April Newsletter – The Threshold Between Winter and Summer
Spring unfurls with the promise of warmer days and long, golden summer evenings. Across the island, tiny shoots emerge from the dark, carpeting the landscape in a green caress full of promise and opportunity. Magic fills the air – nothing is set- no outcomes yet fixed and every blooming thing brims with potential for summer brilliance.
In this newsletter, Sinéad examines how people marked the change in this season and the retreat of the ancient Hag of winter. Paudie seeks out the places in the landscape that mark these changes and finds a wealth of information in Hector McDonald’s Holy Hills and Pagan Places of Ireland. Jess chases tales of fairy cows, bewitched butter and primroses gathered before sunrise.
For now, let’s celebrate the arrival of spring and look for delight in the unfolding promise of a story where anything is possible !
Spring Equinox– Sinéad O’Brien
The wheel turns and the season slips almost imperceptibly from winter to spring. As the light behind the grey clouds changes & the rain warms, and the earth exhales once again, we feel the brightening of the days at last. We celebrated the Spring equinox this year from March 19-21st. Across Ireland ancient stone circles and Iron age tombs mark the changing of the light. The rising sun aligns with these stone markers and we join all those who have gone before us in marvelling at the life returning all around us.
The equinoxes are 2 days in the year where the day and the night are of equal length. This spring equinox marks the lengthening of the days and the dark and cold loosening their grip.
At Loughcrew in Co. Meath there is Slieve na Caillaigh, the Hills of the Hag, back around 3500BC people built a group of cairns, heaped stones as a burial chamber. At one known as cairn T, the sun on spring equinox morning reaches the cairns backstone inside the chamber, illuminating the carved swirl of solar patterns.
In our stories that still survive we hear how the Cailleach is the Hag of Winter, she gathers firewood and sleeps through the dark bitter season. She carried great stones in her apron and crossed the island in only a few bounds, where a stone fell a mountain came to be.
Now she awakes in her cave and relinquishes her hold on us. The stories shift to a young spring maiden, the goddess, the saint, Brigid stepping into the light and her power. The light and dark battle eternally, one must give way to the other. In some stories the Cailleach and the maiden are one. As we honour the changing seasons, the cycle of life, acknowledge and honour our own cycle through life. Something is stirring. The land and the fairy hills wake. The promise of summer is hinted at. By Bealtaine (May 1st) we will feast and celebrate the warmth and bounty of summer. Watch for the otherfolk, they will be particularly active then.
But for now, mark the season, nurture the buds & shoots as they poke their way out of the earth and branches now. Pause and enjoy our emergence from the dark, into the light and how the land is renewed again. The wheel keeps turning, the cycle goes on.
Book Review: Holy Hills and Pagan Places of Ireland – Deirdre Lynam
This pocket sized book, is just one in a series of books by artist and historian Hector Mcdonnell. It is filled with details of the lands connection to ancient myth, fascinating folklore, traditions and festivals. From holy wells that can cure many ailments to hill tops with foreboding curses.
With legends from our pre-christian beliefs shaping and shaped by our rich landscape and beautiful illustrations both by the author and inspired from ancient sources.
This is a great reference point for those who are new, or even for those well versed in Irish myth and folklore. It captures and connects us with our own imagination to the beautiful beliefs from our past.
There’s not much to critique or fault, considering it is a pocket reference book and if one needs more details, there are several others in the series to see, such as Megalithic Ireland and Irish Round Towers. I would love to see an art book depicting famous scenes in Irish history in Mcdonnell’s stunning realist painting style. Though I think that would need to be much bigger than something that could fit in your pocket.
All in all this is a great book to check your bearings when it comes to locations in Irish storytelling or a guidebook to get you started on the path.
You can purchase a copy in our shop. Or check it out at the publisher, Wooden Books
The Turning Of The Year – Jess Foley
The threshold between winter and summer observes a season of new beginnings and practices for protecting these new beginnings in Irish tradition and folk history. In Ireland the fairies known for their pride, their rage, passion and intensity, are often given the title of ‘the good neighbours’ or ‘the good people’ in the hopes that such a naming would placate the fairies and stave off their wrath. Offerings were made to them to prevent them from inflicting their rage upon the mortal world a rage that could devastate crops, strike illness or death down upon children and livestock alike.
Spring marks a time of traditions, beliefs and stories that instruct how this season is a time to celebrate the turning of the year, take full advantage of new beginnings and how we might protect both our livestock and ourselves. A brief investigation of some of these rituals, beliefs and practices might illuminate the history behind them and how we could get in touch with them today.
Fairies are passionate and intense, their hearts feel love and hate in full measure and never act in half heartedly. They consider that anything of beauty should belongs to them and will take it away to their world, regardless of whether it is personal belonging, livestock or human. It is always better to protect what one already has than to try to get back what the fair folk have stolen and now deem their own.
The importance of cattle in Ireland is felt not just by people but also by fairy kind. Disappearances of cattle at the hands of fairies has a long running thread in Irish mythology and folklore. Children and beautiful women were regarded as favoured by the fairies and were at risk of being stolen away but so too were cows. Whether this was because of the tendency of cows to wander and step into a fairy fort or raths – stone fortifications thought to be home of the fairies – or due to the fairies’ appetite for cow’s milk and perhaps the need to feed mortal children they had brought away from their homes and into the otherworld.
Stories of cows being led away for the fairies to use as their own include the tale of a cow named Cooby belonging to a farmer named Tom Connors. Tom had noticed that his livestock was in the habit of wandering into the secluded lands and up on to the rath that belonged to the folk. To ensure his cattle would not be taken, he tied up Cooby, who grown accustomed to the delicious grass of the fairy fields refused to eat anything else. The cow wasted away and eventually died. Tom skinned and ate the cow but as he went to tan the hide into leather, he realised that it was not the skin of Cooby but one of his horses. The fairies had placed a glamour upon the horse who took on the appearance of Cooby and stole the cow away to feed the human children they had stolen. Late one evening on his way home by the light of a full moon Tom saw the silhouette of Cooby apparently alive and well, grazing on top of the fairy rath. Connors, perhaps fortified with a drop (braon beag of the cratúr) had enough courage to enter into the fairy domain to try and claim his cow. Stepping over the threshold he saw a troop of fairies celebrating within the fort. He argued against the folk that if he could not bring home his cow, then he’d bring down the fairy fort around them, having argued so tenaciously the folk returned Cooby to him, the milk cow presumeably having served her purpose to their content, as to the children it seems they had lost the desire to retun to the human world.
The care and protection of cattle was ensured by employing various customs and superstitions such as tying a red thread around the tail of each cow in a farmer’s herd to prevent the fairy folk from harming them (Kerrigan 184). Tales such as ‘Bewitched Butter’ advise folk remedies for the lifting of the evil eye placed upon livestock by the likes of fairies and witches. Their envy could cause a productive cow on whom the good folk had set their eyes on to run dry or suddenly perish (Jarvie 100). Fear of the evil eye or of being thought of posessing an evil eye was warded off by use of certain hymns and prayers. It was thought that if an individual, whether fairy mortal with the ability to curse others was a guest in your home and happened to fix their gaze upon a cow or a child, a deadly fate was unavoidable unless a counter-charm was employed. To avoid suspicion that they themselves possessed the evil eye in any way, individuals would heap blessings on children, land or livestock they passed, imparting the protection of god or saints upon them.
Prayers and incantations for protection of cattle call upon Saint Columba or Colmcille, the invoking both the land and sea in these hymns for his protection thought to be in reference to the Saints travel over both Ireland and Britain;
The Charm sent by St Columba
For the cow of the Servitor of Peace —
My foot is on the sea and my foot is on land ;
O King, who art in Heaven, succour the cow, .
And take the calf under thy protection.
Come home, cow, and be well.
Other protective traditions and customs surrounding land and cattle included the use of specific herbs and flowers that bloom in the early spring as winter begins to yield to the warmer season with the turn of the year. Primroses were thought to be an especially powerful protection. These had to be collected before sunrise and if tied to the tails of cattle or scattered before the door, would safeguard a cow or a home from evil spirits.
