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Showing posts from April, 2013

Sewynpadir: Frewyn Prayer Beads

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Our good friends at Designs by Oak&Ivy made some authentic Frewyn Sewynpadir, or Frewyn prayer beads. The can be purchased from the church or made, given to friends and family members during times of celebration or personal trial. Sewynpadir can be worn at the waist or worn around the neck and are made from wood, clay, or even hair of someone close to the wearer. They are held in the hand during prayers and can be set at family shrines at night. Two of the prayer beads that Oak&Ivy made depict Diras, Father of the Gods, and Libhan, Goddess of Friendship.  If you would like to order your own sewynpadir, visit  Designs by Oak&Ivy .

Story for the Day: Fraternal Sentry -- Part 4

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Getting ready for the next book tour. Here is the last part of Feidhlim and Gaumhin's saga. Enjoy. A small inspection of Feidhlim’s face proved that no bruise had been made or skin breached  but the dimmed eyes and hopeless aspect betrayed a heart dreadfully broken. The injury to Feidhlim’s ambitions could only be healed by his father’s forgiveness, and how that was to be won, Gaumhin must be left to conjecture. No child should be made an example of before his siblings, and though Gaumhin would not speak his sentiments aloud, he knew that they were successfully conveyed by Feidhlim’s sudden curling up against him and wrapping his arms about his waist. “Gaumhin…?” said Feidhlim, in a mortified voice. “Aye, mah Fei-lad,” Gaumhin whispered, rubbing his brother’s back. A pause, a shuddering sigh, and with what slender the courage Feidhlim had remaining, he muttered a most beholden “…I’m really glad that you’re here,” and resigned himself to his sorrows, his sadness brea

Story for the Day: Fraternal Sentry - Part 3

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F eidhlim sat in the dismal throes of ruined ambitions, his expression disconsolate, his heart irreconcilable: he had angered his father, had disappointed and disobeyed him, and what was worse than the father’s aggravation was the mortification he was made to suffer for rousing his father’s displeasure. He had come home to be sanguine and gratified by his sons, but his indulgence of their strident animation had been tried, and Feidhlim had thus destroyed all his father’s expectations of finding an dutiful son in himself. Feidhlim was always doting, looking after his father as something of a divine figure, but he was not always as attentive as his conscience commanded. Gaumhin gave him latitude on many points as long as he never incommoded his grandmother and looked after his younger brothers, but his father practiced no such lieniencey regardless of how well his sons behaved. He had shown himself as discourteous and insubordinate, indifferent to his father’s comforts and unmindful

Story for the Day: Fraternal Sentry - Part 2

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W hile the strike had not been of a sort to damage, the action itself had been enough to stun Feidhlim into submission. The boy instantly bowed his head and said a most woeful, “…I’m sorry, Da,” before turning toward the rest of his siblings with downcast eyes and speaking an apology that was as mortifying to remark as it was to offer. Ossin and Irall, still under the dread of their father’s petrifying calm, softly refuted their brother’s apology, needing none for the few moments of enjoyment he had granted with his games, and Blinne said nothing, her hands lowering by trembling gradations, her lips quivering with each shuddering breath, her mind engrossed in the trepidation of the moment, uncertain as to whether she ought to give way to notions of compunction for not having stopped her brother sooner, or whether she ought to accept all the culpability in the question for having won at the game so early, compelling Feidhlim to steal their pieces that he might triumph over his siblin

Story for the Day: Fraternal Sentry - Part 1

T.H. White said it best when he said,  "It is so fatally easy to make young  children believe  that they are horrible," one of my favourite quotes from The Witch and the Wood. It is frightfully easy, and while parents may think that a punishment has little lasting effect on their children, even a cruel word from a parent they love is the end of the world for a child. Gaumhin MacLachlann, one of the Captains of the Royal Guard in Diras, first understood this when he was fourteen. He came from an orphanage in TussNaTuillin to help a large family in Eastern Westren, and the manner in which the father treated the children in that house was something which he was unprepared to witness:  Fraternal Sentry - Part 1                 Just how much the family were in need of Gaumhin and all that his jovial spirits, high good humour, and forbearing character could warrant was made apparent the very next day, for when the children came home early from church to enjoy their afte

Story for the Day: Cultivation

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Cultivating fruits in Frewyn begins at an early age.  W estren, being the warmest municipality in Frewyn, situated at the base of the northern Menorian Mountains, championed in the splendor of first spring: the warm gales caroming down the mountainside leaped over the Westren Wall and flushed across the lowlands, blanketing the prospect from TussNaTullin to Tyr Bryn with a wave of verdency, garnishing the landscape with varying hues, their delicate blooms scintillating with vibrancy under the power of every morning’s numinous aurora and the ardent rays of the western gloaming, ornamenting the gold of the daffodils with a tinge of amber light, the remembrance of which made Gaumhin sigh and sorry that he was not in Westren at this time of the year, that time when all the sanguine grandeur of spring and all the succor it supplies, granted by the psithurism of cloaked trees and the mellifluous scent of honeyclover and woodsorrel, promised still more resplendence. Standing on the b

Story for the Day: Accent

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Frewyn is home to many different accents, but the accent from TussNaTullin, the Gaeltacht of Westren, is so different that it might as well be its own language. Many folk who grow up in TussNaTullin, like Sir Gaumhin did, have no idea that their particular brand of speech is nigh unintelligible to those outside of their village until forced to venture beyond its borders. In Gaumhin's case, he was raised in TussNaTullin's orphanage and placed into a foster home when he was fourteen, and while some found his accent difficult to understand, his three foster brothers reveled in his thick brogue:  T he boys had demolished Gaumhin’s bowl of oats and sat with one hand to their ears, that they might listen to Gaumhin’s amusing accent all the better, and with one hand over their toothy grins, their eyes beaming with mirthful delight, their giggles ebbing out from behind parted and sullied fingers. They said nothing to Gaumhin’s question, only staring at him in expectant glee, wait