For fairy lovers

   Today was another low key day- the weather was bleak and we needed to get ready to leave Bushmills and head down to Dublin, anyway.  Plus, Kaia and Tessa's friend reappeared, and they've been playing with her, along with the 2 boys next door, all day.  So, the rest of this post will have nothing to do with today- I'm just going to write up the trip through Breen Oakwood I promised days ago.  

Non-fairy lovers, depart!  

Fairy lovers, I'm including the pictures from last time as well as new ones.  I'm writing it the way I would re-tell our day to Kaia and Tessa.  I'll include the caveat again that the ancient Irish who named the wood had a different understanding of the realm of fairy altogether.  This is our completely Americanized version!

We were very excited to go to Breen Oakwood.  Breen means "Fairy Palace" in Gaelic, which is the language they spoke in Ireland a long, long time ago (and some speak it now).  So we knew we needed to keep a lookout for any sign of fairies!

   It was really hard to find, with only a sign by the road telling us where the wood was-  maybe the fairies only wanted visits from people who really wanted to see them.

    When we started walking, we saw this gate, and wondered if marked the entrance to the place where the world of fairy and the world of people were woven together.  There aren't too many places like that in the world.  Could this be one of them?

    We climbed through the gate and walked down the road.  Pretty soon, the road ended and we turned onto a grass path.  We kept walking, wondering what we would see.  Eventually, we came to this gate.  We were sure we were getting closer to the land of fairy.

    But the gate was locked!  How could we get through?  Then we saw that there were little steps built into the wall, so we knew the fairies wouldn't mind if we went on.  You can see Kaia climbing over in the photo.

    On the other side of the gate, the path was surrounded by beautiful flowers and tall grass.  There wasn't anyone else around.   Only those who really, really wanted to step into the land of the fairies would have made it this far.  We knew we had to be almost there.

    Finally we saw this gate, almost hidden by the trees. Can you see it? Maybe it was usually hidden from sight by the magic of the fairies, but they revealed it to us.  We walked down the path.  Was this it? The final gate?  Maybe after this, we'd be in the land of the fairies.

    Sure enough, on the other side, the woods began.  We walked down a small path, surrounded on all sides by old, magic filled trees.

    While we were walking, we saw a little lake filled with lily pads, buttercups along the side of the path, and small leaves, which Tessa realized the fairies used to write lists on.

Suddenly, we saw it- a fairy house!  Fairies living in Breen Oakwood, of course, don't need to build their houses.  They just look around the wood until they find a beautiful spot where they will also be safe.  If you look closely, you can see that the grass is hanging over an opening.  Living in there, the fairies would never get rained on, unless they wanted to!

    And here was another fairy house!  Can you see how the ferns are growing right next to the entrance, like a fairy garden? 

    We kept walking down the path, through the fairy wood.  We could feel the magic all around us.

    We passed a stream, where the fairies sailed.  Here are Kai and Tess, watching the water flowing.

    We also saw a bench, where fairies could rest when they were tired.

    Then Kaia noticed this spot, where the fairies come to watch the solstice, which is the longest day of the year.  You can tell it's the solstice watching spot by the way the water shines.  See the rock seats in the stream?

    Tessa spotted this fairy shop, hidden under the tree.  If you look closely, you might be able to see that the leaves are actually fairy dresses.

    Then we saw this waterfall.  Fairies have lots of work to do, but they like to have fun, too!  They swim in this stream, slide down the branch, and jump over the waterfall.  They have to take their wings off before they do any of that, though, since otherwise they'd get wet and wouldn't be able to fly.

If it's raining really hard, and the fairies aren't in their homes, they go to this hill.  See how it's covered with brachen (ferms)?  It keeps the rain off them.

    We'd had a magical time in the fairy wood, but we could tell that it was time for us to go.  The fairies had shown us some of their secrets, but now they needed the wood to themselves.

    So we sang the fairies songs of thanks into buttercups and left Breen Oakwood.

Maybe we'll be able to visit the land of fairy again in our dreams.