds and I get "oh are you on the Internet during a lecture?" in a really patronising voice from Mr. On-Facebook-on-his-laptop!! Just please no. 

I'm going to strangle him or something soon if someone else doesn't do it first. It's a close thing though.

Right that's my rant of the day.

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[Soliloquy]

Ew I feel your pain on that guy. I had a girl similar to that in one of my theory classes last year. She was also quite the tattle-tail as well like we all were in kindergarten again. I'm sorry about his "difficulty" and hopefully your class with him ends soon! I leave with cuteness!

[Skerry]

Aw it's so adorable! Thanks Soliloquy for the sympathy but I won't get rid of him anytime soon. Either he realises what he's like (unlikely) or I might get rid of him from most of my classes in 3rd year which is 2 years away. Hopefully something happens soon.

[Skerry]

Well this week was eventful.

1) PRETTY NEW BOXCODE!

2) I had numerous accidents. Nothing unusual there as I'm very prone to drop things and good at managing to hurt myself (best one I've ever managed was a paper cut across my wrist, don't even ask). So I have cuts on my knuckles and a burnt thumb. I've only dropped my iPod twice this week, I dropped a carton of milk and I dropped a few glass things but I was lucky that they fell on soft stuff.

3) I have had the wonderful task of doing my first college essays. This week I have spent about 20 hours doing research and 2 hours of writing. So far I have one essay fully done and have most of the research done for the second one so it's all good.

4) Went to see Santa today. Yes, I did just say that. We brought my cousin to see Santa and he cried the whole time. He doesn't like men with beards. It was quite funny actually. We had to drive an hour and a half to bring him specially and he was at his happiest when we left. Talk about a pointless exercise.

5) I discovered that a project I was working on for WR (revision of an old location) is totally useless so it had to be scrapped. Yay! :/

So that was my wonderfully eventful week. I'm sure I'll succeed in doing something extremely stupid during the coming week for the simple reason that I am me.

[Skerry]

I'm in a good mood. No, I tell a lie, I'm in an excellent mood! Yay! The two essays that I needed in before the end of this semester are done and handed in. It's truly wonderful to have them done especially as most of my class have spent all day in the library trying to get theirs done by tomorrow but mine are done! College is over until January and I don't have to start worrying about my other two essays just yet so it's all good.

Other than that it's been a fantastic day. I got to have lunch with a friend that I don't get to see very often and one who is just as unlucky as I am when it comes to accidents and mishaps. No accidents for me today but I'm an unlucky charm for sure. My friend spilt hot chocolate, found the bathroom he wanted to go into locked, broke a table (well wrenched the fixtures out anyway), forgot the fork for his salad and had to eat it with a knife and spoon and the spoon broke. It was hilarious and for once it wasn't me!

To add to my good mood, one of my modded threads is going very well and I'm quite enjoying it and for the icing on the cake, my PC Azira shot the massive Blue Elk in the WR DQ!

I'm deliriously happy about everything right now.

Oh plus new box code courtesy of Ruuka!

[Skerry]

True story

I swear I have no idea how I was born into such an insane family but yeah somehow it happened. Basically I live with my aunt, uncle and cousin, have done for the last 5 years. My aunt's friend in Canada sent her a wall sticker. You know that fancy looking writing that you sometimes see in cafes and stuff with inspirational messages or whatever. Well that one sticker made her a little obsessed with them so she went off and bought loads of them online, ones for the kitchen, ones for the hall, some for the bathroom. It's actually ridiculous.

So yeah basically she got two of the stickers yesterday from two different shops so we put up the first set but the second set, bubbles for the bathroom, you had to put on the walls in a different way. Usually you end up with the writing on this clear plastic and you rub it and peel off the plastic and the writing is left there. These bubbles were on this stuff like parchment paper and it wouldn't come off the same way.

So yeah we spent ages trying to rub it onto the wall but that didn't work but the instructions suggested heating it with a hair dryer or something to loosen it.
1)We don't have a hair dryer but we could have borrowed one
2)It was in the bathroom, there's no socket.

So yeah we were trying to figure out, what can we heat that can be unplugged but still stay hot. What did we come up with? An iron. So I stood there in the bathroom watching my aunt iron the wall. It worked but it looked so ridiculous that I still can't believe that I stood there watching my aunt iron bubbles on the wall in the bathroom.