An Cailleach Bheara

I've posted a link to this short film before, but it's well worth another watch! 'Tis the season, and all...

Soon the Cailleach Bheur will make her lament as she gives up and admits defeat in trying to hold back the onslaught of Spring. As she throws down her wand, she shouts out:

‘Dh’ fhag e mhan mi, dh’ fhag e ‘n ard mi Dh’ fhag e eadar mo dha lamh mi, Dh’ fhag e bial mi, dh’ fhag e cul mi, Dh’ fha e eadar mo dha shul mi.		It escaped me below, it escaped me above.     It escaped me between my two hands,     It escaped me before, it escaped me behind,     It escaped me between my two eyes.
Dh’ fhag e shios mi, dh’ fhag e shuas mi, Dh’ fhag e eadar mo dha chluas mi, Dh’ fhag e thall mi, dh’ fhag e bhos mi, Dh’ fhag e eadar mo dha chos mi.		It escaped me down, it escaped me up,     It escaped me between my two ears,     It escaped me thither, it escaped me hither,     It escaped me between my two feet.
Thilg mi ‘n slacan druidh donai, Am bun preis crin cruaidh conuis. Far nach fas fionn no foinnidh, Ach fracan froinnidh feurach.’		I threw my druidic evil wand.     Into the base of a withered hard whin bush,     Where shall not grow 'fionn' nor 'fionnidh,'     But fragments of grassy 'froinnidh.'

While the Irish An Cailleach Bheara doesn't have such firm associations with the seasons as the Scottish An Cailleach Bheur does, there are some hints. Cairn T, at Loughcrew (or Sliabh na Caillí) is thought to have an equinoctial alignment:

The light of the equinox sunrise illuminates the back chamber of the Cairn T at the Loughcrew complex, lighting up carvings that are thought to have astronomical meanings. Near to Cairn T is the Hag's Chair, and she is said to have created the tomb by accidentally dropping a pile of stones from her apron. But of course, in spite of her associations with the place today, we can't really say when the Cailleach came to be associated with the place – certainly not until after Christianity, when the word 'cailleach' came into the Irish language – or if her associations are meant to tie in with the equinoctial alignment. The coincidence with the Scottish Là na Cailliche is tantalising, however.

It does seem like she has other, older names as well, which offer further (possible) seasonal associations. In The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare, she calls herself Buí, who is referred to as a wife of Lugh in other sources, and is said to have been buried at Knowth (Cnogba). In the Dindshenchas of Nás (another of Lugh's wives) she is mentioned again, along with Tailtiu, so one wonders if she has an association with Lúnasa, which were often held at places that are thought to have been the burial place of supernatural women or goddesses who were married to Lugh, or otherwise associated with him? The Dindshenchas of Nás seems to hint that this was the case, since it mentions games and gatherings.

Another Dindshenchas, Lia Nothain, refers to two sisters, Nothain and Sentuinne, both of whom are "Old Women" and Sentuinne itself means "Old Woman" just as "Cailleach" can. The Dindshenchas associates them with May-day, suggesting further seasonal associations:

Nothain (was) an old woman [cailleach] of Connaught, and from the time she was born her face never fell on a field, and her thrice fifty years were complete. Her sister once went to have speech with her. Sentuinne (” Old Woman”) was her name: her husband was Sess Srafais, and Senbachlach (“Old-Churl”) was another name for him. Hence said the poet: 

      Sentuinne and Senbachlach,
     A seis srofais be their withered hair!
     If they adore not God’s Son
     They get not their chief benefit. 

From Berre, then, they went to her to bring her on a plain on May-day. When she beheld the great plain, she was unable to go back from it, and she planted a stone (lia) there in the ground, and struck her head against it and….and was dead. ” It will be my requiem….I plant it for sake of my name.” Whence Lia Nothan (“Nothan’s Stone”). 

     Nothain, daughter of Conmar the fair,
     A hard old woman of Connaught,
     In the month of May, glory of battle,
     She found the high stone. 

Source

The association with Berre (Beare), just as Buí is associated with that place, suggests that they are probably one and the same. So there are some hints and bits of seasonal lore that may be associated with An Cailleach Bheara. It's guesswork, for sure, but I thought it's worth putting out there to ponder.

St Patrick's Day, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth

As the sound of much internet anguish and wailing and gnashing of teeth over St Patrick's Day recedes, we ease into Sheelah's Day...

I wrote a bit about it last year and put together some pointers to the references I'd found about it, and that's about as much as there is to go on, I think; I've found some additional references to it, but it's only ever a passing mention of the day that doesn't really add to anything. Just like Là na Caillich – which is what I tend to focus on at this time of year – Sheelah's Day seems to mark an official end to the winter storms, and thus marks the official beginning of Spring.

For many, according to the sources, it's also traditionally a day of nursing a hangover or partaking in a hair of the dog after yesterday's celebrations and revelry. For some of us today, it's pretty much a similar feeling, but instead of the after-effects of overdosing on alcohol, there's a hangover of frustration, of having had our fill of the ignorance and "alternative history" that abounds at this time of year. As much as anyone might write about how the snakes-don't-equal-druids, and that Patrick isn't responsible for mass genocide of the druids, pagans, or anyone else... there's always a depressing amount of wailing about it anyway. Here's the first one I saw yesterday:

Which... Since when has "driving out" meant "mass murder"? I mean, really.

But anyway, here's (arguably) an even better one:

To be honest, this one's so condensed with bullshit (and an impressively immediate Godwin, to boot) that I have to point to Poe's law here... But I'm pretty sure the snake tattoo thing comes from Marian Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon, right? It's been a while since I read it, but I'm pretty sure the male druids wore serpent tattoos in that. Although it's not the first time Mists has been held up as a factual story, is it?

The problem with this kind of thing is that – aside from the fact that it's so painfully inaccurate on just about every level that I almost want to cry – it's nigh impossible to counter. Saying "That never actually happened" prompts replies of "Prove it," but it's very difficult to prove the absence of something because by it's nature, there's nothing there to show as evidence. It's difficult to point to the absence of mass graves in the archaeological record. It's difficult to point out the absence of documentation on the matter, but pointing that out usually garners the kind of response that there was a conspiracy to cover that kind of thing up, because hey, "History is written by the victors," or variations along those lines.

We can disagree any amount. We can point to more accurate resources that show that the snake story is nothing more than that: A story. It's really nothing more than a stock motif, a miracle of a kind that many saints, heroes, and even gods before them are said to have performed. So we can even muse on the fact that stories of this type have their roots in paganism, and isn't that kind of ironic considering the fact that so many pagans are keen to believe that it's evidence of paganism's oppression?

But it often falls on wilfully deaf ears because the fact remains that some people want the illusion, the fantasy of oppression. People seem to want to believe that Patrick is responsible for the genocide of the druids and pagans. In spite of the fact that Christianity came to Ireland before Patrick did, and pre-Christian beliefs persisted well beyond Patrick's mission, people just want to believe their own narrative. There's no amount of evidence that can convince those people otherwise because they don't want to hear it in the first place, and it's embarrassing and cringeworthy to see memes like the ones above fly around at this time of year that perpetuate this kind of thing. Even worse, I think, are the people who recognise that there's no real truth to these claims, but choose to observe it as a day of "mourning" anyway. Mostly, it seems, because Christianity happened at all, And That's Bad. 

Really, it's insulting. And offensive.

The reality is, Christianity happened. It arrived and spread peacefully in Ireland, and our Irish ancestors adopted it willingly – certainly not at the edge of a sword. There were no horrendous massacres of pagans who refused to convert, and the pagan Irish didn't find Christianity to be such a threat that they persecuted early Christians, either. So peaceful was the whole process that – as Gorm pointed out last week – Ireland's Christians had to come up with other ways to martyr themselves to the cause.

But it's always Patrick that's the focus of all this misplaced outrage, in spite of the fact that those same people who are so angry about him don't really know anything about him in the first place. Nowhere in the works of the saint himself, or in the later myths, legends and hagiographies (saint's lives) is he shown as a perpetrator of mass genocide. If he was that successful as a genocidal maniac, there would hardly be so many stories of him having miracle smack-downs with druids, would there? He's hardly the kind of guy who was all about sunshine and rainbows, either, but still. Anything he does – especially in the later sources – has more to do with showing Patrick in a way the writers wanted him to look, framing him in a way that people would understand, or that would get the message the writers wanted to convey across. It has very little to do with anything Patrick actually did during his life; the way the later stories portray him – as a warrior priest, a no-bullshit-purveyor-of-miracles-against-druids kind of guy – is at odds with the way Patrick portrays himself in his own words. Sure, Patrick wants to make himself look good, but the later sources are more concerned with making Patrick look powerful, to justify the authority of Armagh as the ecclesiastical centre of Ireland. Kildare did the same with Brigid.

But regardless of the things that Patrick did or didn't do, no one ever points the finger of outrage at those ancestors who converted, though, do they? Is the thought that they chose their own way – as we've done today, as pagans and polytheists of one stripe or another – so hard to reconcile that we need an imaginary scapegoat instead? If that's the case, then it's a weird kind of fundamentalism when people, many of whom claim to venerate those same ancestors, choose to accept a fantasy rather than come to terms with the fact that times changed in a way they don't want to fathom. It's hardly respectful to those ancestors, and it's hypocritical to demand respect for one's own beliefs when one fails to respect others. Clinging to a fantasy does nobody any favours.


Reliable resources on Patrick and Ireland's conversion:

Dáibhí Ó Cróinín: Early Medieval Ireland 400-1200
John Koch: Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia
Bernhard Maier: The Celts: A History from Earliest Times to the Present
Alexander Krappe: St Patrick and the Snakes

Youtube! Videos! Article!

As you might have seen with the announcement over at the Gaol Naofa site, we now have a new Youtube channel with a couple of videos already uploaded to start us off. The first is titled St. Patrick's Day (or, "What's Wrong with Saint Patrick's Day?"):

And it takes a look at the awful stereotypes that are often associated with the day (and people's perceptions of Irishness). The second video, Pagans, Polytheists, and St. Patrick's Day, deals with the misconceptions that are often trotted out at this time year – Snakes! Druids! Persecution! Oh my:

)

We also take a look at what the day means to us as Gaelic Polytheists, and how we might observe it.

These videos are the start of a series on the festival year in the Gaelic calendar, from a Gaelic Polytheist perspective, and we'll be putting up more for the other festivals in due course. Our long term plans include videos on other subjects, too (and if there's anything you'd like to see, feel free to leave a comment), and we also have some playlists on the channel that cover subjects like music, folklore, festivals, language, and history, which we think will be of interest.

Sionnach Gorm from Three Shouts on a Hilltop has weighed in on the St Patrick's Day issue as well, with a fantastic piece that goes nicely with the videos we've done:

Mythically, at least, Pádraig and later saints subsumed the role of the warrior-elite heroes in the popular imagination. By replacing chieftains and druids with Christian saints possessed of miraculous powers, early Christian mythology carried on the patterns of the polytheistic originals they replaced. The mystical, and not the physical, would be the lynchpin in the conquest of the mythic landscape; a trope which is common enough that it appears in the Mythological Cycle, among others. While not unique to Irish hagiography, this is something that occurs repeatedly in the Irish lore. The supremacy of a figure like Patrick over that of the Druids (the most common representative of the Pagan past) is not based on his moral character, but on his supernatural abilities. This is a pattern which is discernible in other hagiographies, particularly that of St. Brigid of Kildare and St. Columba.

That's up on the Gaol Naofa website, and many thanks go to Gorm for writing it, and to everyone who helped with the brainstorming, tweaking and proofing for the videos. In particular, thanks as always go to Kathryn and Treasa for their hard work.

Finally, because it's that time of year and it's a tradition now...

It's Paddy, not Patty.

Insomniac blogging

You don't need to know the finer details of the digestive distress I've been experiencing lately (the medication I'm on for my back now officially hates me. Woe. Oh woe is me), nor the fact that it seemed prudent to stop taking said medication so now my left leg is having a party independently of the rest of my body at inconvenient times of the day and night...

You don't need to know that, but it's my blog so I'll bitch about it anyway. But at least the stomach's doing better.

But still. Seeing as I have nothing better to do, why not waffle on about something to take my mind off things? Why not indeed. So here we go.

Part of the busy run up to the Christmas period involved a spot of decorating, just like the year before when I redecorated the kids' bedroom. The plan then was to give the kids something a bit more suited to their age – less babyish – with a view to preparing things for when they would eventually have separate rooms. So Tom, who would stay put, got to pick the colours and went for a combination of light mustard and what was disturbingly akin to Communist-China-red. Which was... vibrant.

Tom also wanted bunk beds, which was fine by the both of them because Tom got the top bunk and Rosie got the bottom bunk, which she turned into a sort of nest. Nana made some purple voile curtains to go around the bottom bunk and enclose the space, and she also got a tea set so Rosie could have tea parties with her teddies. It ended up that any kind of random 'arty' crap got hung off the top bunk as she felt like it, including the cros Bríde Rosie made.

With Tom being an early riser and Rosie being very much not, however, she ended up deciding to move into her own room a little sooner than we were anticipating, so she could get an extra hour or two in the morning without Tom interrupting. This meant following through with the promise that she could have it decorated to make it 'hers.' Naturally Tom decided that he wanted a revamp again, and seeing as he couldn't think of anything else he wanted so dearly for Christmas, I relented. After much deliberating Tom went with a space theme and he picked out the darkest blue he could find and asked for myriad glow in the dark stars (and a glow in the dark moon. There had to be a moon). It was better than the plane crash idea from last year, so that was easy enough, and voila:

He eventually decided he wanted the glow in the dark stuff concentrated on the wall opposite his bed, so that he had a whole wall of night sky. He has the rowan charm at the window and now he has a cross up as well, from earlier this month. I made him a moon-and-stars plaque to hang up on one wall (the clay didn't dry flat for some reason so it's a bit skewed but he still liked it), and after knitting Rosie some hearts for Samhainn, which I turned into a rowan charm for her, Tom asked me to knit him some stars. He picked out some yellow wool and I set to it – picking out a six-pointed star pattern because the five-pointed pattern required fancy needles I don't have...Except when I finished it, I realised that the particular yellow and the star pattern looked disturbingly like the Yellow badge a la Anne Frank. Oh dear. Mr Seren strongly agreed and I can't bring myself to let Tom have it hanging in his room, so I've said I'll have to think of something else.

My mother-in-law had given Rosie some curtains she'd made for my nieces but never used, and she also gave me the spare material. Tom decided he liked the fabric so asked for curtains (I had to make blinds in the end). After much loud swearing at the sewing machine, which refused to sew, I ended up having to do it by hand. They haven't fallen apart yet, which I consider to be the height of my achievement in adult life so far, but I should probably confess that neither do they draw up as well as they could if someone who knew what they were doing made them. But Tom's happy, and that's the main thing, right?

Rosie's room was a different kettle of fish. Initially she decided on a space theme like her brother, but with a BIGGER MOON. Then it was an under-sea theme, and there had to be dolphins and a mermaid please. Then it was back to space with the built-in wardrobes painted to look like the TARDIS so she could put her favourite teddies into it at night, so they could have adventures while she slept. But then she decided on a delightful combination of chartreuse and coral pink, which was fine until I realised she'd picked out the most expensive paint possible. So then it was orange and red, please, until we got to the DIY store and Mr Seren convinced Rosie that the colours would clash horribly. So, under Mr Seren's guidance, we ended up with this:

'Mango' and 'Jellybean Green,' with 'Jazzberry' to bring the two together. Rosie briefly contemplated having a pink ceiling, to bring together the walls with the curtains, but I vetoed that one on the grounds that she'd already exceeded the two-colour limit. Also: Grounds of taste. She wanted some pictures up on the wall, to create a "Wall of Wonder," so I offered her some spare frames that weren't being put to use. She ended up deciding to keep the pictures that were already in them, so in the end only had to choose one more picture for an empty frame. She wanted a picture of the dogs, Eddie and Mungo, and we put up the cros Bríde she made last year and some other bits and pieces she liked, to break up the photos:

The one Rosie chose – of the dogs frolicking – is bittersweet considering our oldest dog, Eddie, is starting to struggle a lot. He's coming up to 15 now, and since Christmas he's become basically incontinent. This past week he's not been able to manage more than a toddle up and down the road close to the house without being absolutely knackered, and while he's happy enough in himself to sit out in the garden while it's raining (I've no idea why he loves it so much) and merrily pee all over the place, a decision will have to be made pretty soon as to whether –when – it's a kindness to let him go than linger. It's one of the most inevitable things when it comes to looking after a pet, but it's no less gutting.

In the meantime, the kids are ignoring the fact that the inevitable is likely to be sooner rather than later and are pinning their hopes on being able to get a husky puppy (not bloody likely), because cute and fluffy is a happier thought than old and decrepit. They've been keen to know where he might go, once the end does come, though. Tom likes the idea of Eddie hanging out at the beach, while Rosie likes the idea of him coming back again, because then we might meet him again. Coming to terms with having to let go is hard.

New Article – Children and Family in Gaelic Polytheism

So I've posted this in a few places and might as well post it here, too:

Gaol Naofa is proud to present our latest article for the website, this time focusing on Children and Family in Gaelic Polytheism. 

Although the main purpose of the article is to give parents ideas on how to include children in a family-based Gaelic Polytheist practice, we hope it will also prove useful for individuals – whether youth or adults – who are new to GP, as well as to other sorts of multigenerational spiritual communities. 

The basics of belief and practice are broken down into their various elements, and practical ideas and examples of simple prayers are given that a child or beginner should be able to get to grips with easily enough. 

Read more...