Clíodhna’s Wave (Tonn Chlíodhna)

By Glandore’s bright bay there is a wave that knows its own name. Fishermen mark it as a friend and a warning; children chase its edges and run back laughing. They call it Tonn Chlíodhna, and a queen’s story travels inside it like a shell’s whisper.

Clíodhna loved a mortal and left the hill for the shore, as powerful people sometimes do when what they want is not power but a hand to hold. She promised to meet him at dawn. The sea promised nothing, being old enough not to boast.

On the morning they chose, a wave rose with a pearly sheen and carried a message: some doors are hard to hold open. Whether it bore her away or only her promise, the stories argue. But the wave had her name after, and names are a kind of keeping.

So the people watch the tide with her in mind and keep their own promises a little more carefully. And if a queen returns to the shore sometimes, it is as a gull with a keen eye or a woman with foam in her hair, looking out and remembering that love has weight as well as lift.