An Cailleach
Irish and Celtic myths and legends, Irish folklore and Irish fairy tales from Irish Gods and Monsters
An ancient witch of the earliest days, the Cailleach
An Cailleach or the veiled woman is among the most ancient deities venerated in Ireland, she whose realm lies in the ice and cold of winter. Once it was said that she ruled all the world, when the green things slept for untold aeons beneath her thick icy cloak, until she was given cause for great sorrow and wept floods of tears across the land, her heart melting to a thaw and letting loose the rivers.
As she wept she dropped many large rocks from her apron which became mountains and hills, and her hammer shaped the valleys below. Some even go so far as to say that from her sprang all the spirits and Sidhe of the old world!
She is known by many names far and wide, an Cailleach Béara for her home in Cork and Kerry, Digde and Milucra, Brónach which means sorrow, Queen of the Little Sun, and it was herself that was said gave Fionn Mac Cumhaill his grey hair. When Fintan the Wise of the hundred lives came to Ireland before the flood he thought himself the first but found Cailleach living there, and knew her to be far more ancient than himself.
He asked of her, “Are you the one, the grandmother who ate the apples in the beginning?” but she gave him no answer.
She grows old in autumn and becomes younger as the winter passes, until in spring she relinquishes her hold and lets the summer flowers blossom. The first farmer to take in his crops at harvest time would make a little poppet of the crop's last sheaf and throw it into his neighbour's field, who would then hurry to take in their own crops and throw the doll into the next field. The last farmer to take in his crops had to feed and house the Old Lady, and fierce were the struggles to avoid having to accommodate that wintry guest!
The last sheaf of all was feared by young women, for if they tied it they believed they'd never be married but live alone like an Cailleach. Thankfully, feeding the last sheaf to a sheep would avert the spinster's fate.
Countless lone standing stones throughout Ireland and Europe are said to be sacred to her, as when she was done bringing the winter she'd cast her staff beneath a holly tree or gorse bush and turn into a stone until the spring.
She lays claim to the creatures of the wild and cold places, the red deer and the wolf, the leaping salmon and the springing goat, warding them and watching over them. She it was who decided which would live and which would perish in the storms of winter, and for this she is also known as the Hag of Storms.
An Cailleach lived (and rumour has it, lives still!) in the Beara jut in the south of Ireland, and a wandering friar came to her house, for he had heard tell of a woman of great age, so old that even she herself had lost count of the years. Her house was small enough and he didn't think much of it, but she made himself and his scribe welcome.
“If it's no harm,” he asked, “may I know your age, as there are those who say you're older than the road I walked to get here, and the fields around it, and the hills in which they lie!”
“No harm to me at all,” she answered, “for I've little to say about it, knowing even less! But I do kill an ox every year and stew up the bones for my soup, then throw a leg bone up into that loft above your head. If you send your young lad up he can make a tally.”
Well the friar's lad went up a the narrow ladder to the loft and began throwing bones down as there was no room to do a count up there in the dimness, and for each one the friar made a mark in a thick book he bore with him. At length the book was full of marks and the friar was weary with totting, so he shouted up to the lad to ask was he almost done.
The lad stuck his head out and said he hadn't even one corner cleared yet, so the friar looked askance at the old woman and bid him come down out of it, for he was up to his knees in bones. He spoke to the lady and learned of some of the wonders she could recall, and they were strange tales indeed that hardly made much sense. But for all that he didn't write them down as his book was already full.
The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare
The reason why she was called the Old Woman of Beare was that she had fifty foster-children in Beare. She had seven periods of youth one after another, so that every man who had lived with her came to die of old age, and her grandsons and great-grandsons were tribes and races.
For a hundred years she wore the veil which Cummin had blessed upon her head. Thereupon old age and infirmity came to her. 'Tis then she said:
Ebb-tide to me as of the sea!
Old age causes me reproach.
Though I may grieve thereat—
Happiness comes out of fat.
I am the Old Woman of Beare,
An ever-new smock I used to wear:
To-day—such is my mean estate—
I wear not even a cast-off smock.
It is riches
Ye love, it is not men:
In the time when we lived
It was men we loved.
Swift chariots,
And steeds that carried off the prize,—
Their day of plenty has been,
A blessing on the King who lent them!
My body with bitterness has dropt
Towards the abode we know:
When the Son of God deems it time
Let Him come to deliver His behest.
My arms when they are seen
Are bony and thin:
Once they would fondle,
They would be round glorious kings.
When my arms are seen,
And they bony and thin,
They are not fit, I declare,
To be uplifted over comely youths.
The maidens rejoice
When May-day comes to them:
For me sorrow is meeter,
For I am wretched, I am an old hag.
I hold no sweet converse,
No wethers are killed for my wedding-feast,
My hair is all but grey,
The mean veil over it is no pity.
I do not deem it ill
That a white veil should be on my head:
Time was when many cloths of every hue
Bedecked my head as we drank the good ale.
The Stone of the Kings on Femen,
The Chair of Ronan in Bregon,
'Tis long since storms have reached them.
The slabs of their tombs are old and decayed.
The wave of the great sea talks aloud,
Winter has arisen:
Fermuid the son of Mugh to-day
I do not expect on a visit.
I know what they are doing:
They row and row across
The reeds of the Ford of Alma—
Cold is the dwelling where they sleep.
'Tis 'O my God!'
To me to-day, whatever will come of it.
I must take my garment even in the sun:<
The time is at hand that shall renew me.
Youth's summer in which we were
I have spent with its autumn:
Winter-age which overwhelms all men,
To me has come its beginning.
Amen! Woe is me!
Every acorn has to drop.
After feasting by shining candles
To be in the gloom of a prayer-house!
I had my day with kings
Drinking mead and wine:
To-day I drink whey-water
Among shrivelled old hags.
I see upon my cloak the hair of old age,
My reason has beguiled me:
Grey is the hair that grows through my skin—
'Tis thus I am an old hag.
The flood-wave
And the second ebb-tide—
They have all reached me,
So that I know them well.
The flood-wave
Will not reach the silence of my kitchen:
Though many are my company in darkness,
A hand has been laid upon them all.
O happy the isle of the great sea
Which the flood reaches after the ebb!
As for me, I do not expect
Flood after ebb to come to me.
There is scarce a little place to-day
That I can recognise:
What was on flood
Is all on ebb.
Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry
TRANSLATED BY KUNO MEYER 1911
The Beara peninsula is marked on the map below, and rich are the legends the people of that place could tell you.
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