Rhea

Twelve of them in the classical reckoning, six brothers, Oceanus, Coas, Creus, Hyperion, Iapetus, and the youngest and most cunning, Cronus.

Six sisters, Thea, Rhea, Themis, Nemesine, Phoebe, and Tethys.

These were not small gods.

These were immense, primal, magnificent, the second generation of existence, rulers of a golden age that the poet Hesiod would describe with something very close to longing.

And yet, because the universe is nothing if not recursive in its ironies, Cronus too received a prophecy.

He too was told he would be overthrown by his own child.

And so he too became a fearful father, when his wife Rhea bore children, Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon.

Cronus swallowed them whole, one after another, down into the dark of his own body, where they could do no harm, where they could build no power, where they simply were not.

Of him it is that the lines are written, by the dark rolling waters of the Boyne, where Angus Og magnificently dwells.

when the milesian race invaded ireland and after long fighting subdued the danans in spite of all their enchantments and all their valour the danans wrought for themselves certain charms by which they and all their possessions became invisible to mortals and thus they continued to lead their old joyous life in the holy places of the land and their palaces and dancing-places and folk-moats seemed to the human eye to be merely a green mound or wrath or a lonely hillside or a ruined shrine with nettles and foxgloves growing up among its broken masonry now after angus and his folk had thus retreated behind the veil of invisibility it happened that the steward of his palace had a daughter born to him whose name was ethne On the same day, Fand, the wife of Maenon the sea-god, bore him a daughter, and since Angus was a friend of Maenon, and much beloved by him, the child of the sea-god was sent to the Brug Neboinia, the noble dwelling-place of Angus, to be fostered and brought up, as the custom was, and Ethne became the handmaid of the young princess of the sea.

In time Ethne grew into a fair and stately maiden.

Now in the bra of Angus there were two magical treasures, namely an ale-vat which could never be emptied, and two swine whereof one was ever roasted and ready to be eaten while the other lived, and thus they were, day and day about.

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She was as nimble with her fingers as Calypso, that nymph who kept Odysseus for seven years in her enchanted island.

She was as untiring as Penelope, the hero's wife, who wove day after day while she watched for his return day in and day out arachne wove too the very nymphs would gather about her loom naiads from the water and dryads from the trees maiden they would say shaking the leaves or the foam from their hair in wonder pallas athene must have taught you but this did not please arachne she would not acknowledge herself a debtor even to that goddess who protected all household arts and by whose grace alone one had any skill in them i learned not of athene said she if she can weave better let her come and try the nymphs shivered at this and an aged woman who was looking on turned to arachne be more heedful of your words my daughter said she the goddess may pardon you if you ask forgiveness but do not strive for honors with the immortals Arachne broke her thread and the shuttle stopped humming.

Keep your counsel, she said.