Only the Stones Survive: A Novel

by Morgan Llywelyn

  After that, I was more careful.

  I dispensed knowledge bit by bit, as the Dagda had taught me, beginning with simple things that were easy to understand. A mind must be stretched before it can accommodate complexity.

  And the history of the Túatha Dé Danann is complicated.

  The information I imparted was, and is, regrettably fragmentary. Great gaps exist where those who knew a part of our history never passed it on. I have always urged my people to try to fill in the missing pieces if they could. Gifts are passed in the blood, and so is memory. A sudden recollection may supply another part of the puzzle.

  Who am I?

  Why am I?

  Where am I going?

  Even I cannot answer those questions to my own satisfaction. But I keep trying.

  Of this much I am certain:

  With the passage of time, truth can become myth.

  Objects that appear to be solid are in fact permeable. Otherwise, shapes could not change.

  The condition called death, meaning the end of existence, does not exist.

  There is no material barrier between lastworld, thisworld, and nextworld.

  When an infant is born, the spirit that animates its body is not new. The undying spark existed Before the Before and may occupy many forms during the long reach of Eternity.

  And this I cannot explain:

  After you have gone, I may still be here. Time swirls and spirals and reconnects itself in this enchanted place among the stars.

  At night, I stand alone beneath the boundless curve and gaze upward. Calling silently, not expecting an answer yet knowing you are there. All of you, who are one. As I am part of the same one.

  You can call me Elgolai na Starbird. Elgolai means He Who Goes Out and is the name given to me. Starbird is the name I gave myself.

  Not only the stones survive.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  EVERYTHING BEGINS with an idea. You did. So did I. So did the universe. This book is the result of an idea that interested my late mother, Henri Llywelyn Price. From my earliest childhood, she read serious books to me and encouraged me to ask difficult questions.

  Many years ago, my mother gave me a copy of Until The Sun Dies so we could discuss it together. In this book, Robert Jastrow explored two great mysteries: the riddle of life and the riddle of creation. The conversations this inspired between my mother and me eventually led me to the wide variety of books listed in the select bibliography.

  Most of the questions—and some of the answers—behind Only the Stones Survive are to be found within those pages.

  To all of the scholarly, questing, and/or imaginative minds who researched and produced this diverse totality of work, I can only say thank you. There are too many individuals to name, but, like the stars in the sky, you shed magical light.

  Morgan Llywelyn

  Winter Solstice, Ireland, 2014

  A SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

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  Carpenter, Rhys. Beyond the Pillars of Hercules. New York: Delacorte Press, 1966.

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  Jastrow, Robert. Until the Sun Dies. Toronto: George G. McLeod 1977.

  Jones, Carleton. Temples of Stone. Cork: Collins Press, 2007.

  Joyce, Patrick Weston. History of Gaelic Ireland. Dublin: Educational Co. of Ireland, 1924.

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  Mango, Jean. Ancestral Journeys: The Peopling of Europe. London: Thames & Hudson, 2013.

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  Robb, Graham. The Discovery of Middle Earth: Mapping the Lost World of the Celts. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2012.

  Sandars, N. K. The Sea Peoples. London: Thames & Hudson, 1978.

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  Trump, D. H. Prehistory of the Mediterranean. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980.

  Velikovsky, Immanuel. Worlds in Collision. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1950.

  Wood-Martin, William G. Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland: A Handbook of Irish Pre-Christian Traditions. 2 vols. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1902.