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Dalriada Celtic Heritage Trust: Cailleach Bheare

Scottish Folk Tales

The Cailleach Bheare

The time from Samhain to Latha Fheill Bride is known to the Celtic peoples as "the period of the little sun". This season is ruled over by the fearsome, one-eyed Cailleach Bheare, also known as the Gyre Carline, Mag Moullach and the Storm Hag. Ben Nevis is said to be her seat. She ushers in winter by washing her clothes in the Corrievreckan (Coire Bhreacain, the speckled cauldron), a great whirlpool between Jura and Scarba which can be very hazardous to ships. The sound of this whirlpool is said to be like "the roaring of a thousand chariots".

In Celtic folklore it was Cailleach Bheare who formed and shaped the islands of the Inner Hebrides by dropping a creel of peat and rocks into the sea that she had brought with her out of the North. Many mountains and lakes in Scotland are also said to owe their existence to her. She is therefore one of the Earth Shapers, an ancient Celtic deity who seems ageless. She is also known in Ireland. In the medieval "Yellow Book of Lecan" it is written that she was of the Corco Duibne, an ancient tribe of West Cork and Kerry, who "shall never be without some wonderful cailleach among them". (Rees, Celtic Heritage).

One story from Argyll tells how Loch Awe was accidently formed by the cailleach. She was once living on the Mull of Kintyre, but every day she would take her cow up to Ben Cruachan for the good grazing. She would rest on the Ben near a magic well covered with a huge granite slab. She would remove this every day to allow her cow to drink. However, if the slab was not replaced before sunset, the water would gush out and flood the whole world. One sunny day the cailleach fell asleep on the hillside and the sun set while she was still sleeping. There was a great roar and the water tumbled out in torrents which woke her. She quickly put the slab back in place, but the glen had already filled up with water.

There are many stories from all over Scotland concerning the old hag of winter. This story is from Skye: long ago, there was a heather clad plain between Loch Bracadale and the Red Hills to the East. It was a dark and lonely place where the cailleach lived, and the weather was never good. Spring hated her, for she held the maiden that he loved prisoner. He fought with the hag, but she was too strong, "stronger than anyone else within the four brown boundaries of the Earth". So Spring asked the Sun for help. The Sun flung his spear at the cailleach as she was walking on the moor; it was so fiery that where it struck the Earth the land was split, and a molten mass burst forth to form the Cuillins, and the Cailleach fled away. She leaped from Healaval Beg in Duirinish, to Ben Cruachan, fleeing from the Sun's wrath. Finally, on the isle of Mull, the Shrieking Hag died.

Another tale reveals the Cailleach to be the 'other' face of the Goddess Brighid. In this legend, on the eve of Latha Fheill Bride, the Cailleach goes to the Well of Youth. There, at dawn, she drinks of the water and emerges as the youthful fair Brighid, whose touch turns the grass to green once more.

[(c) Dalriada Celtic Heritage Trust, Isle of Arran]

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