Friday, June 5th, was our annual visit to Loughcrew. I always look forward to visiting the Sliabh na Callighe, which translates roughly as the hill of the hag. I’ve come to expect to learn stories about the Cailleach when I am there and this time was no different.
We left Athlone at 10:30, got to the Loughcrew Gardens for lunch about noon, and then to the hill 1:00ish. It was our first day of what seemed like “normal” Irish weather; the previous seven days were sunny and hot. The sky on this day was deep blue and covered by large, silvery white and grey, billowy, steadily moving clouds. A stiff breeze whipped our hair around our heads and the caps off our heads. The green fields were covered by buttercups, which were being nibbled by horses, sheep, and cattle. (I’ve heard it’s the buttercups that make the Kerrygold Irish butter I love so delicious.) When we got to the top of the hill the clouds seemed even larger and closer and as if they were spiraling around the mound.
I was glad to see George Knight there. He is an Office of Public Works guide that we have met there several times before. George told us that the OPW had come very close to cancelling the guides at Loughcrew for this summer given the state of the economy. He and another guide, Malachy, had only been there for two days, in fact. He said they’d had a lot of clean-up to do. George took eight students and me into the passage tomb and showed us with a flashlight how on the equinoxes the sun moves perfectly across the solar symbols carved into the massive rocks at end of the passage. He described the cruciform layout of the center of the tomb, a feature common to other passage tombs such as Newgrange. He pointed out that the interior of the tomb was eight-sided, the shape you get when you overlay a circle and a square. The eight-sided symbol is seen to this day in the Celtic cross. George said that this represented the union of the spiritual (the circle) and the material (the square). This is all part of why scholars believe the tombs represent the earliest extant expression of organized religion in Ireland. When I asked him if he knew any stories about the place, he told a version of one I’d heard there before in which St. Patrick challenges the Cailleach for control of Ireland. I’ve written about it before here and here. One thing I learned this time is that the fourth hill, where legend say she fell, broke her neck and is buried, is called Patrickstown. Unlike the other three hills that make up Loughcrew, Patrickstown is covered by a fairy wood, and very few people go there for fear of the “witch”. Since I’d heard that one, I asked if he knew any others, and he did! He told us two more. In the first, a man and his son up near Carrowmore, covet the Cailleach’s fine cow which produces the richest milk, cream, and butter. They determine to steal it. Late at night as they are slipping away with the cow, one of them steps on a twig. The Cailleach hears it, catches them, and turns men and cow into stones which you can see to this very day. The second story George said was “naughtier”, but of course we said we wanted to hear it. One day up near Armagh, Finn McCool was hunting when he met a beautiful woman. She invited him to her bed and he readily accepted. But once they were in full embrace, Finn opened his eyes and saw that he was holding a hideous old hag. Furthermore, he himself had been reduced to a feeble old man with snow white hair. He got out of there as quickly as he could, and when he met up with his companions they did not recognize him. Eventually a magical body of water was found which restored Finn’s youth, but his hair was white from then on. I said that the second story was the reverse of the story in which Niall of the Nine Hostages meets the sovereignty goddess. George said he hadn’t heard it, so I told it quickly. Our conversation then went to the role of the goddess in pre-Christian religion. George reminded us that all of the stories we’d been telling were about the goddess in the landscape, and that Loughcrew itself was a monument to the goddess. An enormous boulder on the side of the cairn carved like a throne has always been known as the hag’s seat. The chamber, rather than being simply cruciform, may have been a representation of her body. The sun coming up the passage was entering the womb of the earth, bringing fertilizing energy. He reminded us again, that this monument named for the Cailleach, was the very beginning of religion in Ireland. My students and I heard all this in the rocky embrace and dim light at the center of the tomb. We walked from the body of the goddess into the light of day, into the inspiring beauty of the Irish landscape. It was a very good day to be alive. The picture at the beginning of the post shows Jill, Tracee, Ryan, Vanessa, Ashlee, and Tommy. The second picture is the mound of the passage tomb. And in the third, a couple of modern goddesses (Tracee and Jenna) survey their realm from the Hag’s Seat.