About this episode
Please Support Our Show: Join us on SubstackLove KnotWork Storytelling? Your financial contribution (via Substack) helps me pay the amazing team that puts this show together.With your paid subscription, you'll be invited to our next members only Myth Workers' Salon.Subscribe to our newsletter Myth Is Medicine.OUR STORYThe old myth is well known: King Lir’s four children are turned into swans by their jealous stepmother Aoife. This retelling brings us deep into the motivations and nuances of an old Indo-European story that came to Ireland with the Normans in the 12th century.OUR GUESTEllen is currently a member of the Council of Europe's Expert Group on Violence Against Women. She is a qualified psychotherapist and group analyst. She was CEO of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre from 2006-2016. She gained a wealth of experience in lobbying government, designing and commissioning research studies and overseeing and publicly presenting national awareness campaigns about sexual violence, including the highly successful #AskConsent campaign.Her interest in Mythology grew out of her work as a Jungian Psychotherapist, especially her dream analysis work with clients.For 30 years she and her husband Sandy Dunlop (S5 Ep6) have organized and run the Bard Summer School on Clare Island Co. Mayo where with the group of participants, they explore the contemporary relevance of one of the wonderful Irish Myths. Ellen is also Guardian Chieftain of the O'Malley Clan.Find out more about Ellen on Instagram @bardmythologies and https://bardmythologies.com/OUR CONVERSATIONFolks tend to recall this story as being lovely - "oh, the swans!" - but it’s really about abuse of power, abuse of children, and abuse of womenEllen’s translation work with Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, professor of Irish folklore at University College DublinTransforming the archetype of the “evil stepmother” and looking at all the archetypes present in this story.Her work as a Jungian psychotherapist who worked with clients’ dreams, which often called on mythic figuresThe Children of Lir sculpture by Oisín Kelly in the Garden of Remembrance, created to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1916 rising in Parnell Square GardenThe Magdalene Laundries, 1922 - 1996, where women were incarcerated for anything from perceived promiscuity to being considered a burden on their families or the State“There was no sex in Ireland until the Late
