The Turning of the Year

Lore and Legends of the Irish Seasons

Eithne Massey

• Publisher: The O'Brien Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781788492119
• eBook ISBN: 9781788493109
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Folklore & Mythology
• Index: Social Sciences

From the author of the hugely successful book Legendary Ireland, The Turning of the Year explores the Celtic division of the year, from Samhain to Imbolc, to Bealtaine, to Lunasa, back to Samhain. It examines the significance of particular times of the year and features re-tellings of various legends associated with them. The book will look at the close connection of the Irish with the land and with nature, bringing us on an exhilarating journey through the Irish seasons and the customs that welcomed each one in turn.

Along the way we encounter saints, scholars, kings and goddesses, whose stories, preserved in myth and folktale, counterpoint the book's exploration both of lost traditions such as keening and how other customs and rituals have been preserved in today's celebrations and communal events. It brings to the reader a new awareness of how such ritual can still have relevance in our lives, and a deeper appreciation of the power of the natural world.

144

Bealtaine

Wild and gay, the blackbird’s song

Fionn’s poem ‘In Praise of May’

145

Summer Season

May doll, maiden of Summer,

Up every hill and down every glen,

Beautiful girls, radiantly dressed,

We brought the Summer with us.

Bábóg na Bealtaine, maighdean an tSamhraidh,

Suas gach cnoc is síos gach gleann,

Cailíní maiseach go gealgáireach gléasta

Thugamar féin an Samhradh linn.

Traditional Irish song

By the first of May, the light gathers and holds. May Day, in Irish Lá Bealtaine, heralds the bright half of the year. For many, this is Ireland at its loveliest, with its haze of green growth, scudding clouds and light filtering through young leaves or shining on rushes reflected in water. No more hunkering down, hiding inside; the swallows swoop over our heads, so fast that we are hardly aware of them before they are gone; the cuckoo has returned and every hedgerow and tree is alive with young birds and their songs. Walking the fields, it feels as if every tree has a voice. But the human return to the world outside brings risks and must be man­aged, acknowledgement made and tribute paid to the dark that will, inevitably, return.

Lá Bealtaine is the second great divide in the traditional Celtic calendar, and a time of great power; a seedbed of 146potential good and bad luck. The name of the festival comes from tine, which means fire and from Beal, who is sometimes ­identified with the Celtic god Belenus, the shining one. In modern times the month of May itself is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, a tradition which brought its own customs and rituals to Ireland. But May Day itself figures strongly in Irish mythology. Lá Bealtaine is the day when Parthalon landed at Kenmare in Kerry. He was the leader of one of the first groups of people to come to Ireland, sometimes said to come from Spain, sometimes from Greece. His people prospered in Ireland, until all of them died in a single week – ten thousand people killed by a mysterious plague that also arrived on May Day, again emphasising the sense of threat as well as celebra­tion that is integral to the festival. Lá Bealtaine is not a com­fortable time. It is a passageway, a portal between the world of summer and winter, and portals do not let only good things through to our world.

147

The Cat and Dog’s Story: The Horned Women

I love these mysterious horned women and their flight back to the magical mountain of Slievenamon – the Hill of the Women. This story was collected by Lady Wilde in the nine­teenth century, with one or two variants found in the National Folklore Collection. I first came across it as a child in one of the Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books, which had a marvellous picture of the Horned Woman, while the phrase ‘My blood is on the lips of the sleeping children’ always managed to send shivers down my spine. Foot water was used to wash the feet at night time, an important task if you had been going through mud and worse in your bare feet during the day. It was never to be kept in the house or even in a pail outside the door, but had to be thrown away from the house. There were no doubt very practical hygienic reasons for this activity, but it also holds the echo of the old tales, such as that of Nera.

~

There was a house on a hillside, and a fine house it was. The farm around it was fertile and the beasts and the fields and the trees were well looked after. There was a woman, the woman of the house, and she was a very lazy woman. She preferred to be out with the birds and the animals than looking after her house and doing her jobs indoors. She neglected doing all the work that needed to be doing, like cooking and cleaning and spinning and weaving. She had us to keep an eye on her, the Cat and the Dog of the house­hold, but she was a stubborn woman and went her own way. She had three children and a husband who had to go away 148sometimes, to bring the cattle to the fair in the town on the other side of the valley. She would watch for his return, standing in the shade of the hazels and looking across the river valley, where in the distance she could see the slopes of Sliabh na mBan, the Mountain of the Women, the fairy mountain. We would sometimes go out with her, for it’s the job of the dog to guard her humans and the job of a cat to make sure that they are not up to badness.

There was one bright evening, when her husband was away and the woman had been watching the clouds pass over the fairy mountain all day. Then she had watched the sun set the mountain ablaze as it went down in the west. Then she said goodnight to the birds and creatures of the hillside and went inside to her children and put them to bed. She looked at their clothes and realised that they were too small for them and full of holes. So she began to work. Every­one knows that spinning should be done when the sun is passing through the heavens, in the daytime, while knitting should be done at night when the sheep are asleep. But this woman spun and she sang. She was so intent on the work that although we both warned her, with growling and with prowling, with staring and with scratching, with whining and with barking, that she had not put out the dirty water she had washed her children’s feet in, she paid no attention to us and neglected to do so.

That is what brought the witches on her. There she was, spinning by firelight and candlelight, and singing away, when there was a great knocking at the door.

‘Who is that?’ she called. 149

A deep voice said: ‘I am the woman with one horn.’

The knocking continued, growing louder and louder until the woman was afraid it would wake the children. She went and opened the door. Standing there was a big tall woman with red hair that reached her feet. On her fore­head was a huge, curving horn. She entered straight away and began to card wool, working in a mad rush. She said nothing and the woman thought – well, if she wants to help me, I’ll let her be.

They continued like this until the big woman said: ‘Where are they? Why are they late?’

The woman of the house was just about to ask who she meant when there was a banging on the door.

‘Who is it?’ she said.

‘It is the woman with two horns’ came a voice from outside.

The first woman opened the door and in came a big tall woman with two horns on her head. She had a spinning wheel in her hand and she began to spin wool. And so it went on, for a third woman came, this one with three horns on her head, and another one with four, until the moon had risen, and crowded around the fire were twelve big women, and the last of all had twelve horns on her head. They spun and carded and wove, and the woman looked at the horns on them and was afraid.

And then they said to the woman of the house: ‘We are hungry, make us a cake!’

The woman of the house was very fearful at this stage, for her house was crowded out and the women seemed settled 150forever by her fireside. So she said: ‘I need water for that, and I have none.’

‘Take a sieve and get water from the well,’ commanded the woman with twelve horns.

The woman of the house did not want to leave her chil­dren with these strange creatures, but the women looked at her so angrily that she did what she was told. She took her sieve and went out into the moonlight and walked to the well, which stood between two hazel trees. We went with her to see what would happen.

Of course the water would not stay in the sieve. So she sat and cried, for she was afraid to return to the women with no water. And she was afraid that they might take her chil­dren from her, for although she was a careless housewife, she was a loving mother. She looked at herself looking back at herself in the water of the well, with the moon behind her head like a silver halo and her tears dropped into the water. Then a voice from the well said: ‘Cover the bottom of the sieve with yellow clay and moss, and it will hold water for you.’

So the woman did that, and scooped some water from the well, and stood up, ready to take her water back to the house.

Then a voice from the branches of the hazel tree said: ‘When you return to the house, call out that the Mountain of the Women is on fire.’

The woman of the house went back to the cottage. She opened the door and called out: ‘The Mountain of the Women is on fire!’ 151

Inside the house a terrible wailing and lamentation broke out, and the twelve horned women rushed out by her, tear­ing at each other in their hurry. And they took flight over the fields towards Slievenamon, crying that their children would be burnt.

When the woman of the house went into the house, I, the dog, said to her: ‘There are four things you must do to keep the witches away.

‘First, you must sprinkle the footwater over the thresh­old.’

‘Then,’ said I, the cat, ‘you must take the cloth they have woven and place it half in and half out of the chest; and then you must secure the door with rowan and holly.’

And, I, the dog, continued, ‘You must bake a cake with the blood that the women have spilled in their rush to get out of the house and break it up and place it on the lips of your sleeping children.’

And this time, the woman listened to our advice and did exactly what she was told.

She had hardly placed the last crumbs of the cake on her children’s lips when she heard howling and screaming out­side. The witches were back. They rattled on the door that she had bolted and locked and then as one they called out: ‘Open, feet water!’

‘I cannot,’ called the water, ‘for I am spilled.’

And then they screamed: ‘Open, door!’

‘I cannot,’ said the door, ‘for I am fixed with rowan and holly.’

‘Open!’ They shouted. ‘Cake, that holds our blood!’ 152

‘I cannot,’ said the cake, ‘for I am broken and crumbled and my blood is on the lips of the sleeping children.’

And the witches had to fly back to Slievenamon and leave the woman and her family in peace.

It is said that the mantle the horned women made and left behind them was kept by that family for hundreds of years afterwards. Whatever the truth of that, it is sure that the woman of the house was more careful about not spinning at night and remembering to throw dirty water out of the house before darkness, ever after that terri­ble night. But we are not going to tell you whether she worked any harder in the house or stopped looking over the hills to the Mountain of the Women as the evening sun went down. She is a kind mistress and we can both keep a secret.

The Festival of Bealtaine

The first of May is celebrated all over Europe, especially in its northern countries. In Germany and Scandinavia bonfires are lit on the eve of the first of May, the Feast of St Walburga, tra­ditionally associated with protection from witchcraft. In the Czech Republic, Marzanna, the old hag of winter, is symboli­cally burnt on a hilltop fire at around this time. In The Golden Bough, the anthropologist James Frazer records a ceremony celebrated in the Tyrol, that involved fumigation by juniper and rue and a great deal of noise, including banging pots and pans and ringing church bells. Fionn’s poem to May, written in the seventh century,...

Table of contents

• Review
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements and Thanks
• The Dagda’s Harp
• Contents
• Introduction
• Samhain
• Interval: Bog Time, Bog Lore
• Imbolg
• Interval: Forest Time, Forest Lore
• Bealtaine
• Interval: The Time of Pastures and of Fields
• Lughnasa
• Afterword
• The Music of What Happens
• Bibliography
• Credits
• About the Author
• Copyright