December | Surrendering to Winter
What the Cailleach taught me
The first flutters of anxiety arrive with the meadowsweet, the foxglove, and the rosebay willowherb. My favourite wild friends. I have awaited them all year. They signal high summer, and yet my joy is coupled with a faint sense of regret, for they are last to bloom; no ripple of colour will spread through the hedgerows and fields to replace their blaze of glory once they have faded back into the earth.
Winter is coming…
“Vera [Bheara], the celebrated goddess, sorceress, or hag, of ancient days. The legend current in the neighbourhood, is to the effect that she came onetime from the North to perform a magical feat in the neighbourhood by which she was to obtain great power if she succeeded. She took an apron full of stones, and dropped a cairn on Carnbane; from this she jumped to the summit of Slieve-na-cally, or Hag’s Hill, a mile distant, and dropped a second there; from thence she made a jump, and dropped a cam on another hill, about a mile distant. If she could make another leap, and drop the fourth cairn, it appears the magical feat would have been accomplished, but she slipped, fell, broke her neck, and was buried in the neighbourhood.” 1
Who was the Cailleach?
IN THE STORY QUOTED ABOVE, the Loughcrew cairns are described as being created by a giant hag or witch who dropped stones from her apron as she leapt from hilltop to hilltop in an attempt to wield some kind of spell or great magic. This folklore explains the creation of a regional geographical feature, and is one of many such local legends found across Ireland, indicating that the Cailleach is most likely an entity popularly associated with structuring the landscape. The poem in the video suggests the Cailleach is also associated with winter, and death.
The Cailleach is reputed to be so ancient even she does not know her age. In some stories, she must return once in every hundred years to bathe in a particular lake; immersed in the cold waters, her aching aged body is soothed and her youth is renewed.
The restorative power of water here has echoes of Dian Cecht’s magical lake of healing. However, the Cailleach is not of the race of the Tuatha de Danann; she is not mentioned in any of the four cycles of Irish myths. Medieval Irish writing seems devoid of her presence, and academics are therefore of the opinion that the Cailleach is a fiction of modern times.
Her lore has instead been preserved via the oral tradition and thus passed into modern folklore. However, how far back in time these oral stories originate cannot be determined; Geróid Ó Crualaoich writes:
the discipline of folklore ... [is a] study [of] the process whereby stories are continuously transformed, in performance and transmission, in ways that reflect the changing historical and socio-political circumstances of their narration, and yet continue to maintain and to articulate … a considerable degree of insight into the deeper realities of human life and culture.2
This means that despite their continuing appeal and resonance for the listener, narrators are constantly adapting the stories to suit their own period of telling (or to flatter their patrons), so that it is no longer possible to pinpoint a feature of the tale or language which might indicate a particular moment of origin.
Regardless, in Ireland and Scotland the legends of the Cailleach have endured. She is interpreted not just as the creator of landscape and controller of winter, but also as as the figuring of the wise-woman and healer, and the witch. She has arcane knowledge which she is capable of using for good and ill.
According to Ó Crualaich, the Otherworld female figure of the Cailleach has “actively informed cultural developments - artistic, political and ritual - in the course of the early modern era”. 3
Here at H A G, we will in due course encounter the Cailleach in all her guises and come to know her by all her many names. We will examine her relevance to our post-modern, global, capitalist world, but for now, in this moment, we will concentrate on her association with winter.
WISDOMS
1.
I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape — the loneliness of it; the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.
Andrew Wyeth, visual artist and painter
In winter, I see bones. Twitchy arthritic bones in bare branches overhead. Rib cages beneath every hill, holding up the earth. Roots like long gnarly toe bones digging deep underground. The low smooth swell of a ridge lying like a giant thigh-bone across the landscape. A sky that has exhausted its colour with the dregs of summer, washing itself in the dirty grey-white of long-buried bone, stones crunching underfoot like burnt offerings from a pyre. Everything is pared back, layers of living softness stripped by the icy breath of wind, carried away by the triumphant fall of rain, devoured by mould and damp, spun by frost into brittle immobility. The danger of death hangs like a pall over the land, a creeping shadow that wanders here, there, plunders what little remains.
In my own hands the bones ache, their form growing ever clearer through the flesh-sink skin-sag. Joints are more bulbous than I imagined. Bones are more fragile. All this secret geometry hidden beneath the pillow of my flesh. In the winter, I stalk unwillingly across the wasteland like the Cailleach, hunched as an old hag against the wind that sucks my heat. The landscape and I are alike, more and more so as I gather the years. I can feel her tugging at me, like calling to like, urging me to lay my bones beside her own, to go back to the earth and be absorbed. We are bone-sisters, down here, lying in our damp, earthy bed. Frost’s sharp fingers cannot penetrate the depths, but the steady cold eats me nonetheless. The lack of light eats my eyes.
What appears dead up there is an illusion. Down here, the party never stops, it’s all kicking off. The dirt teems with a rich soup of interconnected, interdependent life forms, feeding on each other, feeding on decay, excreting nutrients and turning the soil so that when the time is right, when conditions are just right, when what is above and below are so finely and intimately tuned in, one to the other, the seeds of new life will sprout. Soon, it will happen, but not just yet. Be patient. When has she ever failed you?
2.
At this season of the year, darkness is a more insistent thing than cold. The days are short as any dream.
E.B. White, author
We leave the house, she to school, I to work, in darkness. We return home through darkness. In some spaces where people work, factories for example, there are no windows; the light of day waxes and wanes without their having seen it. As if it never existed.
I have worked in such a place in my youth. Factories are heterotopia; they imitate real life but they exist in a space and time of their own, with rigid hierarchies of workers, strict clocking in and out systems and communal areas designed to control.
Sometimes, the dark is like that; it hovers outside of what we know, masking and changing the familiar in much the same way as fog. And so it changes us, our behaviour. When people are able to hide, they lose their inhibitions and reveal their true selves, the part of themselves they keep in reserve, their ‘dark’ side; we see this commonly on social media, where hate and prejudice spills forth freely. Hiding behind a keyboard, these people feel enabled to reveal their true thoughts, and attack with impunity those who don’t share their views. In the dark, such people feel protected.
Violence and crime often occur at night because it is easier for perpetrators to move around and afterwards, vanish. And so we fear the dark for the monsters that lurk in it and the evil it protects. And in the presence of that we most fear, our regular exposure to it seems very long.
But the darkness itself is benign. It does not participate in the dark deeds of humankind. It is not responsible for them. We fear the wrong thing. We need the darkness. In the dark of the earth, new life germinates. In the dark warm spaces of the female body new life is also generated. Our skulls and brains are impervious to light, yet in that darkness inspiration sparks new ideas and creativity.
If there was no night, would we rest? Modern life increasingly encroaches upon our down time, nibbling away at both edges of our sleep period. We need the dark to tell us to shut down, to nurture our bodies and minds through sleep. In the dark, the heat of the sun dissipates, and this drop in temperature, we now know, induces our bodies to fall into sleep mode.
The longer dark nights of winter, then, have a purpose. This is the time to rest and recuperate. To turn our focus inwards. To nourish ourselves through the sleep we all crave and never seem to get enough of. It is a gift to be welcomed and used wisely, not squandered. When your work is done, allow your home to become suffused with the softness of shadows and pockets of warmth and light, darkness lit by flickering firelight and candles. Turn down the central heating. Snuggle into blankets. Allow the dark to heal you.
3.
To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake it is necessary to stand out in the cold.
Aristotle, philosopher and polymath
On clear winter nights, the stars blaze with an ardent intensity that outstrips any fire. Without streetlights to dim our eyes, our rural location allows us to appreciate their full glory. The years may pass, but I never tire of gazing into the night sky. I am drawn to Orion. He does not appear above our horizon until the night is well established. The sight of him then, spreadeagled against the blackness, brings me inexplicable joy.
In our northern hemisphere, Orion is associated with winter, hanging out in the night skies from November until May. Orion the Hunter carries a bow (some say a shield), a club and a sword. The hunter provides for a tribe by bringing meat to the table, a food perhaps more common in winter as other food sources so carefully grown and preserved, dwindle.
I see him as a protective figure; perhaps the Cailleach in me recognises and appreciates his qualities. I did not know until recently that Orion is positioned in the night sky between and beneath the constellations of Taurus and Gemini; this has significance for me, in that I was born on the cusp of Taurus and Gemini. Like Aristotle appreciating the snowflake, one must stand outside in the cold in order to appreciate the stars. I am incredulous that there are so many people who never look up.
4.
Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude.
William Shakespeare, playwright
The hill upon which we have made our home lifts us up to the winter wind. The trees we have planted, and those which have seeded themselves, bear the brunt but cannot protect us from its full force. It sucks the slates from our roof, hurls snow and rain without restraint at our walls, screams in our chimneys, rattles our windows, breathes its cold air beneath doors and through the gaps only itself and the mice seem to find. The big ash tree, ancient and firmly rooted, sways and dances with wild abandon when the wind calls; we fear one day it will lean too far, bend to a level from which it cannot recover. If it falls, it will take one side of our home with it. When the wind rests, it swirls a curtain of mist about us so that we are disoriented and removed from the visual reality we rely on. The wind kindles a wildness in me, sets my pulse racing, fills me with desire to travel where it has been, to see what it has seen, to fly with such speed across the surface of the world and into the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Without form, it makes its presence felt, is solid enough to hoist birds and aircraft aloft on its shoulders. Without voice, it makes itself heard, telling its stories and singing its songs through its deft manipulation of the objects it encounters as it travels: the leaves and branches of trees, the strings of telephone wires, the slapping of surf upon the shore, the roar as it vibrates through open spaces. I love when it lifts my hair playfully, its cold tongue licking the warm curve of neck it has just exposed. I love taking its fresh breath deep into my lungs. I love its teasing fingers which try to steal my possessions, which pull at my scarf or skirt, which turn the pages of the books I am reading, as if I am not reading fast enough. I love to lie in the deep grass of a meadow, or the hollow of a sand dune and hear it sing above me without stirring the air around my body. But I fear its power in winter, when it turns from purring kitten into raging wildcat. I fear its wrath, its destruction, its wanton disregard for life. We are like the wind, sometimes: playful and gentle, or vengeful and greedy. We take what we want, even if it destroys, and no matter how much we take, it is never enough. The difference is, the wind is innocent and blithe, whereas we are not.
5.
That’s what winter is: an exercise in remembering how to still yourself then how to come pliantly back to life again.
Ali Smith, author
I used to fear the onslaught of winter. The darkness and unpredictability of it. Its wild, extreme weather, and the sudden inexplicable calm periods in between of watery blue skies, calm, and stark, biting cold. The danger of snow, ice, frost and then flood. I spent the winter longing for the feeling of heat on my skin, to bathe in seas as warm as a bath. To not have to suffocate my body in multiple layers of warm clothing. I relished the thought of being able to walk without the fear of losing control of my body and sliding into a fall. No matter how much I turned up the central heating, I never felt warm. Winter was a time of endurance in which I saw only the negative. I consoled myself with comfort eating and wishing the days away to a distant spring. In the winter, I gave myself up to grieving the summer. Winter was death to me. And many people understand it similarly today as a kind of dying. We have forgotten how to surrender to it. And other than the obvious glittering beauty of snow and frost, we have forgotten how to appreciate its gifts.
Of course, we have to get real. Winter is a time of suffering for many. Illnesses proliferate, and when we are too cold and under-nourished, our resistance is low. The elderly and the disabled are particularly vulnerable and need to be protected. Some people do not have the means to afford heating, particularly in our present times. And our ancestors did not skip blithely through winter without experiencing its worst consequences; they toiled ceaselessly throughout the year in order to prepare for it.
People of my generation remember winters with ice forming on the inside of windows, where we got dressed in the warmth of our beds before getting out of it (and that was no mean feat). As a teen, I lived in a one parent family, and my mother could only afford to heat one room in the house. These are times we would not wish to return to, and yet here we are; for many people this is their current reality.
The winter, with its long dark nights, freezing temperatures and wild storms, gives us the opportunity to reconsider the way we have created our world, how we live our lives. It gives us the chance to ‘check our privilege’. As I move into my elder years, the winter has challenged me in many ways. Learning to surrender to the cold, to allow my body to experience the cold, for example, has proved to be a physiological awakening. I get more sleep in the longer cooler nights, but a by-product of that is I often wake in the very early hours. These dark early risings, when the house is silent and there are no demands on my time or labour, have brought clarity of mind and quiet contentment, and have encouraged me to reflect, to create. When they happen, I treasure them. And following the old Irish tradition of acknowledging the equinoxes, solstices, and four fire festivals of the year has helped the dark season pass more quickly for me. I have made space in my life for winter, and doing so has brought me pleasure and banished my seasonal inner darkness.
A Change of Attitude
The first flutters of anxiety arrive with the meadowsweet, the foxglove, and the rosebay willowherb. My favourite wild friends. I have awaited them all year. They signal high summer, and yet my joy is coupled with a faint sense of regret, for they are last to bloom; no ripple of colour will spread through the hedgerows and fields to replace their blaze of glory once they have faded back into the earth. Even the grass stops growing. Trees weep their leaves and raise bony branches to the heavens. Lowering skies, rising winds, stifling fog, lashing rain and hail. More darkness than light. And even the light is grey, watery, and weak. Winter is coming.
That used to be me.
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is real. It is thought to be depression brought on by a lack of sunlight; apparently, sunlight affects the hypothalamus which regulates mood, appetite, and sleep. Although SAD is still not fully understood, it seems the production of hormones melatonin and serotonin are inhibited in some people in the winter, their body’s natural circadian rhythms disrupted.
Back in the day, I didn’t know about SAD, but my body felt it, and my mind was tormented by it. Now, it is a condition recognised by medical professions, and there are treatments available. Back then, I thought I was going mad, and kept it to myself. And because I’ve always been a bit of a loner, the distance I drew between myself and others acted like a barrier, a cloak, a kind of Faeth Fiadha which hid many secrets. People who suffer from depression are often very good at hiding it from others.
It was only after living in Ireland for some years that I found a cure for myself. I have since shared this cure with others, whom it has helped. For me, the result was dramatic. Be open-minded. Be aware that not all cures involve drugs or doctors. Not all medicines are taken by mouth or administered by needles; physiotherapy, occupational therapy, counselling, for example. And rest. An often quoted proverb claims that a change is as good as a rest, and whilst adequate rest is crucial to one’s physical and mental wellbeing, there is some truth in it. My cure involved a change; I changed my way of thinking about winter. I changed my attitude.
A Google search tells me attitude is a settled way of thinking or feeling about something; a behaviour caused by one’s way of thinking or feeling about something; a negative or hostile state of mind; a bodily state of readiness; bodily position or posture.
In psychology, an attitude refers to a set of emotions, beliefs, and behaviours toward a particular object, person, thing, or event. Attitudes are often the result of experience or upbringing. They can have a powerful influence over behaviour and affect how people act in various situations. While attitudes are enduring, they can also change. 4
In other words, the attitude we adopt can have physiological effects, impacting not just our mental and emotional state, but our physical state as well.
My experience of SAD generally took hold in November when the nights drew in to about 4 or 5 pm in the afternoon, but as I mentioned earlier in this post, would be pre-empted by fleeting feelings of sadness when the last of the summer wildflowers began to fade. I saw the onset of winter as a negative thing. The long lead up to Christmas was a pleasant distraction, but January hit hard. I was unaware of the winter solstice and what it meant.
When I moved to Ireland, though, I immersed myself in the land’s past; its history, and its mythology. I learned about the solstices, and the equinoxes, and how these solar events were marked. For me, this knowledge was transformative.
In Ireland, people would traditionally celebrate four fire festivals which kicked off each season: Imbolc, which marked the beginning of Spring; Bealtaine, associated with Summer; Lughnasa, which heralded the autumn, and also celebrated the harvest, and Samhain, which celebrated the arrival of Winter, but also coincided with what we now know as Halloween. In between, there are the two equinoxes in March and September, when day and night are of equal length, and the two solstices in December [shortest day in the northern hemisphere] and June [longest day in the northern hemisphere].
These fire festivals were social gatherings which included the lighting of great bonfires, music, dancing, storytelling, sports and games, feasting and carousing. There were probably religious ceremonies, marriage promises and political alliances made, buying and selling, and all manner of transactions which constitute the full range of human interaction and engagement. These events must have been hugely anticipated by the communities which celebrated them.
The annual festival of Bealtaine is still celebrated at the beginning of summer at Uisneach.
Winter had always seemed such a long season to me. Of course, scientifically, it wasn’t, but I felt it as such. But when I divided it according to this new-to-me Celtic Calendar, I found there were approximately only 7 weeks between Samhain and Winter Solstice, then only six weeks or so until Imbolc, meaning we had already arrived at Spring. It is then only about 7 weeks until the Spring Equinox, after which we are well on the way towards the arrival of summer.
Dividing the dark cold season into these smaller component parts made all the difference to me. I could manage these small chunks of winter. And I noticed in January that the days were already beginning to lengthen. I began to feed the birds in my garden, and their energy and antics brought me great joy. Drawing cold air into my lungs when I went out walking felt energising. The lacing of bare winter branches against a cloud laden sky reminded me of the tangle of blood vessels within my body, pumping warm blood to all my organs and extremities. The frost that transformed the colourful world I inhabited into monochrome and glitter was a beauty that cut me, sharp as a knife, whereas before, I had only seen it as a danger and inconvenience. During the pandemic restrictions of Winter 2021, my acceptance of the cold finally morphed into a strong desire to immerse myself in cold water. I just needed to awaken my senses, to reconnect with my body, which, as I progressed through perimenopause, felt increasingly alien and dormant to me.
Although I am not a great believer in the necessity of ritual, marking each festival with fire, for me, certainly helped; each ‘ceremony’ ended one of those small chunks of winter and cleared the way for the next. In a way, it was a kind of laying to rest and at the same time looking forward. Fire is cleansing, smoke is purifying, and my ‘ceremonies’ can be as simple as intentionally lighting a candle or an incense stick. Grand gestures are not always necessary.
I admit, the summer nights where light continues to shimmer through the sky until 11pm, and the fall in temperature requires only a light wrap or fleece to keep it at bay, that would be my season of choice. But acknowledging the wisdom of the old ways, and learning from them has helped me maintain a more even state of being through the winter. And whilst I still feel some regret when the last of the wildflowers signal the close of summer, I never experience the weight of dread, as I used to. Winter is not death but renewal. It is the earth’s fallow period, its time of rest and recuperation while it prepares to dazzle with its sassy springtime attitude.
If you think it’s too simple to work for you, just try it. Plot the festival days on your calendar, mark them, give thanks, and see how quickly the time flies. All the while, you know each day is getting longer, even when you can’t yet see the benefit of it. It is inevitable. It is science. The peoples of the past understood this cycle, yet in our sophistication we seem to have forgotten it. How far removed we have become from nature. And how detrimental that can be to our state of physical and mental health.
Lessons from the Cailleach
You may be wondering what this has to do with the Cailleach. As I said in my previous post, Excursions into Darkness, in the darkness new light is born, new ideas, new life.
I can see the truth in that. But also, entering one’s hag years is like a foray into the winter of one’s life. I do not see this as death, although that will inevitably come as it does to all, but as moving from mother to crone. It is a transition, a time to explore, to learn. Gradually, over the years as I have departed from youth, I have felt drawn to certain things, such as the use of wild plants not just for nutrition, but for healing. I have felt myself drawn to the landscape. And to the past. I have found myself interested in global indigenous wisdoms. This has been a long slow process, not a sudden whim, one which seemed to be happening without my ability to appreciate and articulate this new becoming, until recently. To me, this process feels healing. And I see it happening to so many other older women. There is liberation and power in that.
The Cailleach embodies this process. She is the archetypal hag, the witch, the wise old woman who shapes the landscape and ushers in the winter season. She is powerful, not weak, frail or submissive. She possesses magical knowledge, and she exists outside of linear time. Through her magic she can present herself as aged or youthful. The darkness of her season in which life is quietly regenerating unseen is suggestive of the pregnant mother, whereas Brigid, who succeeds her in spring, represents, to me, the post-birth nurturing mother.
There is much to explore here, and as one of the sites specifically associated with her lies just fifteen minutes drive from my home, a place I have had the privilege of visiting often, I feel the pull of some small connection. She may exist only in legend, in stories passed from mouth to mouth, but these stories have, for one reason or another, endured throughout the centuries, and survived Christianity, colonialism, linguistic imperialism, famine, industrial revolution, and the arrival of our modern, ‘sophisticated’ age of technology and capitalism. I feel there must be lessons to be learned from her.
Wood-Martin, W.G. Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland, Vol. II, Longman’s Green &Co., 1902.
Ó Crualaoich, Gearóid. The Book of the Cailleach: Stories of the Wise-Woman Healer, Cork University Press, 2022, p. xi.
Ibid, p. 11.
Verywellmind, https://www.verywellmind.com/attitudes-how-they-form-change-shape-behavior-2795897.
A crone carries a lifetime of wisdom and carries the name wisely.
Whenever I read 'myths' that feature a crone, hag, evil, ugly old woman, I suspect modern influence, particularly Christian. Women (unless they're holy) are often depicted in an unflattering way. Age brought wisdom to the early people, and aging is a natural phase of life.