I’d love to take credit for planning the trip down the lovely little path the kids and I are following at the moment, but I can’t. The trail appeared before us and we set forth, that’s all. It started with Our Island Saints, a book I’d ordered from Yesterday’s Classics last year.

No, wait, I guess it really started with my decision to take a cue from the Waldorf folks and keep "saints and heroes" in mind as a kind of over-arching theme for Rose and Beanie this year. An umbrella, if you will, to provide some shelter from the chaos of our move. Our Year of Saints & Heroes. It has a nice high-tide sound to it, though of course you know we’ll be spending much of this year in the lowest of low tides. And that’s fine. We thrive on low tide around here.

(Hey! Just occurred to me! I get to add actual BEACH experience to my whole Tidal Homeschooling thing! You SEE the lengths to which I will go in order to flesh out a metaphor for you?)

Anyway. Our Island Saints, I was saying. We started with St. Brigid of Ireland because she is special to my family, and also she is the patron saint of scholars and babies. Before I began reading (this was one day last week), I printed out some pictures for the kids to color: pictures of the saint for the younger girls, a complicated Celtic knot for Jane.

I read part of the story (it’s long) and a good deal of it was about how kind and generous Brigid was to the poor, how she’d give away her bread to any ragged stranger she passed on the road. That reminded me of a poem I love—Alice chose it for the first post on her blog last year—and I sent Jane to fetch The Harp and Laurel Wreath so we could read it together. It is "An Old Woman of the Roads" by Padraic Colum, and it begins like this:

O, to have a little house!
To own the hearth and stool and all!
The heaped up sods upon the fire,
The pile of turf against the wall!

The poor, bereft, wandering old woman: she could use a Brigid in her life.

After we read it and talked about it, I got a little goose-bumpy, because I remembered that Padraic Colum is the author of the VERY NEXT BOOK I had planned for a read-aloud. It’s called The King of Ireland’s Son, and if you’ve never read it, you’ve got to treat yourself to the rollicking, lilting (hey!) adventure of it. Sure and ’tis as fine a bit o’ storytellin’ as ivver I’ve seen. Weaving together the strands of old Irish tales, Colum creates a rich and riotous tapestry of princes and enchanters, cats and kings, monsters and maidens, songs and swords.

Like this:

"…the youth
I’m telling you about did nothing but ride and hunt all day.
Well, one morning he rode abroad—

"His hound at his heel,

His hawk on his wrist;

A brave steed to carry him whither he list,

And the blue sky over him,

"and he rode on until he came to a turn in the road.  There he saw a gray old man seated on a heap of stones playing a game of cards with himself. First he had one hand winning and then he had the other. Now he would say ‘That’s my good right,’ and then he would say ‘Play and beat that, my gallant left.’
The King of Ireland’s Son sat on his horse to watch the strange old man…"

Irresistible, I’m telling you.

And so,

with my babe in my lap

and my boy at my knee,

and my big girls before me as rapt as can be,
and the boxes all around us,

we are off on another adventure, and fie to the packing.