SOVEREIGNTY
a noun meaning “the power or authority to rule”1
Who is the Sovereignty Goddess?
She is thought to represent the land, and the divine right to rule over that land. A would-be king was expected to unite with her in order to legitimise his right to the kingship. Feasting would be involved, and sex. Another important feature was the offering of a drink, water or alcohol depending on the tale, by the goddess to the king. By uniting with the goddess, the king was ‘marrying’ the land, and while he flourished, so would the land, and therefore by extension, so too would the people.
According to Muireann ní Bhrolcháin,2 the sovereignty goddess could manifest in three ways, and an element of transformation was always involved:
She appears to the king as an ugly old hag, who becomes young and beautiful when he completes the challenge she sets him, usually sex or a full-on kiss, at least.
She appears as a woman who loses her mind and then regains it.
She appears as a woman who loses her status, but regains it.
The following selection of stories from early Irish manuscripts are all thought to fall within the sovereignty goddess genre, yet whilst they meet some of Ní Brolcháin’s requirements, they don’t all serve to confer the right of kingship.
Niall of the Nine Hostages
In the Echtra Mac nEchach (“the adventures of the sons of Eochaid”), Niall Noígíallach (of the nine hostages) was out hunting with his many brothers one day, when they stopped at a well to draw water. The well, however, was guarded by an ugly old hag who demanded payment of a kiss. Fergus and Ailill were disgusted, and refused. Fiachrae gives her a quick peck on the cheek, but she was not satisfied by his chaste offering.
According to Whitley Stokes’ translation, this is what she looked like:
“Every joint and limb of her, from the top of her head to the earth, was as black as coal. Like the tail of a wild horse was the gray bristly mane that came through the upper part of her head-crown. The green branch of an oak in bearing would be severed by the sickle of green teeth that lay in her head and reached to her ears. Dark smoky eyes she had: a nose crooked and hollow. She had a middle fibrous, spotted with pustules, diseased, and shins distorted and awry. Her ankles were thick, her shoulder blades were broad, her knees were big, and her nails were green. Loathsome in sooth was the hag’s appearance.”
Charming!
Undeterred, Niall launches a no-holds-barred, full-on snog on the old woman, even offering to sleep with her though she only asked for a kiss, and thus gratified, she transforms into a beautiful young woman and bestows upon him and twenty-six future generations of his descendants the right to the high kingship of Ireland.
Fiachrae is also rewarded; two of his descendants enjoy the high kingship of Ireland, too. Note though, that the beverage offered by the goddess of sovereignty is but a humble sip of water, not an alcoholic drink.
Niall is a semi-historical person, founder of the illustrious and powerful line of the Uí Néill’s (O’Neill’s) which dominated Ireland throughout the early medieval period, although the Annals can’t agree on the actual period of his reign, and neither can the academics. His life is now shrouded in legend and myth. He was said to be a high king of Ireland, possibly during the fourth or fifth centuries, however this is likely to be untrue, as it has now been established that the office of high kingship did not exist before the ninth century.
According to Geoffrey Keating, Niall led raiding parties on Britain (and/ or Brittany), and it was on one of these raids that St Patrick was abducted (along with his sisters, Lupida and Darerca, apparently, whom of course have been dropped from the narrative). 3
Conn of the Hundred Battles
In Baile in Scáil (The Phantom's Vision), Conn Cétchathach finds himself entering the Otherworld through mist. There he encounters the God Lugh, one-time high king of the Tuatha de Danann. With him is a beautiful woman bearing a golden goblet filled from a gold and silver barrel holding 'red ale'. She asks Lugh to whom she is to offer the cup, and he tells her to give it to Conn, who drinks whilst Lugh then goes on to recite a long list of Conn’s descendants who will become high king after him. 4
Here, the woman does not fit any of Ní Bhrolcháin’s three categories; she is already beautiful, has not lost her mind, and as consort of Lugh possesses high status. Feasting and drink is involved, but not sex. The drink is not water but ale. And although the drink is given by the woman, the right of kingship is bestowed by Lugh. Not only that, but they have passed through the misty liminal margin between the mortal and magical worlds, the whole ceremony taking place in the Otherworld.
Like Niall, Conn is also a semi-legendary High King, and is in fact descended from him. The theme of the sovereignty goddess is then perhaps a trope commonly used to legitimise the rise of Ui Neill kings.
Mór Muman
In Mór Muman Aided Cuanach meic Ailchine (Mór Muman and the death of Cuanu mac Ailchine), Muman lost her mind after hearing voices in the air, causing her to escape by jumping over the embankment which surrounded her home. Such leaping is typically a sign of mourning, loss or madness in early Irish literature. 5
Mór wandered Ireland for two years, crazed and “blackened by sun and wind, in rags and marshes”. 6 Once "thought so beautiful that every woman in Ireland was compared to her", 7 her appearance deteriorated so much that no one recognised her. Finally she came to Cashel, where she began minding King Fingen mac Aeda’s sheep.
Fingen’s wife mocked the new shepherdess, daring her husband to sleep with her. He obliged, and afterwards took Mór as his new wife, giving her a “purple cloak and queenly brooch”. Her sanity was restored and she duly produced a male heir, Sechnasach. When Fingen died, Mór married another king named Cathal, and after him, another king of the Eoganacht.
Mór was the daughter of a seventh-century historical king known as Aed Bennan, of the Eoganacht Locha Léin. According to Ní Bhrolcháin, Mor’s fertility and her multiple marriages indicate a sovereignty goddess role, although Mór was a mortal, not an Otherworldly figure. Historically, high-status women were often remarried more than once, usually to cement political alliances, so I am not convinced by this argument. In any case, Fingen was already king, as were her following two husbands; Mór’s presence in the tale does not confer sovereignty.
Mis and Dubh Rois
Mis’s father was killed at the Battle of Ventry (so he fought with Fionn mac Cumhaill, which places this story in the third century). When she found her father’s body, she was so overcome by his brutal death (and probably the carnage of the battlefield) that she lost her sanity and drank his blood. She grew whiskers, fur and feathers, thus entering a non-human state, and rampaged around the area of the Sliabh Mis mountains, leaping into trees, running as fast as the wind, killing animal and human alike, and eating their raw flesh, so that Feidhlimidh, the king, sent his harper, Dubh Rois, to capture her.
Dubh Rois knew a thing or two about wild women, and he decided the best way to win her round was with gold, music and sex. He laid down on the mountainside, loosened his trousers to expose his privates, hoisted up his harp, and began to play. Seduced by his harp playing at first, Mis soon became more interested in him.
“A glance she gave, and she saw his nakedness and his playthings, and she said: “What are these?” she asked of his bag and his little eggs, and he told her.
“What is this?” she asked of the other thing that she saw.
“That is a branch of the trick,” he said.
“I don’t remember that,” she said. “My father did not have such a thing.” “Branch of the trick,” she said again. “What is the trick?”
“Sit beside me,” he said,” and I will perform the trick of that branch for you.”
“I will,” she said, “and stay beside me.”
“I will,” he said. He lay and slept with her and she said: “Ho ho, a good trick. Do it again!”
“I will,” he said. “But I will play the harp for you first.”
“Never mind the harp,” she said. “Do the trick again.” 8
Dubh Rois then builds a fullachta fiadh in which he boils deer meat to feed her, and gives her bread he has brought with him. Then he melts deer fat in the warm water of the fullachta and bathes her in it. These actions remind her of how she used to live; they serve to re-civilise Mis and return her from her wildness to sanity. The couple go on to marry and have children together.
Wisdoms
1.
The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth [...] Kings are justly called Gods, for that they exercise a manner or resemblance of divine power upon earth.
King James VI of Scotland and I of England and Ireland, 1609
This statement was made by King James to his parliament in 1609 in an attempt to assert absolute power over a fragmented kingdom. However, the concept of the divine right of kings to rule was already well known in early medieval times, and something our well-educated Irish scribes would undoubtedly have been familiar with. Remember that myths more than likely reflect the time the writer was living in, rather than the time they are writing about, giving the writer a safe space in which to explore themes which, although current, could land one in trouble if expressed too openly.
The medieval period in Ireland was turbulent to say the least, with the arrival of the Vikings, and then the Anglo-Normans, and meanwhile all the cattle-raiding and territorial wrangling of the Irish chieftains. A strong king meant security, and so the concept of the divine right of kings was a powerful tool for achieving that security. But in Ireland, the divine right was conferred upon a king not by the Christian God, but by a pagan goddess. Why?
Manchán Magan makes it clear in the film at the top of this text that Irish pre-Christian culture was founded on the Goddess; the evidence for him is overwhelmingly abundant in the naming of the landscape. I would add that the built structures left behind by early Irish people also indicate a worship of the feminine; if you read my earlier texts, you will know about ‘womb tombs’ as places of both birth and death, and if you read my blog posts about the Hill of Tara, you will know how this space, and others like it, could be interpreted as feminine sites.
This speculation on my part comes from having spent much time at such sites, throwing off the blinkers of patriarchal interpretation and opening myself to new possibilities. Without evidence, such ideas are only guesswork, and I offer them to you as the basis for further thought rather than the battering-ram of half-baked theory.
You might be thinking that Ireland was already Christian by the medieval period; yes, and no. Patrick was active in Ireland during the late fourth and early fifth centuries, by which time there were already pockets of Celtic Christians living peacefully in Ireland, but the country was still largely pagan. The Goddess Brigid was still being worshipped in Kildare; in Bailieborough in Cavan, she was worshipped right up and into the nineteenth century. This shows that female deities were popular, and people were reluctant to give them up. In such circumstances, then, it would be natural to assume that the divine right of a king to rule could be endorsed through the Goddess, rather than a foreign God who was not yet fully accepted or understood by the local populace.
2.
The Cailleach… regarded as the shaper who has formed the features of the landscape… becomes identified… as a royal sovereignty principle in terms of the political ideology of the ruling dynastic lineages. In the course of time… [she] undergoes transformation into that of the sovereignty queen and suffers stigma and displacement in the course of the development of the patriarchal and Christian cultural world of the later Irish middle ages.
Gearóid Ó Crualaoich, author, professor of folklore and ethnology
As the shaper of the landscape, the Cailleach is powerful, perhaps supremely so, and herself takes shape as the land personified; she represents the land, she is the land. The sovereignty goddess also represents the land in female form; she also is the land. It stands to reason that the Cailleach and the sovereignty goddess must therefore be one and the same; remember how, in many kingship stories, the sovereignty goddess first appears as a hag who transforms into a beautiful young woman following her union with the king. The barren waste-land of the hag/ cailleach’s body is renewed and fruitful once tended by the king. This transformation symbolises the fertility of the land under the king’s rule, and thereby the flourishing of the people.
As Christianity took hold and flexed its patriarchal muscle upon society, the old woman, the goddess and the Queen were diminished; there was no place for the powerful female in this new order. Fertility was still important, but replaced by an emphasis on the only role which remained for women: the subservient mother, and the goddess was remembered only in the naming of the land.
3.
The sovereignty of one's self over one's self is called Liberty.
Albert Pike, author, poet, orator, editor, lawyer, jurist and Confederate States Army general
Today, we think of sovereignty in terms of national independence. Brexit, for example, was built upon the fear of England losing theirs and being absorbed into the body of the European Union. But sovereignty is also the mastery of oneself. We can exercise our sovereignty as political beings by casting our vote, and this is our contribution towards the rulership of the land/ nation. But personal sovereignty can also be found in the mundane, in the choices we make which govern the minutiae of our lives, from the food we eat to the physical exercise we take, to the love we bestow on friends and family, to the care with which we tend the land which supports us and gives us life.
However, despite the utopia personal sovereignty promises, an over-jealous pursuit of liberty can be a dangerous thing. Humans are a social animal, and as such, need community in order to thrive. A successful fully-functioning community cannot exist where individuals care only for themselves. Which is pretty much where we are now. We must use this superpower wisely.
4.
Democracy and liberty are not the same. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual.
Walter E. Williams, author and professor of economics
The older I become, the more dissatisfied I am with the workings of democracy. Perhaps that is because, in the hands of the patriarchy, it has been misused. Democracy is not, in fact, serving the majority; it is serving the middle-aged male white elite, and he is not the majority. The word ‘democracy’ comes from the Greek language and literally means ‘rule by the people’, and this is usually done by the election of representatives. It is meant to be inclusive so that it benefits the people, yet inequality and prejudice are rife in modern society, and we have seen some governments in recent years make it harder than ever for minority groups to exercise their voting rights. Many people feel powerless and so disenchanted that they don’t even bother to vote.
If I am getting a little too political here, and it’s not what you came for, may I just gently remind you that we are studying the sovereignty goddess, and it is impossible to do this without thinking about political theory. The sovereignty goddess is a political figure, that is her raison d’etre, and, as feminist Carol Hanisch wrote back in the 1970s, the personal is political. If you decide to drop out of politics and not vote, you are making a political statement on the state of current politics. If you drop out of modern society and live ‘off the grid’, you are making a political statement about your interpretation of modern capitalism. Everything we do is political, from joining the school PTA, for example, in which we are taking part in an organisation based on rule by the people, to organising our local community ‘tidy towns’ group. And it is your personal sovereignty which confers upon you the right to do all of this, or none of it at all.
5.
Personal sovereignty means that you choose from what is available in order to be intentional about your life... When you feel in control of your life, you know yourself to be the author of your own actions and know that you always have choices.
Polly Young-Eisendrath, psychologist, author, teacher, speaker, Jungian analyst, Zen Buddhist.
Personal sovereignty is to choose to be intentional about your life.; I couldn’t agree more, Polly! There is so much outside of ourselves that we can’t control; if we worry about all of that, we will make ourselves ill. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care; being intentional helps us to think clearly and choose or decide what we can do.
For example, we all know that climate change is a major issue to which governments and global corporations merely pay lip service. They could make the biggest difference, but have no will or conscience to do so. Beneath this shadow, our own efforts to recycle, cut waste and save energy can seem puny and pointless. This is where our personal sovereignty comes into its own; we can choose to give up, or we can choose to go on, maybe even do more. At a personal level, that might mean car-sharing or using public transport to get to work, or repairing clothing and setting up a capsule wardrobe to avoid purchasing new clothes or sending old ones to landfill. On a larger scale it might be setting up a group letter writing campaign to politicians or organising resistance.
I’ll give you a personal example. In a year’s time, my disabled daughter, Carys, will leave her special school and transition to adult services. We started the process of enquiry when she was sixteen to give us plenty of time to find an alternative day care; she is now nearly seventeen and a half and we are no further on. There are so few services for young adults of Carys’s level in Ireland. This week, the parents of Carys’s class have got together via Whatsapp so we can help each other through this difficult process. We will have a meeting in a couple of weeks and hopefully begin a plan of action to lobby for more services. We shouldn’t have to do this; life is busy enough when you are a carer. But our children have no voice or power of their own, so it is down to us to advocate for them. They are a minority group governments and society in general prefer to close their eyes to. If democracy worked as it has the potential to, minorities and the needy would be properly cared for.
Being intentional about your life means living it in a way that matters to you, regardless of the external factors you can’t control. And if something matters so much to you that it causes you to make changes in your life, you can be sure it matters to other people, too. They are your community, and by exercising your personal sovereignty to be intentional in making your life choices, you are finding your community.
Lessons from the Sovereignty Goddess as the Cailleach
Maybe I’m a bit late to the party, but it had never occurred to me before I began working on this text that an Cailleach and the sovereignty goddess could be one and the same, or at least a double aspect of the same entity. Geroíd spotted it, as our second wisdom quote shows, but somehow, I leapt over that part of his book, and it didn’t lodge until my second reading. I am like that sometimes, when I am reading a good book; my eyes gallop ahead and my brain can’t keep up. I wonder how many gems of wisdom I have missed this way over my lifetime so far.
There is so much more I want to discuss with you about the sovereignty goddess: the role of the female in the building of nation states, eg Britannia, Colombia, Hibernia, all modern sovereignty goddesses if ever I saw one, albeit created to please the male gaze; Mother Ireland and Kathleen ní Houlihan; the Aisling and the Spéirbhan, or sky woman, heiros gamos, so beloved of sensationalists, and of course, Giraldus Cambrensis, and his deliberately misleading interpretation of Irish kingship rites… we have no space here for these discussions, so perhaps we need a Sovereignty Goddess Part Two? Let me know in the comments!
I am always amazed at how much there is to be learned from an Cailleach. To me, she is not so much a deity to be worshipped, but a teacher, and a way of life. As I sit here pressing keys and formulating my message to you, pausing briefly to rip off my dressing gown at the arrival of yet another hot flush, she shows me that even in old age her power is such that in a patriarchal society kings require her blessing before they can rule. Ok, so that was then, many hundreds of years ago, and kings, where they remain, must now give way to governments; perhaps this is because in the unnatural clarity of Enlightenment, the power went to their heads, and they forgot to seek her approval. Perhaps climate change is her warning to corrupt governments, whilst those who honour the land will find a way to survive. The Cailleach is fierce, but she is not unkind, She provides for us, if we make the effort to reap her bounty.
In my personal journey, I am learning to understand the power of personal sovereignty, and am amazed at how it intersects with other lessons, which I have written about in previous posts. I keep receiving the message to let go, but am unclear as to what I am to unburden myself of. I have to take responsibility for myself and make a decision, take action, and live with the consequences. It scares me, because the only things I can think of are big, and the consequences profound. Meanwhile, my physical journey into my H A G years is proving challenging, and here also I must exercise my sovereignty and make decisions which scare me.
I didn’t think old age would be like this. In my youth, I expected that by this age I would have most things figured out. In truth, the transition from mother to H A G is more overwhelming than puberty.
Governments and kings do not depend on my blessing. My personal sovereignty works at grass roots level, building the life which feels authentic to me, most nourishing to my family, building habits and traditions and raising awareness amongst those close to me that are all-inclusive and which honour the earth. How many caileachs’s like me are working in the same way, their areas of influence intersecting with my own, unbeknown to us, snapping together like synapses, creating a ring of energy and light of protection around everything we care about. We are going back to the old ways to protect the future. And it happens in the most surprising ways.
Calling all Grey-Haired Rebels!
I am fortunate to live less than twenty minutes drive from Loughcrew, the home of the Cailleach. My dear friend, Séamus Draoigall lives actually within its shadow, and he is passionate about this place. In 2017, the Office for Public Works shut Cairn T because they said it was no longer structurally sound. Cairn T has survived perfectly well for thousands of years; it is the needless intervention of an air vent and concrete which has caused its decay. Prior to the closure, anyone could borrow the key and enter the chamber; only in Ireland! No harm was ever done. The closure was only meant to be temporary, but here we are in 2023, no survey has been done, no remedial action taken, the cairn remains shut. There is no transparency about the future of this wondrous ancient site.
Seamus has asked if all those who care about the seat of the Cailleach at Loughcrew reach out to the OPW and the National Monument Service to ‘put pressure on them to care for this irreplaceable gift from the past’. I am asking all our grey-haired rebels to play their part and remember their power. Let’s get to work. You know what to do.
Office of Public Works, Address: Jonathan Swift Street, Trim, Co Meath, C15 NX36 Website:www.gov.ie/opw/ Email:info@opw.ie Phone number:0469422000
National Monuments Service, Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Custom House, Dublin 1. Tel:085 8049231 Email:nationalmonuments@housing.gov.ie
Within the NMS a number of individual units carry out critical functions in relation to the protection and management of our archaeological resource. The contact details for these units can be found at the following links:
It may be that we can organise a vigil at the site if enough cailleachs and friends are interested. Let me know in the comments, and please do click through to Séamus’s Insta to find out more.
Definition of sovereignty from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press
My own notes from lectures, ‘The Cultural Heritage of ‘Royal Sites’, Maynooth University.
Beautiful!
No, but it keeps the viruses away much better.