The dog closes the mouth which he had opened, ready to bark; he bows his head to that old Cailleach, and gives way.
*
The water is clear, and cold. By the time it reaches her waist she is shivering convulsively, but she will not let go of the fox. ‘Let it live,’ she whispers. ‘Just this one. Just one more beautiful, wild thing. Let it live.’ And down she goes then, down into the water. Down into the bright, clear water with the fox. The lake takes them both, laps around them, soothes them and sings to them. Seeps through her skin and into her old bones; seeps through her ribcage and into her tired old heart. Seeps into her cells and mingles with the blood in her veins. She sings the old words and everything is singing, now; everything is alive. All you have to do is remember. Long ages unfold their wings and fly away out of her; the flood tide of her memory turns to ebb. And when finally she lifts herself out of the sun-spangled water, her body is young again, and strong.
Her ears are open again; she can hear them all now. All the new voices, calling to her. The eldering woman in the fields of Offaly who makes paintings of her; the young woman on the Kerry coast who writes poems about her. Two sisters from the land across the ocean leave flowers on her chair at Loughcrew; a middle-aged woman from the country across the sea leaves a bracelet at the Hag’s Rock in Beara. Her ears are open again, and everything is new. The waters of the world are awakening, and the mountains murmur love songs in the west. Maybe it’s not all lost. Maybe it’s not all lost, after all.
She shakes the shining droplets from her hair, for it’s time to go home, now – there is work to do. She will go first to the Pass of the Birds, and she will raise up the serpent that Patrick cast into the deep, dark waters at its peak. She will bring out the old god’s white bull, too. She will roar in the ear of that dark, crooked god till he wakens, and the fire in their ancient hearts will set the world alight again.
She knows about stone; she is the Cailleach. Rock-solid and as old as time. She’s a stone-shifter, a rock-reaver; she’s the mother of worlds. She will walk through the prison walls they have built to contain her; she’ll bring them down around their knees, if she must. She will gather together the ones who long for her; she’ll show them the ways in which the needed work should be done. Tending the bedrock, tending the wild things. Tending the soul of the land. More than any other living being, she knows there are never guarantees. But maybe it’ll be enough.
Something stirs in the water at her feet. The Cailleach looks down, and laughs at the sodden little fox. He is young again too, and strong. His soft fur glows like fire in the first rays of the Bealtaine sun, and his amber eyes are bright with life. ‘Madra rua,’ she whispers; ‘madra rua beag.’ Little fox, little red dog. And as she steps out of the water with the fox trotting along beside her, the old dog’s excited yapping echoes through the valley.
The hills that are gathered around it answer back.
Notes
Wolfskin
This story is based on an old Croatian folktale, ‘She-Wolf’, in which a wolf-woman’s skin is stolen by a soldier. She is forced to marry him, and stays with him until one of her sons finds her skin and allows her finally to escape. The story is similar to the Gaelic tales of the selkie: the sealwoman whose sealskin is stolen by a fisherman who sees her dancing in human form on a beach under the full moon – so trapping her in her human form. In the old versions of these tales, no harm comes to the husband who steals the woman’s skin and later breaks his word, refusing to give it back after seven years as he had originally promised her. But I’ve always preferred stories which come with consequences.
The Last Man Standing
This story was inspired by the old folk tales of fairy women who would appear out of nowhere, knock on the door of a lonely man (usually a farmer) and offer themselves up as wives. As long as the human husband didn’t break the fairy wife’s clearly stated taboos, their fields would grow fertile and their livestock would thrive. I was inspired by the old Irish myth of Macha in Armagh, and particularly by the old Welsh tale of ‘The Lady of Llyn Fan-y-Fach’ in the Brecon Beacons. The natural setting arose from the seven years I spent living on and working a croft on the shores of Loch Broom – a sea loch in the north-west of Scotland – slowly watching the salmon farm which my house faced expand, and the old ways disappear.
I wrote this story while thinking of my very dear elderly neighbour there, Ami McKenzie.
The Bogman’s Wife
I don’t know any specific folk tales about women who shape-shift into sea trout, or vice versa. However, this story was in part inspired by the first verses of W. B. Yeats’ poem, ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’:
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
Cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossoms in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And vanished in the brightening air …
More than anything, though, it was inspired by many years living in the wild and radical landscapes of the Outer Hebrides, Donegal and Connemara, and my ensuing transformation into a fervent lover of bog and moor.
Sometimes, stories arrive in your heart fully formed. This was one such story.
Foxfire
In the Scandinavian tradition, the huldra is a supernatural creature of the forest. The word derives from the Norwegian language, and means ‘covered’ or ‘secret’. The huldra is one of several rå – a keeper or warden of a particular location or landform; the huldra is the rå of the forest. Stories about her vary, but it is often said that, seen from the front, she is a stunningly beautiful, naked female with long hair; from behind she is hollow like an old tree trunk. In Norway she may be depicted with a cow’s tail, and in Sweden she may have that of a fox. In contemporary Iceland, stories still abound of the huldrefolk. It is said that work crews building new roads will sometimes divert the road around particular boulders which are known to be the homes of the huldre. In many folk tales, the huldra lures men into the forest to have sex with her, rewarding those who satisfy her, but driving mad or killing those who don’t.
Meeting Baba Yaga
This story arrived cackling, poking, and refused to go away till I’d written it. She’s like that, Baba Yaga. And you don’t refuse a woman who lives in a house fenced with human bones and skulls. The Baba is a wonderfully ambiguous character in Slavic folklore; she’ll help you or she’ll kill you – it’s all down to you. She’s the classic, powerful, old creator-goddess of ancient myth who later was trivialised as a wicked old witch.
The story was particularly inspired by the beautiful old Russian fairy tale of ‘Vasalisa the Brave’. It came alive out of the recognition that anyone can travel into the forest looking for the old woman of the woods, but not everyone leaves her house carrying the fire they came for.
I’d like to give credit to two fine pieces of work which inspired fragments of this story: Susan Richardson’s poem ‘The White Doe’, from her beautiful collection skindancing (Cinnamon Press, 2015); and the brilliant Taisia Kitaiskaia’s Ask Baba Yaga (Andrew McMeel Publishing, 2017) – a remarkable little volume of Otherworldly ‘advice columns’ from the Baba, which occupies a permanent spot on my bedside table.
For the record – like Carol, I was born in Hartlepool. And, with many apologies, I’ve never actually been to Totnes.
This story is for Moya McGinley, Baba-in-crime, ever free with a cackle and a rousing hot drop. Yes, we’ll burn together, for sure.
The Wat
er-Horse
In the classic Scottish/Irish folk tale of the each-uisge (water-horse – pronounced ‘yach OOsh-ger’, with a soft ‘ch’ at the end of each, as in the Scottish ‘loch’), a young girl who is looking after her family’s cattle in a shieling (summer cottage) in the bog, comes across a handsome young man and immediately falls in love with him. They sit together, and he places his head in her lap and falls asleep. It’s only then that she notices the water-weeds in his hair and realises that he has come out of the loch and is in fact a each-uisge. On land, these magnificent horses are able to take on the appearance of a dashing young man.
In most of the original stories, the girl carefully puts a stone under his head so that the water-horse won’t know it isn’t resting in her lap any more, and runs away back to the village while he’s still sleeping, so escaping him. Because every young girl knows that, given a chance, the each-uisge will trick you into believing that he’s human, and then steal you away and carry you off to the land under the water to be his wife. Or, in some stories, he’ll carry you away to eat you.
My reimagining of this old story was inspired in part by Nuala Ní Dhomnaill’s beautiful poem, ‘Each-Uisge’, from her 1999 collection The Water Horse (The Gallery Press). It also owes much to designer Alice Starmore’s vivid description of her youthful days at the summer shielings on the east side of the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides, which she spoke of to me when I was living there and writing my non-fiction book If Women Rose Rooted. I’m also grateful for a couple of articles about local folklore by Dave Roberts on the Comann Eachdraidh Uig website, www.ceuig.co.uk.
This story is for Holly Ringland, and her big old selkie heart.
Snow Queen
The long and complex story of the Snow Queen that so many of us read as children came to us from Hans Christian Andersen. In it, two children, Gerda and Kay, are the best of friends. Until one day a splinter from an enchanted mirror – which enhances what is ugly and evil in the world – lands in Kay’s eye and works its way into his heart. His childlike warmth disappears, and he devotes himself to the pursuit of reason. And then, one day, he is stolen away by the Snow Queen and taken to her icy palace in the north.
Gerda sets out to find him, and consults with many people and animals on her way. When finally she makes her way to the Snow Queen’s palace she finds Kay alone there, sitting on the icy lake which the Snow Queen calls her ‘Mirror of Reason’, and working to solve a word-puzzle which the Snow Queen has set him. It is what Andersen considers to be the purity of Gerda’s heart which ultimately transforms Kay back into the boy that he once was, and they set off for home together, presumably to live happily ever after.
The Snow Queen, in the original story, is actually quite an ambiguous figure. Although (not surprisingly) she seems to lack warmth, she certainly isn’t presented as evil, and actually comes across as rather lonely – and although she has stolen him away she is, after all, kind to Kay in her way. Characters based on the Snow Queen in other books and movies (from the White Witch in C. S. Lewis’ Narnia stories, to the various TV and cinematic movies of the same name) tend nevertheless to have been presented as evil; this has always seemed wrong to me.
The Saturday Diary of the Fairy Mélusine
This story is based on the old tale of the fairy Mélusine, which appears across much of Central Europe, though it is perhaps best known in France; the most popular version of the story was recorded by Jean d’Arras between 1382 and 1394. Mélusine is cursed to become a serpent from the waist down every Saturday. The curse has been laid upon her by her mother, Pressine, a fairy woman. Pressine had been offended because Mélusine and her sisters had taken revenge upon their father for breaking his oath to Pressine when they were babies. (He had promised Pressine that he would never enter her chamber while she gave birth to, or bathed, her children.) Pressine cursed Mélusine in spite of the fact that she had left her husband for his betrayal, and had railed against him throughout her daughters’ childhood.
After wandering the world for many years, Mélusine marries Raimondin of Poitou. He is forbidden by her to see her on Saturdays, which she spends alone in her serpent form, bathing. She bears him several sons: the first with one red eye and one green eye, the second son with one eye higher on his face than the other, the third with long claws and a body completely covered with hair, and another with a boar’s tusk protruding from his jaw. In spite of their deformities, all of their sons grow up to be outstanding men: scholars, monks and warriors. But one of their sons – the son with the boar’s tusk – subsequently goes mad and uncharacteristically attacks a nearby monastery, killing over a hundred monks; one of those murdered is his own brother. When Raimondin hears of the disaster, he sinks into deep sorrow and begins to wonder if perhaps this event might be punishment for Mélusine’s secret – because, just as her father did, he has eventually broken her taboo. She discovers that he has spied on her after he calls her a monster, and flies away, dragon-like, with a mournful cry, leaving Raimondin and their children behind.
The Madness of Mis
‘The Romance of Mis and Dubh Ruis’ is a medieval story about Mis (pronounced ‘Mish’), the daughter of Dáire Dóidgheal (sometimes called Dáire Donn), a powerful European ruler who set out to invade Ireland. He landed with a huge army in Ventry, County Kerry, and a fierce battle followed which lasted a year and a day. Dáire was eventually slain by the hero-warrior Fionn mac Cumhaill, which ended the battle. Mis came down in the aftermath to look for her father and found only his dead body on the beach. She was overwhelmed by grief and flung herself across her father’s body, licking and sucking at his bloody wounds to try to heal them, just as an animal might. When this failed to restore him to life, madness overcame her, and she rose up into the air like a bird and flew away into the heart of the Sliabh Mis mountains – a range on the Dingle Peninsula.
Mis lived in the mountains for many years, and grew long trailing fur and feathers to cover her naked skin. She grew great sharp claws with which she attacked and tore to pieces any creature or person she met. They thought her so dangerous that the people of Kerry created a desert stripped of people and cattle between themselves and the mountains, just for fear of her. The king in those parts, Feidlimid mac Crimthainn, offered a reward to anyone who would capture Mis alive. Most of those who went returned wounded, or died, and so eventually no one else accepted the challenge, for fear of Mis. Until along came a gentle harper by the name of Dubh Ruis (pronounced ‘Dove Rush’). Dubh Ruis enticed Mis out of hiding, made love to her and looked after her. And eventually he brought her back to civilisation, and married her. When he was murdered, she wrote an elegy for him and then remained with their children; the ending in this reimagining is my own.
I’m grateful to Harvard scholar Edyta Lehman for sharing her thoughts on Irish-language poet Biddy Jenkinson’s poems about Mis, only one of which, at the time of writing, seems to have been translated into English.
I Shall Go Into a Hare
This story is based on the widespread old European folklore which tells that a witch can shapeshift into a hare, and also on folk traditions from England and Germany about the ‘Easter Bunny’ (who was actually a hare) and the eggs which he is said to carry. The hare and the Easter Bunny’s eggs are thought to be ancient fertility symbols. Isobel Gowdie’s confession in the epigraph is quoted from ‘Isobel Gowdie’s Second Confession’, in Robert Pitcairn, Ancient Criminal Trials of Scotland (3 vols.), Edinburgh, 1833.
The Weight of a Human Heart
This story is based on an old Irish literary tale called ‘The Wasting Sickness of Cú Chulainn’. In it, Cú Chulainn (pronounced ‘Koo HUllen’), the warrior-hero of Ulster, has for some time been married to the beautiful Emer (pronounced EE-mer today, but AY-ver in Old Irish), but has proven to be constitutionally unfaithful. One day, he is with his companions by a lake when a pair of beautiful white seabirds fly over. The birds are in fact Fand, the Otherworldly wife of Manannán mac Lir (who has apparently abandone
d her), and her sister Lí Ban. In order to offer them as a gift to a woman who loves him, Cú Chulainn hurls stones at the seabirds, one of which passes through Fand’s wing feathers; the two birds fly away. Later, Fand and Lí Ban return in their female forms and confront him on the shore of the lake. They beat him with sticks until he falls ill and lies in his sickbed for a year, unable to rise. Cú Chulainn eventually regains his health when he agrees to travel to Fand’s Otherworldly island and help her in a battle against her foes. He and Fand then become lovers.
Emer hears of this and decides she cannot tolerate this new betrayal. She travels with fifty of her women to Fand’s island, with a plan to attack the couple and kill them with knives. But when Emer meets Fand and sees the strength of her love for Cú Chulainn, she decides instead to give him up. Fand, touched by Emer’s generosity, and realising that Emer is in fact a wife who is worthy of him, decides instead that she will be the one to give up Cú Chulainn, and return to her own husband. And so Manannán and Fand are reunited, and he shakes his magical cloak of mists between Fand and Cú Chulainn so that they may never meet again. Cú Chulainn and Emer eventually drink a draught of forgetfulness, brewed by the druids of Ulster, to wipe the entire sequence of events from their memories and allow them to live in harmony again.
I’ve never been a fan of Cú Chulainn, as you might gather from the story. It gave me the greatest of pleasures to imagine an ending in which Emer frees herself from him for good.
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