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Leda and the Swan

from Beautiful Tragedies by Unkindness Of Ravens

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Anthony King
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about

William Butler Yeats's 'Leda and the Swan' retells the story from Greek mythology of the rape of a girl named Leda by Zeus, the most powerful of the Greek gods.
Yeats presents this tale in a graphic way - stories about sex with animals were fairly common in classical societies like Ancient Greece, and the myth of Leda and the swan was once well known.
'Leda and the Swan' was published in Yeats's 1928 collection 'The Tower' – one of the most celebrated and important literary works of the 20th century.
Yeats's poem was inspired by a Greek myth in which Zeus rapes Leda, the daughter of a king named Thestius. In many versions of the story, Zeus merely seduces Leda, but this is not the case in Yeats's graphic version. After the rape, Leda gets pregnant and gives birth to Helen of Troy. According to the story, Helen was hatched from an egg.
Yeats is one of Ireland's most well-known and important poets. Some scholars have interpreted 'Leda and the Swan' as an allegory for the "rape" of Ireland by its once colonial invaders, the British.

The video for the song was filmed on the Holy Island of Monaincha in the Irish midlands in March 2018. The island, first created by the monk Elisarius in the 6th Century, is recognised as the 23rd Wonder of the World (there are in fact 50, not seven).
The High Cross seen several times in the video is one of the oldest in the world and is in two parts - the base and main shaft date to the 9th Century, while the top section dates to repairs carried out in the 12th Century.
Monaincha is off the beaten path and a wondrous place, with an atmosphere unlike anywhere else. It is a truly ancient and forgotten site, with tombstones dating back to the 8th and 9th Century so weathered they are just old stumps of stone now.

lyrics

(Words by William Butler Yeats)

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

credits

from Beautiful Tragedies, released March 14, 2018

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Unkindness Of Ravens Ireland

Dark music from Ireland

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