Liz's Ireland Journal

Bloomsday and Beyond

        The 16^th of June in Dublin, which happened to be on a Saturday this year, is the annual celebration of Bloomsday.  That day in 1904, was the one James Joyce chronicled in his book Ulysses.  We started our Bloomsday at the Joyce Center, an easy walk up O’Connell Street, with a short jog over Parnell Street to Great Georges Street.  We passed a statue of Joyce himself on the way, which is what the students are swarming at the beginning of the post.

       We arrived just as the proceedings were getting under way.  The street was blocked off and there were a couple dozen folding chairs outside the Joyce Center, and about a hundred people sitting or milling around.  Just to the left of the entrance, there was a small platform with a podium and microphone for the readers and actors.  The director of the center welcomed us all and after the first performer, Senator David Norris a well known Joyce enthusiast, the line-up was spectacularly international.  The ambassador from Japan read a selection in Japanese, and he was followed by readers from all over the world.  

       I heard very few of them because I had arranged to go to County Wicklow with Danielle for the day.  Miceál Ross had made arrangements to pick up Joyce Story and Doug Bland at the Joyce Center, and after seeing them off, I made my way to Connolly Station, got the Dart Train south to Glenagearry where Danielle was waiting for me.

       Danielle grew up in Wicklow, and she misses the trees and the landscape.  The first place she took me was Warblebank, a beautiful garden maintained by the aunt of one of her closest friends. Then we stopped for a cup of tea at Fisher’s in Newtownmountkennedy, the sophisticated boutique and tea room where her mother works when she is not painting.

       We then went on to meet her mother, Patricia, who lives in the Danielle’s childhood home.  Patricia had a day of painting planned in preparation for an upcoming show, and hadn’t wanted to be disturbed, but since we had her baby granddaughter, Hannah, with us we were welcomed.  Danielle’s uncle, Andrew, happened to be there too, doing some construction for his sister.

       From there we set off for Glendalough, the glen of two lakes, the home of St. Kevin.  On the way we stopped off at Danielle’s father’s antique shop in Annamoe.  It’s a tiny place stuffed with treasures, but since there were two customers already inside there was literally no room for us.  Danielle said we would stop back later, which we did, but regrettably her Dad had already closed up.

       The Wicklow hills are famous for their beauty, and Glendalough reflects it all like two giant mirrors.  We went to the visitor’s center, where I heard the story about St. Kevin included in an earlier post.  It’s small, but well done, and includes the famous Hollywood stone on which is carved a labyrinth.  It was found along the pilgrimage route associated with the saint and his glen.  There is a modern labyrinth in the grass on the grounds of the park.

       I was waiting for Danielle and Hannah to reappear when I noticed Richard Marsh, a storyteller from Dublin, walking by outside in the rain. I waved him down through the window and he came inside.  He was there with a group of teachers, from Belgium I think, serving as their guide and telling them stories about St. Kevin.

        After visiting with Richard for a few moments, Danielle and I had lunch and then braved the elements to visit the round tower and other buildings on the site.  We had just reached the little chapel when we turned to see Doug, Joyce, and Miceál coming towards us.  I immediately cornered Miceál so that he could finish telling me his perspective on why the Cailleach would accept a challenge from St. Patrick.  What it boils down to in his opinion is nothing more than a Christian recension of an old story, a recension that functions – not surprisingly – to discredit and diminish the goddess of the land. Maybe I am taking it too seriously, but that story is still nipping at the heels of my consciousness.

       Danielle drove up past the lakes to the Wicklow gap, and then we made our way back through the countryside and villages to the Dart station, where she dropped me off.  I got back to Dublin at 8:30 p.m., my internal landscape filled with the beauty of the external one.

       Below is the upper lake at Glendalough and a little robin that Danielle spotted as we left Miceál and his passengers. 

The Dublin Yarnspinners

        The Dublin Yarnspinners had arranged several weeks ago for me to be the featured storyteller at their monthly meeting on Thursday, June 14^th.  As it happened, Study Abroad Ireland was scheduled to be in Dublin – starting the 14^th – for our annual multi-day trip that includes the celebration of Bloomsday on June 16^th.  Bloomsday celebrates the day chronicled by James Joyce in his famous novel Ulysses.

       The team that is responsible for running the Dublin Yarnspinners is composed of three storytellers: Aideen McBride, her father Jack Sheehan, and Jack Lynch.  Aideen was my contact for the evening, and she told me that it was scheduled for 8:00 p.m., but probably wouldn’t start until 8:15.   It was about 8:20 as Aideen introduced me that I looked around the room at 22 American faces and 13 Irish ones, including those of Miceal Ross, Danielle Allison, and Richard Marsh.

       As I prepared myself for the evening, the one thing that never occurred to me was that there would be more Americans in the audience than Irish, but for the first half of the evening well over half my listeners were participants and faculty of the Study Abroad Ireland Program.  I was honored and a little surprised that all my colleagues and over half the students would come, and just before it was time for me to begin telling I allowed myself a moment of wonderment and reflection on the relative utility of expectations. The picture I had in my head of the Dublin Yarnspinners was of the last time I was there in 2005. On that evening there were about the same number of people, but Mark and I were the only Americans.

       Flexibility is part of the storyteller’s credo, and I pondered a moment on whether I should choose something different than what I had planned to tell.  I decided to stick with “The Path of Truth”, a story about my grandmother and her impact on me, built around the image of a bracelet that she wore most of her life.  For this evening, I developed an expanded 30 minute version of the story.  I had a wonderful time telling it, and as she usually did and still does through the story, my grandmother was able to bridge both generation and geography.

       After I told, Aideen invited Joyce Story to come up and tell which she did with great aplomb.  She chose a short story with a good ending that the audience really enjoyed.  It took me several days to convince Joyce that I had not known Aideen was going to ask her.  I should have realized though, when Aideen asked me who the experienced storytellers in my group were. 

       After Joyce, Aideen asked Richard Marsh to step up and tell.  Richard hails from Detroit, but has lived in Ireland for close to three decades and is well known as a storyteller, author, and tour leader.  Richard told a poem he wrote about an experience he had crashing the annual and very posh Trinity Ball with a group of friends.  When Richard finished it was time for the break, and when the doors opened 10 or more people who had been waiting in the hall poured into the room, including Jack Lynch.  It was a horrible rainy night out and people had had a rough time getting there.

       The Yarnspinners is held at the Club na Múínteoirí, the teachers’ club, which has a very nice bar.  During the break, most people went there to grab a pint or a cup of coffee.  When we resumed, over half of the Study Abroad Ireland listeners had gone, replaced by the people who had been standing in the hall during the first set. That meant that the majority of the listeners were now Irish.

       I had asked Jack Sheehan for a story I heard him tell last year at Cultra called “The Fairy Seat”.  Aideen called him up first and I was very sorry that so many of the students had left because this was the story I had wanted them to hear.  Fortunately, most of my storytelling students were still there. Then Aideen asked Danielle to come up and tell a story that has become something of her signature, a beautiful love story about a tragic, misguided postman and the woman he loves. I closed out the second set with two of my favorites, “The Woman Who Knew a Story and a Song”, and “What Happens When Your Really Listen”, two folktales from India both collected by A.K. Ramanujan.

       After visiting with the listeners and wrapping up, several of us went to the bar and then another storytelling session began.  Maura and her sister Brigid told about their father, who was a great storyteller, and about their personal experiences with ghosts.  Jack Sheehan told a ghost story that turned out not to be about a ghost.  Aideen told her “Hole Story”, and another one about a long concealed murder.  I told a short Irish folktale about a mirror, and then gave the modern American version transformed into a blonde joke. 

       The Irish folktale is about a man who buys a mirror in town, thinking that he is looking at a picture of his dear, departed father.  His wife grows jealous of his attention to it and thinks it is a picture of another woman.  After the man goes to bed, she sneaks out for a peek and says in astonishment, “Now why on earth would he take up with an old worn out hag with those two useless things hanging down?”  But, feeling uncomfortable saying that, I instead said, “Now why on earth would he take up with an old worn out thing like that with her gray hair and wrinkles?”  Right away Maura and Brigid were nodding their heads.  Maura said, “Oh yes, our dad used to tell that, but he always said. . ." and she proceded to tell what I'd edited out.

       The blonde joke, just so as not to leave you hanging, is this:  The blonde was stopped for speeding by a woman police officer, also blonde.  When asked for her license, the driver could not find it.  Finally, the police officer says, “It’s the little square thing with your picture.”  The driver says, “Oh!  Here it is”, and hands the police officer a square mirror.  The officer looks at and replies, “Why didn’t you tell me you were a police officer, too?”

       It broke up about 12:30 and Doug Bland and I walked back down O’Connell Street to the Liffey and then to the Abbey Court Hostel on Bachelor’s Walk through a steady cold rain.  It was a memorable and satisfying evening.

       The photo of me at the beginning of the post was taken by Allison Davis.

First Stories

The students in The Irish Storytelling Tradition told their first stories last Wednesday, June 13th.  It was a good solid set of stories – well chosen and well told.  Their written responses to their stories were as interesting as their tellings of them and added dimension to their choices.

Danielle Allison told a modern Irish version of “The Very Hungry Cat” which featured among others a Ninja Nana and a Surfer Dude with an entourage.  Danielle has a background in clowning, which was evident in her energetic and kinetic telling.

Jeff Asplund told “A Bargain is a Bargain” in which a woman sells her soul to the devil for the money to educate her children.  He told Sharon Creeden’s version from Fair is Fair.  Hers is my favorite because the last child, who grows up to be a lawyer, in her telling is a woman. About selecting his story Jeff wrote, “The story was simple and had a good end to it. That’s why I switched to it the day before the presentation. I need a story that I could connect with and eventually master.  “The Jackdaw”, my original choice, really wasn’t my kind of story. “A Bargain is a Bargain” really fits with how I tell a story.” The picture at the beginning of the post is Jeff sitting in the Bad Ass Cafe in Dublin.

Doug Bland told “The Story of Boann” a mythic story that he crafted from a wide range of sources.  Boann is the goddess who created the Boyne

River by defying a taboo against visiting a particular well.  As such, it’s a perfect fit with the theme of Doug’s sabbatical. On the challenges of crafting a story from Irish myth, Doug wrote, “I chose to tell “Boann and the River Boyne” first, because it fits well with my sabbatical theme, “Living Water”. Second, I’m intrigued with Boann as an Eve or Pandora figure who dares to defy authority and liberate the source of wisdom---the waters of the well of Segais. . .I was afraid that I was defying the gods of Irish storytelling by taking the few details and images I had collected and putting them together in my own way.  I came up with a story that I like, a story that makes some sense to me, maybe event a story that Boann, acting as a muse, gave me; but even at that I told the story with some fear and trembling.  Now that I’ve received some affirmation and encouragement, I’ll go back and develop this story with more boldness and creativity.

Skippy Covington told “The Cow Who Ate the Piper”.  After consulting several versions, Skippy settled on Billy Teare’s version called “The Piper’s Revenge” from More Ready to Tell Tales from Around the World. The story involves adangerous cow, frozen feet, new boots, and a tricky piper who himself gets a surprise at the end of the story.

Allison Davis told “Secret Tokens Prove Ownership” from Folktales of Ireland by Sean O’Sullivan.  In this story, a mysterious scholar arrives for the birth of a foal, makes an unusual prediction and recommends the assignment of a secret token for the horse. In response to the question of why she chose the story, Allison wrote, “At first, I really didn’t know why I liked the story. It finally occurred to me only when I told my story to Doug and we talked about it. I realized it had a splash of dramatic irony – my favorite! I enjoy a story when the audience knows something the others characters do not. It creates bittersweet suspense! The story in the book however, did not present the irony strongly, so that may be a reason it did not pop out to me consciously. But after realizing that the ending scene consisted of dramatic irony, I decided I would like to stretch it out a bit in my own telling.”

Ashley Dobbins told “Oisin in the Land of Tir na Nog”, a beautiful story that describes not only how Oisin, the son of Finn McCool, came to have an otherworldly wife, but how he lived to tell the stories of the Fianna to St. Patrick.  When asked why the story was important to her, Ashley wrote, “I was immediately drawn to this story because of Tir na Nog.  The second I heard that word, something sparked in my memory.  I had heard the word before, I just couldn’t remember where.  I assumed it was from my grandparents telling me a story with Tir na Nog as the main setting.  So, I thought that I would learn this story and tell it to them next time I visited them!”

Amanda Ryder told “The Seal Wife” from George MacPherson’s Highland Myths and Legends.  The story is from Scotland, but the tradition of the seal wife, or selkie spans both islands. About her story Amanda wrote, “The story was important to me because all of the stories that I had heard involving mermaids or selkies had the husbands hiding the skins.  To me this was an indication that perhaps the love for their wives or the respect for their happiness wasn’t a top priority.  In this story I noticed right away that the fisherman’s love for the woman is so strong and he wants so badly for her to be happy that he offers her skin back. I thought that was a wonderful gesture on his part. Even though he could have lost her and been lonely all over again, he was more worried about her happiness and well-being than his feelings.” The picture is of Amanda occupying the Hag's Seat at Loughcrew.

Joyce Story told “The Three Daughters of King O’Hara” which was a perfect match for her voice and storytelling style. The story attracted her because she is an O’Hara, but beyond that she wrote, “I liked the story not only because of the O’Hara connection but because the plot is so interesting.  The listener is caught up in wondering what happens next.  I also like the appeal of the wife’s devotion and love, and I was moved at the loss of her three children.”

Did I mention that it's been raining steadily for a week and a half?

No? Well, it has been. It's a cold rain, with wind.  The worst part was when I was trying to preserve my hairdo while walking down O'Connell Street to the Dublin Yarnspinners on Parnell Square wearing adorable sandals with little leather flowers studded with tiny crystal beads that I bought especially for the occasion while the rain was coming at me sideways. While I was walking that is – not while I was buying.  Just thought I should mention it since earlier in the month I had been complaining about the heat.  Now I'm sleeping with socks on my feet under a comforter and wearing six layers during the day. Several Irish people have said, "Sure, nobody comes to Ireland for the weather".  But I actually did come for the weather, amongst other things, and I say you gotta love it.  That's what we're here for and I'll take it over 113 degrees any day.  Hairdo and flashy sandals bedamned!  And believe me, the hairdo, especially the hairdo, is.

Saints and Aprons

        I heard another story involving saints, aprons, and rocks at Glendalough, the home of St. Kevin in Wicklow.

       St.Kevin was concerned that people not be greedy. One morning about breakfast time he met a woman carrying loaves of bread in her apron.

       He asked her for a loaf, but she said, “Oh, no, Brother Kevin. These are not loaves of bread, but rocks I’m carrying to line the hearth.” Kevin knew better and said, “If they really are rocks, then let them be loaves. But, if they really are loaves, then let them be rocks.”

       Since they really were loaves, they were instantly changed into rocks. They tore through the woman’s apron and scattered on the ground. This presumably taught the woman several painful lessons, especially if any of the rocks happened to land on her feet. Once again, as with St. Patrick and the Cailleach, a saint causes rocks to be dropped from an apron.

       There’s another story, though not Irish, involving a saint, an apron, and loaves of bread. The future St. Elisabeth of Hungary was married to the Landgrave of Thuringia. While he was away managing a war, there was a famine in Thuringia and Elisabeth began giving food to the poor. Her mother-in-law, who was ruling in the Landgrave’s absence, forbade Elisabeth from distributing food. One day Elisabeth’s mother-in-law caught her with her apron full of loaves of bread for the poor. When she confronted her daughter in law, Elisabeth said, “Oh, no, Mother. These are not loaves of bread. My apron is full of roses!”  When her mother-in-law demanded to see, Elisabeth lowered her apron to reveal the white, pink, and red blossoms.

       My glib response would be that we might trust a woman saint to produce something beautiful rather than causing a lot of rocks to be dropped all over the place. That doesn’t really work, since the rocks that the Cailleach dropped at Loughcrew are magnificent. I think the real difference has something to do with perceived power. Both St. Patrick and St.Kevin believed, and in the stories were proved to be, in positions of power relative to the women in their stories and their power had tangible weight and force. Elisabeth on the other hand was not in a position of power relative to her mother-in-law and she knew it. She could not risk a titanic confrontation. Elisabeth relied on her God-given miraculous power to deflect her tormentor and to save her ministry and the result was as light as a petal.

       In the picture at the beginning of the post, I’m standing next to one of carved stones at the opening of the passage of Cairn T at Loughcrew.

This World is Good

       Miceál Ross joined us in class on Monday morning. Miceál's first career, which took him all over the world, was as a research economist. Later in life he attended University College Dublin's famous Delargy Center for Irish Folklore to pursue his passion for story and obtained an additional degree. Although he recently relinquished the responsibility to others, for the previous several years he managed the Dublin Yarnspinners storytelling group.

       As he has in the past when he’s visited my class, he spoke about strong women.  This year his comments were enhanced by his recent reading in new biblical scholarship and in creation theology.  It seems I’m not the only one with the Irish goddess on my mind. He started the session with the following comments:

       “I said that I would talk about the strong woman in Irish tradition.  It’s a funny thing, but when I come across things like new-age people, what have you, and with all this weird and way out there stuff – I hope you’re not new-agers, now – and they have all this sort of stuff they’re going on with.  But the funny thing is that in the last number of years I’ve been starting to re-evaluate religion – religion in my life and so forth – and very recently I’ve come to a strong feeling. And it’s not just a felling, but it is a conviction, that there has been a strong woman looking after the Irish for 2,000 years. And she’s there and she’s looking after the Irish. And I’ve been reading the new biblical studies and what have you and I realize of course that our concepts of God and all that are bananas, and that this strong woman is an Irish expression of God in its own way.  I really now realize that the new-agers were ahead of me in this regard . . .So, what I have done is trace over the period of time how this concept of the strong woman has come along and has informed the Irish over the years – how they coped with prosperity and with ruin.  She’s there all the time looking after them in a funny sort of a way.”

       Miceál said that her presence can always be detected in the stories and in the way that the stories are told.  It turns out that the strong women in the stories are often otherworldly women.  The health of the land and its people depended on a marriage between an earthly king and an otherworldly woman, both of whom had to be without blemish.  Their united perfection was then reflected in the world around them which thrived as long as they did.

       He told us several stories that emphasized this otherworldly aspect of the strong women in Irish story and myth.  The first was “Macha’s Curse,” also known as “The Weakness of the Ulstermen,” a fore-tale to the epic “Cattle Raid of Cooley”, which explains why the Ulstermen can not defend themselves – in short because they have deeply offended the goddess – nine generations worth of offense, in fact. You can find the story here.

       He followed that with the poetic description of Etain when first seen by her future husband, Eochaid, the high king.  Eochaid could not rule without an otherworldly wife, and this is his first glimpse of her:

       And Eochaid came to that place to take the maiden thence, and this was the way that he took; for as he crossed over the ground where men hold the assembly of Bri Leith, he saw the maiden at the brink of the spring. A clear comb of silver was held in her hand, the comb was adorned with gold; and near her, as for washing, was a basin of silver whereon four birds had been chased, and there were little bright gems of carbuncle on the rims of the basin. A bright purple mantle waved round her; and beneath it was another mantle, ornamented with silver fringes: the outer mantle was clasped over her bosom with a golden brooch. A tunic she wore, with a long hood that might cover her head attached to it; it was stiff and glossy with green silk beneath red embroidery of gold, and was clasped over her breasts with marvellously wrought clasps of silver and gold; so that men saw the bright gold and the green silk flashing against the sun. On her head were two tresses of golden hair, and each tress had been plaited into four strands; at the end of each strand was a little ball of gold. And there was that maiden, undoing her hair that she might wash it, her two arms out through the armholes of her smock. Each of her two arms was as white as the snow of a single night, and each of her cheeks was as rosy as the foxglove. Even and small were the teeth in her head, and they shone like pearls. Her eyes were as blue as a hyacinth, her lips delicate and crimson; very high, soft, and white were her shoulders. Tender, polished, and white were her wrists; her fingers long, and of great whiteness; her nails were beautiful and pink. White as the snow, or as the foam of the wave, was her side; long was it, slender, and as soft as silk. Smooth and white were her thighs; her knees were round and firm and white; her ankles were as straight as the rule of a carpenter. Her feet were slim, and as white as the ocean's foam; evenly set were her eyes; her eyebrows were of a bluish black, such as ye see upon the shell of a beetle. Never a maid fairer than she, or more worthy of love, was till then seen by the eyes of men; and it seemed to them that she must be one of those who have come from the fairy mounds: it is of this maiden that men have spoken when it hath been said: "All that's graceful must be tested by Etain; all that's lovely by the standard of Etain."

   

       Miceál then treated us to several passages of his translation of “The Midnight Court” by Brian Merriman. The poem was written late in the 18^th century, and describes a court presided over by an otherworldly woman who takes the men in the country to task for neglecting the women and their needs.  He recited the stanza below with great relish, turning on the young men in the room and addressing the poem to them with vigor and delight.  The picture above shows them in the aftermath.
      

The Court considered the country’s crisis,

And what do you think its main advice is –

That unless there’s a spurt in procreation

We can kiss goodbye to the Irish nation;

It’s growing smaller year by year –

And don’t pretend that’s not your affair.

Between death and war and ruin and pillage

The land is like a deserted village;

Our best are banished, but you, you slob,

Have you ever hammered a single job?

What use are you to us, you cissy?

We have thousands of women who’d keep you busy

With breasts like balloons or small as a bud

Buxom of body and hot in the blood,

Virgins or whores – whatever’s your taste –

At least don’t let them go to waste;

It’s enough to make us broken-hearted –

Legs galore – and none of them parted.

They’re ready and willing for any endeavor –

But you can’t expect them to wait forever.

       When we returned from a quick break, Miceál told us about the banshee, which literally means woman of the sí, or otherworldly woman.  In his introduction to the banshee and her importance to the Irish, he gave us this piece of wisdom:

       “This may sound trivial, but in terms of modern philosophical discussion it’s very important.  The Irish believed that this world was good and the early Bible said God created the world and it was good.  And so their idea of the Otherworld was a good place and their idea of this world was a good place and the only time this world wasn’t a good place was when people screwed up this world.”

       Miceál went to say that the idea of original sin, and that nettles sting and tigers chase gazelles is due to it, was not part of the Irish orientation to the world.

       “The Irish didn’t buy that.  They believed that this world was good.  It’s quite a fundamentally different approach.  If this world’s a mess, it’s not because it’s fundamentally a sinful place that has to be redeemed.  It’s a mess because we make it so.”

       After class, Miceál and I were sitting outside the classroom waiting for Danielle to come take him to the train station.  I told him the story of St. Patrick and the Cailleach and asked him why he thought the Cailleach would have accepted a challenge from Patrick.  “Ah,” he said, “Now, that’s a very interesting story, and actually a story of Lughnasadh.”  Just at that moment, Danielle arrived to collect him, and I didn’t get the story!  He called through the window as the car pulled away, “I’ll tell you the rest when I see you in Dublin.”

From left are Joyce Story, Ashley Dobbins, Miceál Ross, Sean Covington, Allison Davis, Jeff Asplund, and Amanda Ryder

St. Patrick and the Cailleach

When St. Patrick came to Ireland, he met the Cailleach near the three hills of Loughcrew. It didn’t take him long to figure out that she was the goddess of the land, the keeper of the landscape and its creatures. “Fill your apron with rocks and then hop across these hills in three steps”, he challenged her. “If you don’t drop any rocks, the land will stay pagan, but if you drop a single one the land will be mine. I’ll claim it for Christ.” The Cailleach accepted the challenge. She filled her apron with boulders, then loped from hill to hill in three long strides. At each hill several of the rocks tumbled from her apron. That’s how Ireland came to be Christian and also how the rocks that form the ancient monuments on the crests of the hills of Loughcrew were moved there.

The Friday at the end of our first week of classes is traditionally the day we go to Loughcrew in County Meath. Loughcrew, also known as Sliabh na Callighe, the Hills of the Hag, or the Three Steps of the Witch, is a Neolithic passage tomb complex spread across three hills, dating to 3000 B.C. At Loughcrew we are in the realm of the Cailleach, in a landscape created by her.

The word “cailleach” simply means old woman or hag. She is a figure who has fascinated me for the last several years. I first came upon her when Doug Bland asked me to do a story about Brigid for his annual Winter’s Light concert and I ended up telling about the Cailleach instead. Brigid and the Cailleach are often interpreted as two faces of the same goddess – her spring and winter aspects. The Cailleach shapes the earth, brings the winter, and shelters the animals. She’s often described as wearing an enormous cloak and carrying a mighty staff as she strides across the countryside. She has a reputation as a great walker, not surprising given her intimate connection with the earth. The image above by Barrie Maguire is a modern representation of the Cailleach, sheathed in the quilt of the landscape even as she stitches it together.

Like the rest of Ireland, Loughcrew is undergoing changes. The first year I went we were the only people there. The second year there was a small OPW (Office of Public Works) trailer in the car park at the bottom of the hill and a guide at the entrance to Cairn T, the largest and most impressive passage tomb on the middle hill. This year our group of 32 was there along with 30 school children from Dublin, with 100 more expected later that day. There were two guides, one of whom escorted us to the center of the passage in small groups of five or six.

I always appreciate having a guide. Ours was knowledgeable and efficient. She reminded us that the passage was aligned to sunrise at the equinoxes. She demonstrated with her flashlight how the sunlight traveled across the face of the carved rock at the back of the passage from the upper left corner to the lower right during the hour it is illuminated. She told us that Cairn T, the one we were inside, had once been covered with bright white quartz rock like Newgrange, so that the hill would have shone like a beacon. One of the old names for Cairn T is Carnbane, which in Irish means white cairn. I struggled with envy when she revealed that she had witnessed the winter solstice sunrise in Newgrange three times. “The perks of the job,” she told me with a satisfied smirk for which I couldn’t blame her. She said that two guides were now necessary since Loughcrew received over 6,000 visitors in 2006.

Most importantly, she told us the story that opens the entry. The story has been aggravating me since I heard it on Friday, and I suspect it will continue to do so. I’ve come across several versions of the story without St. Patrick. Here, for example, is a poem about her attributed to Swift, who purportedly gathered stories in the area in the early 1700’s. Carnmore (large cairn in Irish), and Carnbeg (small cairn) are alternate names for the Loughcrew passage tombs.

Determined now her tomb to build,

Her ample skirt with stones she filled,

And dropped a heap on Carnmore;

Then stopped one thousand yards, to Loar,

And dropped another goodly heap;

And then with one prodigious leap

Gained Carnbeg; and on its height

Displayed the wonders of her might.*

The image of her presented in the poem corresponds to my concept of the Cailleach. It makes sense to me that she chose to place the rocks on the hills as she “displayed the wonders of her might.” To think that she would accept - and lose - a challenge from St. Patrick rankles me. Why would she accept such a challenge? Why did she drop the stones, or why did she let them fall?

I’ve been thinking about what the Cailleach might say if I was able to pose these questions to her. In the process it’s occurred to me that my conception of her is too narrow. It doesn’t really make sense that a goddess of her scope and antiquity would buy into the primitive duality of Ireland being either pagan or Christian exclusively. It’s just too small a world view for her. Plus, surely she showed Patrick something that day, too. He witnessed her capabilities, her hill loping stride and her boulder bearing might.

That may explain why in another story about an encounter between these two titans, he “causes her to disappear in a red flash.” The story is included in Gearoid O’Crualaoich’s Book of the Cailleach. Here’s what he says about it:

"St. Patrick and the ‘new’ Christian order is shown as unsympathetic, to say the least, to the figure and the significance of the cailleach in ancestral tradition. Patrick is portrayed as immediately pronouncing the demise of the cailleach and all she represents. He causes her to disappear ‘in a red flash’ and that, we are told, was ‘the end of her’. We can again however, point to the continued transmission and performance of this narrative itself as a continuing afterlife for the cailleach and for the perception of ancestral cosmology in a worldview that is officially Christian and in the modern era, increasingly rational. In this, as in other texts that purport to show the displacement and expulsion of the cailleach, we can sense the abiding allure of the older wisdom and the poetically privileged way in which it continues to find expression even in accounts of its supplanting. Such accounts serve to renew the ambiguity of cosmological allegiance that marks the Irish repertoire of legend regarding landscape, as both domain of the hag-goddess and God’s creation. "

In other words, you never die as long as they keep telling stories about you. As any storyteller can tell you, being storied is the best kind of immortality. Should I ever get an opportunity to interview the Cailleach, I’ll let her know I’m doing my best to keep her stories alive within my own consciousness and in the imaginations of my listeners.

*Loughcrew: The Cairns by Jean McMann

Believe it or not - it's hot!

It really is.  An hour ago it was 75 degrees and 60 percent humidity.  The sun is intensely brilliant. It takes me roughly ten seconds to become completely soaked upon stepping out of the door. A breeze will often come up, which then turns me into a human swamp cooler - but it's better than no breeze. I'm sitting with a fan blowing on my neck as I write.  The Irish love it.  Tomorrow many of them will be sporting shiny new sunburns. As I was walking back from the laundry, I saw a neighbor on her balcony stretched out on a chaise and doing her best impression of the Irish flag: green shorts, white arms and legs, orange tank top.  Those arms and legs will look like tomatoes tomorrow.

Small victories:  I managed to get a matching duvet cover and pillow case!  Gavin Doorly, our apartment manager brought over some linens so that we could set up a room for Miceal Ross who will be arriving on the train this evening.  He is scheduled to tell and lecture in my class tomorrow morning.  With what Gavin brought and what I found in another room of our apartment, I got a matching set.  Before this great decorating boon occurred I had an orange bottom sheet, yellow and brown duvet, and turquoise and blue pillow case.  Not restful.

The Front Page Experience: Turns out the Westmeath Independent is a weekly newspaper.  Yesterday several of us were walking to the farmer's market at the castle and we stopped in a little market.  There was the paper in a double rack, both racks with the front page facing the door.  Later Danielle and I stopped at another market and they had a triple rack, all with me on the front page facing the door.  I got recognized in the Athlone Crystal and Gift Gallery while purchasing a large ceramic mug with a spiral, and as the owner's five year old daughter demonstrated her step dancing. I invited them both to come to the library for the storytelling.

Words from Wise Students

I have an excellent group of students this year. I have been impressed and moved by their responses to the class readings. My own understanding of the issues is often deepened and expanded by what they write. Below are some selections from the first week.

Sean Covington (aka Skippy): It really painted the storyteller as a romantic figure who not only entertains but also teaches. It made me want to be a storyteller as much as a knight in shining armor riding on his glorious white steed into battle. (In response to Mara Freeman’s “Word of Skill”)

Doug Bland: Lir has four children whom he loves with a passion. This causes a great jealousy in their stepmother. She orders them killed. When the order is refused, she attempts to kill them herself. Failing, she places a magical curse on them which turns them into swans and send them into exile for 900 years. By the time their exile ends, at the beginning of the Christian era, the Tuatha de Danaan have passed into legend and there is no place for them in the mortal world. They die together. Damn sad story. (His summary of the Children of Lir)

Ashley Dobbins: My grandparents are from Ireland and they would always tell my sister and me stories growing up about leprechauns and banshees, but at the time, we thought they were just fun stories. I now realize that these stories they told were a major part of their culture. My grandpa would tell us that he met a leprechaun named Rufus Knickerbocker and he outwitted him enough to find his pot of gold, but he turned his head at the last second, and it was gone. He would also tell us a story about being out at night and hearing a moan from the house up on the hill. He ran home as fast as he could because he knew it was the call of the banshee. Also, when the article mentions the fact that much storytelling takes place at wakes remembering those of the deceased, I recalled coming to Ireland for my great-grandpa’s funeral and how many stories were told during that entire week. Story, after story, after story; they just kept coming! The last point I thought was the funniest. The fact about the Yank and Paddy jokes made me laugh because I fit into that category! I have close Irish heritage and I come over here thinking that I am “all that” returning to my homeland. But then I look at my actual Irish cousins living here and I am reminded that I am an American and I need to watch myself! (In response to the Ireland entry in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Folklore)

Joyce Story: I appreciated Freeman’s appealing evocation of the “fireside teller”; such a practice seems so vastly superior to our modern retreat within our own houses to plunk down in front of the TV. I also found very interesting the fact that when the written word was introduced into Ireland at the beginning of the Christian era, the “Men of Art” were forbidden to write their knowledge down because it might jeopardize the gift of memory. What respect for the oral tradition!(In response to Mara Freeman’s “Word of Skill”)

Doug Bland: I’ve been reading some writing by David James Duncan, author of The River Why. He says that environmentalists have taken the wrong approach to preservation and protection of the land. We think that people will be convinced with “facts” so we do environmental impact statements on land and we are sure that people will be convinced to care for the place and protect it. But, he says, people are never convinced by facts, they are convinced by compelling stories. One way to help people to value places is by visiting them in person. The problem is that we sometimes, then, love places to death. Another way to help people love a place is by telling the stories about them. I think the environmental impact of storytelling is both less (in a negative sense) and more (in a positive sense). (In response to “Introduction” in Eithne Massey’s Legendary Ireland) Below is Doug at Loughcrew, one of those places in imminent danger of being loved to death.

Front Page News

             

           Tuesday afternoon I launched the Summer Reading Program at Athlone’s Aidan Heavey Public Library at the beginning of a storytelling session.  The next day it was on the front page of the Westmeath Independent.  When my students returned from their break on Wednesday morning, Danielle was proudly bearing a copy of the paper for all of us to ogle.

For the past several weeks I’ve been planning weekly storytelling sessions for local school children with the executive librarian, Mae McLynn.  Liz Weir will tell one week and I’ll be leading the other three sessions with local storytellers Susie Minto and Danielle Allison, and of course the two that came along on the program, Doug Bland and Joyce Story.

Last week Mae wrote and asked if I’d be willing to launch the summer reading program, and of course I said I’d be delighted.  I took a book to present to the library at the launch, Chico, by Sandra Day O’Connor.  It’s a beauty, and even though Justice O’Connor is my parents' generation, the drawings are evocative of the Arizona I remember from my childhood.  I thought it was the perfect mix: someone of Irish heritage writing about Arizona. 

The newspaper sent a photographer who took a few details from me, and evidently thought I had written the book I was presenting.  The caption says, “American author Liz Warren is pictured reading to enthralled students from Cornafulla NS in the Aidan Heavey Public Library yesterday.”  Of course, there was no reading of books during our session!  Oh, well.  I imagine the library was delighted to be on the front page of the paper, and the article on the inside got the details of the summer reading program correctly which is what matters most.

We had an enthusiastic and focused group of listeners.  I started off with “The Calf Scramble”, embellished with pertinent details to make it comprehensible to my young Irish listeners.  Then Susie, a Scottish storyteller now living in Longford, told a riveting and compelling selkie story that she learned from storyteller Duncan Williamson, the famous Scottish Traveler. The mood and style was markedly different from my story, but she totally captured the students and pulled them into the story.  Then I told the “The Horny Toad’s Grandparents”, which features horny toad pee amongst other nuggets of narrative nostalgia and then finished up with an interactive piece I learned from Susan Klein called “Earth, Water, Fire, Air.” 

We were telling in the lower level of the library and at one point I noticed a group of teenage boys leaning over the staircase to listen.  Danielle told me they were in the library to study for their “leaving certs” – the tests older children take at the end of the year.  She was up there too with her two small children.  I’m not sure when the boys gave up and came over to listen – at any rate the telling and the laughter finally got them.  A good time was had by all, including the tellers.

Next week I’ll be doing the session with Danielle.  Miceál Ross will be in town that day, too and I’m hoping we can persuade him to come along and tell something, too.