I was much loved by my mother and father, and I grew up tall and strong and handsome. I learned to run and shoot, and I could swim and dive better than any lad my age in the isles of the west. I knew how to sail, I sang with the harp, and I liked nothing better than to entertain the people who gathered in the hall to weave and make their bows during long winter nights.

Then my mother died. My father mourned her as bitterly as I did, but within a year he had married again.

My mother was all but forgotten by him. But not by me.

Ian the Privileged Prince in How Ian Direach Got the Blue Falcon, Orange Fairy Book. Painting “Orpheus” by George de Forest Brush.