A Tale Before Departure

A stranger carrying an unusual cloth handbag engages in conversation with a fellow traveler during a flight delay. When questioned about the bag, the man relates a gloomy tale.
The tale begins when a clap of thunder causes a peacefully grazing bull to stampede into a young man. The trampled man's body is later linked to the beating and rape of a young girl found comatose at the bottom of a rocky ravine. Incredibly, despite the marginal medical treatment by inadequately educated physicians in an under equipped hospital of the impoverished country, the girl gains consciousness and is returned to the small cottage once occupied by her long deceased parents. Alone, the young woman, impregnated by the rape, miraculously gives birth to a healthy boy. In a country steeped in superstition, word of the young woman that, in the clutches of death, reached to the heavens to seek justice, spreads throughout the land and is sought for supernatural guidance.
Shrouded in mysticism, the traveler's narrative chronicles four generations of tragedy. The soothsayer's son is forced to flee Ireland during the "Irish Uprising". Instead of departing a blessing, the boy’s mother instills an “Irish Mother’s Curse”. The rendering of the curse is depicted through tragic marriages, a secreted child, alcoholic neglect, self imposed isolation and untimely deaths.