The Birth of Lugh

They hid him first in a foster-house where the roof was thatched with careful straw and the door knew the boots that crossed it. Prophecies gather trouble like wool gathers burrs, and a child promised to be light to a people makes jealousies as well as songs. Tailtiu, the foster-mother who later gave her name to games, bent over him and whispered the names of tools—sling, spear, harp, needle—so that when he woke he would not be surprised by the world.

When he was grown to the size of his own courage, Lugh came to Tara where the Tuatha Dé Danann were gathered. The doorkeeper asked his trade; Tara kept order by craft.

“I am a smith,” said Lugh.

“We have a smith.”

“I am a wright.”

“We have a wright.”

“I am a harper, a poet, a champion, a sorcerer, a historian, a hero.”

“We have each of those,” said the doorkeeper, “and a fine example of each besides.”

“Have you,” asked Lugh mildly, “one man who is all of them?”

They had not. So in he went, and his hand was a key for a dozen locks. He set bones straight as if they were fence rails; he played a tune that sent sleep to the babies and fire to the soldiers. He bent iron like a branch and persuaded pride to sit down and eat with wisdom.

That night, a star seen through the smoke-hole of Tara seemed to hang lower than is proper for stars. “A sign,” someone said. “Or else a good story beginning,” said someone else, which in Ireland is often the same thing.

Lugh was not born to boast but to do, and this is how light arrives: carried in, almost casually, by someone who has practiced what he loves until it looks like magic.