Activity: Have you ever seen a mountain or cliff or other landscape that looks like a person? What kind of person did it resemble? Describe their features. If the earth were a person, what kind of person would it be? How old would that person be? Would they be strong or fragile—or both? Are there certain seasons or things in nature you associate with old age or youth? What and where are they?
The Cailleach is an Irish and Scottish variant of the crone archetype. The name comes from cailleach, the modern Irish and Scots Gaelic word for “hag” or “old woman,” but it may have roots in an older word, caillech, meaning “veiled one.” She is often depicted as having blue skin.
The Cailleach is a feminine figure associated with the earth, death and renewal, the winter season, and particular landscape features and regions. These include the southernmost point of the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, Ireland, known as Hag’s Head (Ceann Caillí; pictured in the header) for a rock formation that resembles a witch’s head, and the mountain Ben Cruachan in Scotland, whose nearby River Awe and Loch Awe were formed after Cailleach Bheur, who guarded the mountain’s spring, mistakenly let it overflow. For her negligence she was turned into a stone ridge and became known as the Hag of the Ridges.
In the most well-known tales and legends about the Cailleach, she is known as Cailleach Bhéarra, or the Hag of Beare. Her home is the Beara Peninsula on the southwest coast of Ireland. An Old Irish poem known as “The Old Woman of Beare” dating to the 10th century tells the story of her centuries-long life and decline into “ebbtide,” or old age: “Ebb-tide to me as of the sea! / . . . I am the Old Woman of Beare, / An ever-new smock I used to wear: / To-day—such is my mean estate— / I wear not even a cast-off smock” (translation by Kuno Meyer).
The poem is sometimes called “The Nun of Beare” since several lines describe her wearing a white veil and being secluded among other women. The tone of the poem is a lament for the lost pleasures of youth, including the company the old woman used to keep with “glorious kings”:
I had my day with kings
Drinking mead and wine:
To-day I drink whey-water
Among shrivelled old hags.
I see upon my cloak the hair of old age,
My reason has beguiled me:
Grey is the hair that grows through my skin--
‘Tis thus I am an old hag.
The flood-wave
And the second ebb-tide--
They have all reached me,
So that I know them well. . . .
The linguist and scholar Douglas Hyde includes some Cailleach stories in his collection Legends of Saints and Sinners. In one, a friar and young boy visit the Cailleach and ask her age. The Cailleach directs the boy to count the beef bones in her loft, explaining her father used to kill a beef every year on her birthday since she was born and she kept up the custom. The task proves futile as there are so many bones, the boy and friar can't keep count of them. The friar then asks her to tell of some of the marvel she's known, and the Cailleach recounts three stories.
A collection of Cailleach folk tales in English and Irish appear in The Book of the Cailleach: Stories of the Wise-Woman Healer, an academic analysis of the Cailleach legend by folklore scholar Gearóid Ó Crualaoich. It was the subject of a book talk by the Mythical Ireland YouTube series in late 2020. Some of the tales are also available through a 2006 RTÉ radio series, Hags, Queens and Wise Women: Supernatural Females of the Irish Otherworld. The tales explain some of the landscape features on the Beara Peninsula.
Older characters figure in many Irish and Scottish folk and fairy tales, and some will make general reference to a “cailleach” or old woman character. But these are not always the Cailleach. Sometimes an old woman is just an old woman, as in the traditional Irish song about a rich old woman looking to marry, “Cailleach an Airgid,” recorded by the great folk singer and storyteller Joe Heaney.
Below are some videos offering different tales or interpretations of the Cailleach legend, plus a “Cailleach an Airgid” video. The annotated bibliography page includes detailed information about some Cailleach stories.
Photo credits: Header--René Ostberg / Thumbnail--Loophead Studio
The Cailleach is an Irish and Scottish variant of the crone archetype. The name comes from cailleach, the modern Irish and Scots Gaelic word for “hag” or “old woman,” but it may have roots in an older word, caillech, meaning “veiled one.” She is often depicted as having blue skin.
The Cailleach is a feminine figure associated with the earth, death and renewal, the winter season, and particular landscape features and regions. These include the southernmost point of the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, Ireland, known as Hag’s Head (Ceann Caillí; pictured in the header) for a rock formation that resembles a witch’s head, and the mountain Ben Cruachan in Scotland, whose nearby River Awe and Loch Awe were formed after Cailleach Bheur, who guarded the mountain’s spring, mistakenly let it overflow. For her negligence she was turned into a stone ridge and became known as the Hag of the Ridges.
In the most well-known tales and legends about the Cailleach, she is known as Cailleach Bhéarra, or the Hag of Beare. Her home is the Beara Peninsula on the southwest coast of Ireland. An Old Irish poem known as “The Old Woman of Beare” dating to the 10th century tells the story of her centuries-long life and decline into “ebbtide,” or old age: “Ebb-tide to me as of the sea! / . . . I am the Old Woman of Beare, / An ever-new smock I used to wear: / To-day—such is my mean estate— / I wear not even a cast-off smock” (translation by Kuno Meyer).
The poem is sometimes called “The Nun of Beare” since several lines describe her wearing a white veil and being secluded among other women. The tone of the poem is a lament for the lost pleasures of youth, including the company the old woman used to keep with “glorious kings”:
I had my day with kings
Drinking mead and wine:
To-day I drink whey-water
Among shrivelled old hags.
I see upon my cloak the hair of old age,
My reason has beguiled me:
Grey is the hair that grows through my skin--
‘Tis thus I am an old hag.
The flood-wave
And the second ebb-tide--
They have all reached me,
So that I know them well. . . .
The linguist and scholar Douglas Hyde includes some Cailleach stories in his collection Legends of Saints and Sinners. In one, a friar and young boy visit the Cailleach and ask her age. The Cailleach directs the boy to count the beef bones in her loft, explaining her father used to kill a beef every year on her birthday since she was born and she kept up the custom. The task proves futile as there are so many bones, the boy and friar can't keep count of them. The friar then asks her to tell of some of the marvel she's known, and the Cailleach recounts three stories.
A collection of Cailleach folk tales in English and Irish appear in The Book of the Cailleach: Stories of the Wise-Woman Healer, an academic analysis of the Cailleach legend by folklore scholar Gearóid Ó Crualaoich. It was the subject of a book talk by the Mythical Ireland YouTube series in late 2020. Some of the tales are also available through a 2006 RTÉ radio series, Hags, Queens and Wise Women: Supernatural Females of the Irish Otherworld. The tales explain some of the landscape features on the Beara Peninsula.
Older characters figure in many Irish and Scottish folk and fairy tales, and some will make general reference to a “cailleach” or old woman character. But these are not always the Cailleach. Sometimes an old woman is just an old woman, as in the traditional Irish song about a rich old woman looking to marry, “Cailleach an Airgid,” recorded by the great folk singer and storyteller Joe Heaney.
Below are some videos offering different tales or interpretations of the Cailleach legend, plus a “Cailleach an Airgid” video. The annotated bibliography page includes detailed information about some Cailleach stories.
Photo credits: Header--René Ostberg / Thumbnail--Loophead Studio