Aisling Clíodhna (ASH-lyeen C-liodh-na) was an Irish fifteen year old girl. She had long red hair, her milky skin was spattered in perfect freckles, and her green eyes shone with a curious light. She was a beautiful girl, but she was misunderstood in almost every way. Aisling did not have a paticular liking for anything, yet she loved everything in it’s own way. She liked planting one day, and sewing the next.
Everyone around Aisling did not know what to think about her, “She needs to stay focused on one thing,” they’d say.
Aisling was sitting on her knees one day out on the green moss outside her home, she was singing a lovely ballad while weaving a small basket.
“Ha!” a voice laughed from behind her, “there you go doing something different today than yesterday, while I head out to the fields like I’ve been doing since I was eight!” her brother mocked.
Aisling sighed, “I’m making a basket for Bean (Mrs.) O’Sullivan,” she explained.
“And next you’ll be plowing the field for tUasal (Mr.) Walsh!” he chuckled.
When Aisling finished her basket, she headed toward Bean O’Sullivan’s sod cottage. She bent down every once in a while to pluck a juicy red strawberry from the moss of the road side to place in the basket.
When she arrived at the cottage, she knocked on the wooden doorframe, “Bean O’Sullivan!” she called.
“Oh, Aisling!” a round woman exclaimed as she walked to the doorway with a wooden spoon in her hand.
Aisling handed the basket full of strawberries to the woman, then headed home, encouraged by Bean O’Sullivan’s kindness toward her. She never mocked or scolded her, though she came with many different kinds of presents.
When the girl arrived home, she skipped into her family’s cottage and sat down at the kitchen table with a piece of paper and a pen in hand.
She dipped the pen into a pot of rich black ink and began to write.
‘Oh Ireland, a land so dear to me,
I know by heart every brook and tree.
Oh Ireland, a beautiful land to see,
I know every view…’
“What are you doing now, Aisling?” her mother’s voice interupted.
“I am writing a ballad!” Aisling replied.
“A basket, and ballad, what next?” her mother cried.
Aisling said nothing, but her thoughts went wild, ‘I wish they understood, I must find something I can do to please God.’
Her mother left, mumbling to herself.
Aisling finished her song quickly, the words flowing from her swift fingers. She rose from the chair and went out of the cottage. She had a large canvas bag in her hand.
“At least this time I’m doing a chore, not something I like to do,” she said to herself as she walked to the edge of the peat swamp.
She took the large knife that always leaned against the rock by the swamp, and started cutting large squares of peat. She would set these squares in the sun to dry, and take the already dried squares she had cut earlier back to the cottage in the bag.
Aisling grunted as she hauled the bag of peat back home, when her sister giggled from behind a rock, “At least you’re doing chores this time instead of some silly useless thing, but you should stick to one thing!”
“I want to find what I like the most, Delaney,” Aisling moaned as she heaved the bag higher onto her shoulder.
“Well, you’re not trying hard enough,” Delaney scolded, “stick to the house chores, while I herd the sheep and our brother plows the fields.”
Aisling blinked away the sparkling tears which slipped from her green eyes, then walked away from her teasing sister.
She sat down in her room to read after she threw the bag of peat onto the hearth.
She felt herself whisked away into a different world as the words of the Bible encouraged her. No one could break the spell which held her captive while reading, at least no one in this world. But that day, Aisling was broken from the spell by a familiar voice, “Aisling Clíodhna, my daughter,” the Voice greeted, “I have given you the secret to happiness, but you must first find it.”
“God!” Aisling cried silently in her head, embracing the words which had been said in her heart, “I will try to find it! Is it the key to what I should stick to?”
“No, Aisling,” the Voice said again, “it is the key to what you shouldn’t stick to.”
Aisling sat on the colorful woven blankdet of her bed, and pondered the words. “What I shouldn’t stick to,” she echoed.
The next day Aisling sauntered toward Bean O’Sullivan’s cottage, the woman greeted her at the door, “Aisling, what have you for me today?”
“Nothing, Bean O’Sullivan,” Aisling stammered.
“Ahh,” the woman said, “Come in.”
Bean O’Sullivan beckoned the girl in and sat her down at the table. She stirred up the fire, set some tea in the hanging kettle, took a bowl of strawberries off the counter, picked up a bundle of cloth, and sat down at the table.
“Oh bother,” she sighed, “I have forgotten to stir the pot of cloth I’m dying.”
The woman got up, and stirred a large clay pot with yellow water in it, then sat down at the table again.
“You can sew and dye cloth, and cook and stir up the fire,” Aisling wondered.
“Yes, I can,” Bean O’Sullivan replied, “I also collect peat, weave, spin wool, and garden.”
“But you do so many things?” Aisling asked.
“Yes, I wanted to be more than a shepherd, so I stopped listening to the people and learned many things.”
“You didn’t stick to what they said about you?” Aisling smiled.
“No, because a woman needs to do many things to run a family, not just one or two things.”
“So this is what the Lord wants! Do many things for my future family!” Aisling laughed exuberantly.