Labours of Hercules and lessons learned

King Eurystheus set Hercules originally ten monumental tasks to achieve. Despite these being incredibly difficult, King Euythesus ultimately added two extra labours. He claimed Hercules had got help from others to accomplish one task and received payment for another.  In the legend, the king comes across as a petulant, frightened and mean-spirited man while the hero Hercules shines forth as an incredibly brave and heroic figure tackling unimaginable horrors to achieve victory despite the odds. Here, I look at just six of his tasks to see if there are lessons from these that can help us today.

Slaying the Nemean lion

The lion had fur that protected it from all arrows and Heracles, in order to kill the animal, had to lure it into a cave and block its entrance.  There in the darkness at close quarters he was eventually able to club and strangle the lion.  To skin the lion he had to use the animal's own claws as nothing else was powerful enough to cut through.  He was able to use the lion skin as a coat and use its protection in future tasks.

Lesson 1 

Sometimes in order to achieve your objective you must create an environment that suits your particular skills.  The more you accomplish the more informed you become at knowing how and where to make your stand.  

You can take from any conflict or achievement vital tools that will help you in future challenges.  If navigated well, even unexpected developments can help you emerge a stronger and more competent person.

Hydra-nine headed monster

Heracles covered his mouth and nose with a cloth to protect himself from the nine-headed Hydra monster’s poisonous fumes. Heracles discovered that when he successfully cut off one head two more heads grew in its place.  The only way to disarm the monster was to not only cut off the head but also to cauterise the remaining neck with a firebrand.  Heracles was assisted in this task by his nephew and although he succeeded Eurystheus used the fact that Heracles had not acted alone to justify adding an extra task.  By dipping his arrows in the Hydra's poisonous blood he managed to make his weapons much more powerful.

Lesson 2 

At times the environment in which you must work is so toxic you need to protect yourself to survive it.  Such a poisonous atmosphere needs to be recognised to stop it from overpowering you and making you incapable of functioning at all.

Tests often come back at you again and again.  Striking repeatedly and viciously they can even grow stronger and more numerous.  When this happens, it is important to spot the similar source of difficulties and take remedial action to avoid future repetition.   Simple instant removal will not suffice and a longer-acting permanent process needs to be put in place.

You will often need friends or colleagues to help you overcome such situations and it may be necessary to have the humility to accept such help despite any complications their assistance may through up.

The good news is that overcoming such a pernicious situation leaves you with an exceptionally potent remedy for future adversaries.

Capturing the Ceryneian Hind

Because of its sacred nature, Heracles did not want to hurt the hind and so had to be patient in this task.  It took over a year for him to achieve this task.  It is said he used nets to capture it while it slept and when he returned to Eurystheus with the hind he was reluctant to give it to the king who wanted to keep it in his collection of animals at the palace.  Hercules cleverly called for the king to come and get the hind himself and when the king emerged from the palace he let the animal run off freely.

Lesson 3

Destroying something is much easier and faster than keeping a thing alive. However, such wanton destruction has consequences and you need to recognise that some goals are not worth all the anguish and pain they entail.  If at the end of a lot of effort and time you have not injured or damaged something precious take that as a job well done not a failure.

Capturing the Erymanthian Boar

Hercules caught the boar by shouting and chased it from the thicket into deep snow. Eventually, the boar was totally exhausted and Hercules was able to bind it with chains. When he reached king Eurystheus with the boar on his shoulder Hercules threw the boar at his feet and the king was so terrified he hid himself in a bronze vessel to escape danger.

Lesson 4

Humans can outpace almost any other animal on the planet, including even cheetahs, horses, and wolves in an endurance race.  It is your stamina that may make all the difference in many challenging situations.  That ability to persevere will mean even a stronger opponent can be beaten especially when they are pushed into unfamiliar landscapes.

Those in charge of us are sometimes not worthy of the role they choose to play and hide from their responsibilities.

Cleaning the Augean stables in a single day

Hercules's next task was a humiliating one. He was instructed to clean the huge Augean stables, which had over 3000 oxen and had not been cleaned in over three decades.  This would have been an impossible task for one person but Heracles succeeded by cleverly rerouting the rivers Alpheus and Peneus to wash out the filth.

Lesson 5

When dealing with huge quantities of shit and with little time to dig it out you need to be creative.  Sometimes the solution is not getting bad stuff out but putting good stuff in.  Even in our own lives instead of constantly being depressed by all that we dislike in our lives get busy filling it with something good and worthwhile instead. 

Slaying the Stymphalian birds

The Stymphalian birds were man-eating birds with beaks of bronze, sharp metallic feathers they could launch at their victims, and poisonous dung. They had migrated to a marsh in Arcadia to escape a pack of wolves. They swarmed over the countryside, destroying crops, fruit trees, and townspeople.  Hercules could not enter the marsh as he would sink into the soggy ground so he used a rattle to make a loud sound and this drove the birds high into the sky.  He was able to shoot some of them with his poisonous arrows and take them back to the king as proof that he had achieved his mission.

Lesson 6

Even those who are terrifying to us are invariably scared of some other thing.  

When you cannot enter a dangerous area to achieve a difficult objective then start by driving your opponent, through distraction, to a more beneficial zone for you.  Once you have achieved that use the potent skills you have already acquired to eradicate the problem. 

There are many other tasks Hercules undertook and many other lessons to be learned from all of them but I grew weary of my task and decided to stop at the sixth.  Knowing when to stop is another valuable lesson!  The reason Hercules had to undertake all these tasks was because he had killed his wife and children and the deeds were set as a form of atonement.  Surely that itself is the mightiest lesson of all.  Don’t harm those nearest and dearest to you because you end up spending the rest of your life fighting demons and monsters, like yourself!

Breaking things

 

It came yesterday, borrowed from a relative, and stirred up old forgotten memories.

Of struggling to thread up a pedal singer sewing machine in primary school. 

Those days of being taught knitting and sewing at school have long passed. 

In my day, we spent hours and hours knitting cushion covers or sewing pin cushions. 

I was the class expert in breaking the needles in the sewing machine, 

and our teacher hated my unnatural skill. 

Even my knitting was hit-and-miss. 

It seemed to become tighter and tighter until I was strangling wool and needles. 

My sewing was so bad on the machine that when I did get it going, 

I refused to change the bobbin and thread and did everything with the one colour. Delighted to paddle and zoom in freedom.

At such moments I would have loved to have never-ending curtains of material to feed through the capricious machine. 

Instead, always someone else was waiting to use the machine behind me.

When the needle broke as usual I could hear their despair

I quickly left them to the disaster

Machines are capricious things like people.

Usually broken by others.

There was a flow chart in our engineering department on how to deal with a broken machine.  It always made me laugh.

Green mounds, murdering ancestors and the ages of man

Some objects fill our landscape, but we just don’t see them. Growing up in Northern Ireland these mounds were everywhere. 

I can remember seeing them through the car window and wondering what they were and why were they there. I think I even asked a few questions, but no one gave me a satisfactory answer. One elderly relative put a finger to her mouth, in a hushing motion, and then whispered that these mounds belonged to the fairy folk. This answer did not seem right to me, however, I just accepted their mysterious presence and peculiar abundance in Northern Ireland. 

This year, I suddenly decided I wanted to know what these are and why we have so many. It was prompted by the fact I had to take my car to a garage to get it fixed, and as it was Easter, almost every other garage in the town was shut, so I had to go out into the country to a garage in the middle of nowhere. While I waited beside the garage there was a rath. I had to wait almost 30 minutes, it was the only thing to look at, and I was reminded of seeing things like this through car windows for decades, and not knowing what they were.

They are certainly distinctive, and once you’ve seen one, you can recognise others. I started to do a bit of research into these raths.  Scotland has them too, but nowhere near the numbers that we have here in Northern Ireland. In fact, one of the first papers I read was comparing the raths that are found in Northwest Scotland to Northeast Scotland. Apparently northwest Scotland from Cape Wrath to Argyle and the Hebrides has only five Raths, whereas northeast Scotland from Cathness to the Firth of Fourth has over 38!  These raths in Scotland have a pickish Celtic origin and in the regions where this race lived, there was an abundant number of such mounds to be found. The Picts were first mentioned in 297 AD, when a Roman writer spoke of the “Picts and Irish [Scots] attacking” Hadrian's Wall. The name, thought to be from the Latin picti, “painted”, was one of an ancient people who lived in what is now eastern and north-eastern Scotland, from Caithness to Fife. Their name may refer to their custom of body painting or possibly tattooing. 

However, in Ireland, raths are found in far more abundance with an estimated number between 45,000 to 60,000 and represent the most common form of ancient monument. In fact, between 70-80% of all raths in the island of Ireland are found in Northern Ireland. No wonder I was always seeing them during my childhood! Dating from the early Christian period (500-1100AD), they are circular earthworks defined by a deep ditch and internal bank, enclosing an area of twenty to forty meters in diameter. There has been little archaeological excavation of these mounds but some have been shown to have the remains of houses and other structures.  The name rath is thought to be from the Irish ráth or ráith meaning of uncertain origin.

The Irish tend to be a superstitious race and these monuments were regarded as the homes of the sídhe (fairies), earning them the title "fairy forts” just as my elderly relative had whispered. Fortunately, superstitious fear of retribution from the fairy folk dissuaded most country people from damaging these mounds and, as a consequence, protected many from destruction but not all.  Another example of such superstition, found in N. Ireland, was leaving a hawthorn tree in the middle of a field, despite the difficulties of ploughing around it.  

 

Farmers just did not want to anger the little folk and bring bad fortune on themselves by pulling out the hawthorn tree.  Another recently proposed explanation is that hawthorns emit a peculiar scent to attract insects rather like the smell of gangrene and decomposing bodies.  In those early times when people were more exposed to this disease and often sat with dying and the dead this smell must have seemed like the smell of death. 

It is probable that raths built between 500-1100 AD were the residences of minor chieftains and served to protect their homes from cattle rustlers or other attackers.  Being raised up on a height gave you a better opportunity to see who might be on the way to cause you problems.  In Malta, the oldest capital city (Mdini) is found inland on a raised mound where its inhabitants would have had a panoramic view of the entire coastline on all sides, very useful in those days of sea-born attackers. 

Fear of others is a powerful motivator to protect your home, family and lifestock. In the Sci-Fi series Firefly, savage and cannibalistic Reavers, were the scary villains of the story.  Terrifying bloodthirsty attackers whose horror was hinted at throughout the early episodes but not seen. When the Reavers eventually turned up in a much later episode it was even more frightening as they had a horrifying reputation.  On a personal note, a relative of mine used a DNA test to discover more about our ancestors and discovered that our family is descended from the Scottish Reivers. These were a group of cattle rustlers, often guilty of feuding, murder, arson and pillaging on the border between Scotland and England in the 14th – 17th century.  How come others invariably find they are related to royalty or famous folk while mine turn out to be rogues?  Both names Reaver and Reiver come from the Old English ‘bereafian’ which means "to take by violence, seize, or rob" and it is where we get the present-day term of bereaved. Not a great discovery to find such blood runs in our veins!

The terms used to describe these mounds can vary: fort, rath, grave mound, earthen ramparts, cairn, mottes, ring forts and cashels. Raths are usually monuments of the early Christian period 500-1200AD and are large flat-topped grass-grown mounds.  Mottes were flat-topped mounds erected by anglo Normans in the late 12th or early 13th century as the bases of strongly defended dwellings of timber (and later stone) castles or dwellings.

Cashels were usually larger than raths and had a circular stone structure used for defence

With a diameter of 80-200ft.

Despite the large number of such mounds, not all have survived. There are only two Ballymurphy raths on the slope of the Belfast Hills when it is known that there used to be twenty on these hills. Unfortunately many have been demolished before even archeological excavations could be done.  Another rath, elsewhere, was destroyed by the intrusion of a rubbish tip that gradually spread over it.  No weapons have been found in raths or cashels but have been found in ring forts.  But often the divisions between these types of mounds blur.  The Mound of Down (Rathmullan) has been excavated and a report suggests that it has been many things over the centuries, 

“First, a rath was built on the site at some point in the Early Christian period; secondly, the main enclosure was constructed; and finally, shortly after the arrival of John de Courcy in Ulster in 1177 AD construction of a motte upon the site of the earlier rath was begun and then abandoned before it could be completed.”

This has probably happened elsewhere and mounds were reused over the millennium.  How many forts, cathedrals, and castles will have started life as a simple rath?  

The Stone Age (10000 BC – 3300 BC) was followed by the Bronze Age (3300 BC-1200 BC) followed by the Iron Age (1200 BC-550 BC), the Roman period (43 AD –410 AD) and the Early Medieval period (410 AD – 1066 AD) etc so little wonder people chose to build upon earlier more ancient constructs.  It is then more surprising to stumble across a feature in Northern Ireland in pristine condition that is so old it makes all the mounds mentioned earlier almost modern in comparison. Mountsandel Wood is the earliest known settlement of man in Ireland dating to between 7600 and 7900 BC.  

Flint tools were found here, indicating that Stone Age hunters camped here to fish salmon in the natural weir.  Archaeologists believe that Stonehenge was constructed in several phases from around 3100 BC to 1600 BC and 3200 BC is the approximate date when the earliest pyramids of Egypt were built. This Mountsandel Settlement was already over four millenniums old when these were all being constructed. However, the Stone Age period has even earlier and more intricate constructions that make Mountsandel seem both primitive and modern in comparison.  Göbekli Tepe in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey was inhabited from 9500 BC to at least 8000 BC now that is impressive!

This piece started with simple green mounds I saw through the car window as a child and the mystery they represented. It continues with a run through the ages of mankind and a quick detour into my own murderous family ancestors from Scotland. It ended with a temple constructed in Turkey over 11000 years ago.  Strange the paths a mind takes when freewheeling.

Beatrice a hundred year old mystery

My grandmother died aged 25 when my father was only 14 months old. One of the few photos we have is her sitting with him, a baby on her lap. She looks so lovely, but it feels strangely heartbreaking knowing that in a matter of months, she would be dead. What caused her death or even any details of her death seems still shrouded in mystery. It was 1925 and attitudes to death were different in those times. The general approach then could be summarised as ‘least said soonest mended’!

A friend, even in the 1960s, said her mother had died when she was just 13 and her sister 11. They were sent to school the day of their mother’s funeral and no one ever mentioned her mother again. Such a reaction was fairly common in those earlier years of the 1920s, and to be fair, there were so many deaths from diseases and other causes that perhaps not talking about such losses was a practical way of coping. What is there to say about the death toll of World War I when 40 million died between the years 1914 and 1918? My grandfather fought in that war. The Spanish flu which followed from 1918 to 1919, killed another 50 million. In the face of such a scale of loss, possibly people opted to just accept death as an ever-present feature of their lives. 

My grandfather was born in 1898 and entered the army aged only 16. It is hard to imagine him going through World War I as a teenager and facing the brutal horror of those days including the battle of the Somme. During that time he was shot in the upper arm and once recovered was sent right back into battle. By the time World War I was over he was in his early 20s. He returned to Northern Ireland fell in love with Beatrice Magee and married in 1923, aged 25. They had a baby boy but after just two years, his young wife suddenly died.

Because her death was seldom discussed my father knew little of his mother’s death. He was fortunate that his mother was one of many siblings and during his childhood, he had many loving aunts lavish attention on him. But that void where a mother should have been was ever-present. He had questions that were never answered. One gossipy villager whispered that she had been sent to an asylum and died there. In the absence of real knowledge, toxic gossip often takes its place. Also in today's world, not knowing your family’s health details leaves you uninformed about important things like any inherited diseases there may be. When a relative examined one side of our family tree, he was horrified at the number of male relatives who had died quite young from heart disease.

Last week, my brother found an old tray in the attic of our garage and brought it down for us to see.  It had been there for decades but we read its inscription as we examined it.  Given to Beatrice Magee on the occasion of her marriage in 1923.  My brother took it home and cleaned, polished and fixed the tray and my Mum placed it in the living room behind the photograph of Beatrice holding her baby.  It triggered renewed memories of this lady that none of us had ever met.  Several family members had failed to find Beatrice’s death certificate while carrying out their research and there seemed to be a mystery in its absence.  

This week I applied online and bought a copy of her death certificate using a different birth date than the one commonly used.  This morning the death certificate arrived and I felt that at last the mystery of almost a century would be solved.  However, the death certificate was written in such poor handwriting I could not make out the cause of death!  In frustration, I sent it to relatives, medical and otherwise hoping they could help decipher the words.  It took a day but the answer eventually came, she suffered from “mitral regurgitation 2 years cardiac failure certified”.  So there in back and white at last was the answer.  

In examining the names on her grave there are signs of the scale of loss of life in those days.  Of her 10 siblings a five-year-old Violet died of scarlet fever in 1914 (the scarlet fever epidemic would peak in 1914).  The Spanish flu in 1919 took two of her brothers 24-year-old William and 19-year-old Charles.  They had to carry out the coffin of one brother through the family front door in November and then the second brother in December.  The scale of such loss was repeated through homes throughout this country.  It hurts the heart to think of it all.  There are no words.  How that generation weathered so much in such a short time should remind us all of the preciousness of life that we too often take for granted.  War and disease rip families apart. Each loss leaves a void that lingers in the hearts of all those who loved them.  

PS The Spanish Flu originated in the US on March 11, 1918, at Fort Riley a military camp in Kansas.  When those soldiers went to fight in World War 1 they took the disease to Europe and the rest of the world. It feels odd that the war my grandfather fought resulted in a disease that killed his wife's two brothers. However, pestilence and warfare were often fellow bedfellows over the millennium and no doubt recent wars will continue to contribute to the re-emergence of infectious diseases.  Already diseases such as cholera, polio, measles, tuberculosis and malaria are rising in the conflict areas of Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen. The sad truth is that adequate prevention and treatment of communicable diseases are often impossible in times of conflict. In fact, war itself provides perfect vectors for disease such as refuge camps, mass movements of populations, poor sanitation, and a lack of access to either proper medical assistance, water or a healthy diet.

Courtesy is such an old-fashioned word but a wonderful art indeed

 

She had a warm smile of greeting and she spoke kindly showing careful loving attention towards all guests. Her open heart welcomed you to her simple tidy home with generosity. Talking with her reminded me of conversations long ago, in black-and-white movies, where it seemed each word and gesture was carefully weighed and considered.  But it is the feeling her courtesy generated that I remember most.  She was doing not just everything to avoid offending you but also providing a safe space for you to be. Where you knew no harm but only help and love would come your way. Her determination to be courteous provided a safety net for every hurt soul that came her way.

"Do not be content with showing friendship in words alone, let your heart burn with loving-kindness for all who may cross your path."

Bahá'í Writing

Doer of good

Dear Friend (you know who you are!), 

Doer of good remorselessly. 

Placing wreaths on old graves. 

Remembering lost ones over decades. 

Tidying and cleaning their resting places in honour of the love that lives still. 

Visiting lonely living elderly relatives and nurturing them with that life-affirming connection. 

I care, you matter, these regular long trips, crisscrossing the country affirm. 

Keeping friends, tight, through stress, divorce, separation, and loss of loved ones. 

Making sure the safety net of your love and concern is strengthened with additional knots of love. 

Never failing in loyalty, even when brought to the knees by the suicide of dear ones. 

The devastation of losing dear ones by their own hand strikes that huge heart to its core. 

But keeping that love alive despite the loss, the pain and absence.  

Remembering and holding their spirit in gentle arms of understanding and compassion.  

Dropping everything and giving anything to help a friend in real need. 

Providing constant help of finance, time, and love. 

Not buckling in the face of death but tightening the armour of love and heading anywhere for those you hold dear. 

"The betterment of the world can be accomplished through pure and goodly deeds and through commendable and seemly conduct. "

Baha'i Writings

Mystery of the Missing Earbuds

I lost my expensive Wi-Fi earbuds. I looked everywhere, under things behind sofas, and then in the most unlikely places, drawers and coat pockets, cupboards and shelves. No sign of them, and after two days of no success, my thoughts took a darker turn. Which of our visitors had pocketed my earbuds? They were a top-of-the-range model, an expensive gift for my birthday. You only had to look at them to know the quality. Even the case they were stored in seemed expensive. 

Perhaps it was the man who called in to read the electricity meter this week?  I had held the corridor cupboard door open while he read the meter inside. Had his sticky fingers closed over my precious headset as I fumbled with the door? Another suspect was John the man who comes once a year to spray clean the guttering and windows of the house. He had called and asked if he should do it this week. I went to ask my mother as he waited on the doorstep with the front door open. Had he reached in while I was along the corridor and pocketed the earbuds? His huge hands could have easily swallowed the small slick case in seconds. 

And so it went on. By the fourth day, I even searched the garage, the toilet and the car. Places I had never even used the earbuds. Desperation had obviously set in. They were gone. Was it my carelessness or another’s callousness? Would I even ever know? This morning I put on my white trainers and deep inside there were the case and earbuds. Mystery solved! 

It is human nature to make mistakes and to blame others. To vent our anger out on someone else. Too often the sad truth is the mistake is simply ours. The root cause is right here in us.  How many times do we decide to blame others instead of fixing the problem?

You can get discouraged many times, but you are not a failure until you begin to blame somebody else and stop trying.

John Burroughs