The Children of Lir

PATRICK CASSIDY: "The Children of Lir" (Son Records)

'The Children of Lir' I remember from fourth class - when the magical tale was drummed into our skulls courtesy of a woman in black who insisted that the doom outstripped the delirium in any fantasy stakes we cared to chance. Patrick Cassidy is of another mind altogether.

Fionnghuala, Conn, Aodh and Fiachra are the subjects of his delirious flights of fancy. A tale of the jealous stepmother who transformed Lir's offspring into swans doomed to roam the lakes and shores for a wearying 900 years is surely deserving of a treatment - and Cassidy gives it his all.

The intractable sadness of the tale is such good copy. Snow White's wicked witch fades into insignificance when compared to the demented musings of Aoife. Our Celtic forebears lacked nothing in the imagination department. In fact they predated the naturalists who see man and animal as habitants of the same genetic line by millennia.

And Cassidy has captured his sound-picture of the tale with delicate fingertips across his musicians' finer sensibilities. Opening with the funereal 'Grave', a mournful, melancholic piece to mark the decline of Tuatha de Danann, he lets the strings ('cellos and violins) weep for their passing in a gentle elegy to their passing supremacy.

From there the tale is related with orchestra and choir melding in a sometimes ecclesiastical, sometimes disbelieving meditation. The softer, more contemplative pieces are most striking to these ears, summoning up a feminised Handel in the making. Far from the school that aims to capture Irishness with the token use of pipes or bodhrán, Cassidy sets the tale to the score with Liam O'Floinn's pipes a cosy and integral part of the landscape rather than a token gesture towards authenticity.

A thing of beauty, probably a joy forever.

• Siobhán Long