"Curog and her ladies.... went to swim in the Boyne. When they had had enough swimming and diving they returned to their garments and left. But Eithne did not notice the maidens' departure and it so happened that the magic mist left her."
___ "The Fosterage in the House of the Two Pails," from Caitlin and John Matthews. "The Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom."
The earthly maiden Eithne (EN'ya) served the faery woman Curcog. She was brought up with her mistress and other maidens and lived happily within the feth fiadha (FAY FEE'a), or cordon of invisibility, that surrounded the faery dwelling-place of Newgrange. All was well until a guest, Finbarr, from a neighboring faery hill, came to visit their home.Noticing that Eithne was the most beautiful of the maidens, but disturbed that she was of a different race than he - human rather than a faery - he purposely insulted her. Eithne began to lose her health and confidence from that time forward, and so it was that eventually she began to find life within the faery hill insupportable. She slipped beyond the reach of the magic mist that shrouded faeryland into the realm of mortals. Unable to get back, she died.
The exclusion that we feel when we are insulted may similarly cause us to become separated from the things that normally support and inspire us, to become depressed or antagonized beyond bearing. Insults, whether they bear a grain of truth or not, cause us to reexamine and sometimes doubt just who and what we are. We can become adrift from our soul's center and slip into a state of uncertainty and destabilization. How can we reestablish ourselves after so severe a knock? We can call upon our spiritual allies to pull out the barb that has lodged in our being and neutralize its effect on our system, so that we can be restored to ourselves again.
"What insulting barbs still lodge in your being? Call upon your spiritual allies to help dislodge them and restore you again."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]
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