At the Edge of Ireland (28 page)

At that very moment, as she conjured up the gray glop of winter, a shaft of brilliant light shot through the clouds and bathed the central part of the valley in a golden sheen. It was almost Edenic in its haloed intensity, reminding me of one of my favorite Dylan Thomas snippets: “And so it must have been after the birth of the simple light in that first spinning space…”

Carey seemed so delighted in our delight at her secret places that she may have been a little carried away at times. As, for example, when she described bizarre theories about a vast network of underground souterrain communities that once existed across these wild moors. She also told us of a tendency toward cat worship in ancient temples here, as reflected in stones carved with feline faces; the Celtic acknowledgment of “ancient feminine energies”; a theory that pre-Celtic settlers here were of Far Eastern origin; and a great national fear of fairies and their penchant for stealing babies and leaving behind nefarious “changelings,” which still persists today and explains the deposits of “little gifts” for the fairies, particularly around May Day and Halloween.

“You might well laugh,” said Carey (I was only smiling benevolently, I thought), “but there are still many places here that people are nervous about.” She stopped suddenly at the far edge of the valley with the peat beds. Ahead of us rose an enormous rampart of bare rock hundreds of feet high. A great gash filled with dense scrub split the hillside from top to bottom. “Y'see that place ahead of us?” asked Carey with a sinister tone in her voice. “That's where the Witch of the Red Door lives. Y'see just to the right of that big split in the rock there's an area that looks darker than the rest…sort of blood-red…”

We were a little unsure we could see anything red but nodded anyway.

“Well—it seems there was once a tribe living here in this valley, and they were starving. The crops had failed and people were dying, so the chief went high up into this cleft, and for three days he prayed to the gods for water and sustenance. And on the fourth day that area of rock—now called the Red Door—opened and out came this beautiful young woman carrying two enormous baskets of food. She walked down toward the people in the valley, and they cheered and grabbed the food from her baskets. And as fast as they grabbed and ate, the baskets would refill themselves. But when the chief saw what was happening he rushed down from the cleft. He was immediately jealous of the power of this woman but also doubted if she was indeed ‘a gift from the gods' and declared her to be an evil presence. She smiled and approached him, but he turned his back. She approached again, but he cursed her and her ‘evil fairy ways,' so she dropped the baskets on the ground, walked back into the hillside, and disappeared. And as she vanished, so did the baskets and all the food, and a sheen of red, like a huge spilling of blood, covered the place where she had vanished. And immediately the chief fell dead and all his tribe was left to starve horribly…”

Carey paused dramatically. “And they say this is still a cursed place and that you must never go anywhere near the Red Door over there…They say people have disappeared…”

I love the silence that follows an eerie fairy tale and the little tinges of terror, or certainly trepidation, that scamper up and down your spine.

“And if you like that tale, then I've got a real special place I want to take you…I'd like you to meet my favorite person on the whole peninsula…The Hag of Beara.”

“A hag?! You mean an old woman—a witch?” asked Anne, slightly bemused.

Carey chuckled. “Well—in essence, yes. A very ancient woman…a mythical figure…the Cailleach Bhearra. You've always got to be careful when you visit…You should take a gift—flowers, ribbons, coins, or something shiny—and when you leave, you have to give a bit of yourself as a sign of respect. The locals usually spit on the ground, like they do when they enter cemeteries. They spit and say, ‘God bless all of you.' Or you can cut off a bit of hair—anything to acknowledge her and the fact you're pleased to visit her and meet her.”

“Sounds fascinating,” said Anne. “Is she close by?”

“Not far—just out of Eyeries on the Kenmare road. Past that very ancient Ballycrovane ogham stone marked with a unique script that looks like knife cuts. One of the world's earliest written languages, so they say. Up past Kilcatherine church—or what's left of it. She's high on a hillside looking out across Inishfarnard island to Kenmare Bay and the Skelligs.”

“Sounds a great spot. Let's go, and you can tell us the tale on the way,” I said.

“Oh God, no! That's an ancient terror of a tale. Dozens of different tellings…dozens of different names for her.”

“Yes, but from what I understand, she's such a vital part of not just Beara folklore, but also the whole of Ireland,” I suggested.

There was a pause. I knew Carey wanted to tell the tale. She was a natural
seanachai
, but something was holding her back, and it wasn't coyness or modesty. I wondered if it was the old bardic fear that, if a tale was told inaccurately or any of the subtle nuances were missing, dire consequences could befall the unfortunate tale teller.

Eventually she capitulated. “Okay—but mind you, I know various versions based on all kinds of different tales. They're not gospel or anything. Lots of people will tell you different stories. But this one is about as simple a way as I can tell it—it's based on Julie's version of the legend. Some say the Hag's real name is Boi—wife of Lugh, the Celtic god of light, and one of the original great land goddesses. Y'know, the Great Mother—Magna Mater, source of all fertility, female power, corn goddess, protector of wild nature, symbol of enduring longevity, and all that kind of thing. And she lived on Innes Boi at the tip of Beara. We call it Dursey Island today—a focal point of Ireland's ‘other world' of the dead and mysterious beings. There's a great poem-lament about her written, so they say, around
AD
900. She's the mythical, some think sinister, ‘old woman' of so many Irish legends. I'm not sure if I can remember all of it, but it goes something like this:

‘The old woman of Beara am I

Who once was beautiful

Now all I know is how to die

I do it well

‘Look at my skin

Stretched taught across my bones

Where kings have placed their lips

Ah the pain, the pain

‘I do not hate men

Who swore truth rested in their lies

But one thing I do hate

Is woman's eyes

‘I drank the great wine with kings

They rested their loving eyes on my hair

Now among stinking old hags

I chew the cud of prayer

‘Time was broad as the sea

And brought kings like slaves to me

But now I fear the face of God

And crabs crawl through my blood

‘The sea—ah the sea—grows distant now

Away, away it goes

And I lie here when the foam dries

On this deserted land

Dry as my shrunken limbs

As the tongue that presses my lips

As the veins that break through my hands'”

There was silence. Carey seemed to be trying to remember more, but then she smiled. “I think that's where it ends…”

“Fantastic—well done!” said Anne, patting her shoulder. “Amazing images—kings as slaves, hating women's eyes, crabs crawling in her blood, veins breaking through her hands…”

“Yeah,” nodded Carey. “Wild stuff, eh? They could really write in the ninth and tenth centuries.”

“Yes, they could but…I hesitate to ask. What does it all mean?”

“Well—once again, it depends who's telling it. She's been a key part of Celtic-Gaelic tales for so long. You also find talk of her in Scottish legends…but she shape-shifts, depending on the age of the story and the source. The earliest one shows her as the corn goddess, possessor of all the secrets of seed sowing and harvesting, destroyer of male reapers who fail to equal her reaping prowess. Then she becomes kind of a legend for longevity who seemed to live ‘the seven ages of womanhood,' constantly and simultaneously breeding ‘all peoples and all races.' And I suppose she was a giantess, because tales of her footprints all over Beara and Dursey Island are well known.”

“Y'know—Julie told us a long complex tale about her great leaps,” I said. “There was one in particular where she'd soared from a rock near Eyeries across Coulagh Bay to Kilcatherine, leaving behind two huge indentations, which we could actually see in the rock and touch—definitely a size twenty-four in boots, she was!”

“Well, that sounds like a mixed-up version of another tale where the Hag punished a woman near Hungry Hill for stealing butter. She transformed her into a giant cock, and it left footprints all over Cuaileach and other parts around here. But there's all kinds of versions, from Yeatsian reverie to gothic horror! Some say she changed herself into a rock on that hillside to guard Ireland's shores and await the return of her husband, Mannan, Lord of the Sea. Others say that the Hag—as Mother Earth—got into a fight with Mannan. She became so angry that she turned into molten lava and Mannan overwhelmed her. And, as happens to lava when it hits the ocean, she became a solid lump of rock. And—ironically—that rock is claimed to be the only piece of lava on the whole of our peninsula! Another says that this is the form she took in perpetual humility to God when she rejected her pagan origins and became a Christianized nun. A fourth suggests pretty much the opposite—that she transformed herself—or was transformed—into stone because of her hatred of the Christianizing impact on ancient pagan gods. A lesser theme was her being turned into stone by an angry priest from whom she'd stolen a Mass book.”

“What an incredible kaleidoscope of epics!” said Anne.

“Ah boy, yes—endless! Some call her ‘Our Irish Mary Magdalene.' Others see her as being symbolic of the Irish and European purge of female witches. Some of the old gods like Dna, the mother of Irish gods, became St. Brigid, whose annual festival celebrates the beginning of spring. In some ways they could have been forgotten as the Catholic church became supreme, but there seems to be a new level of interest in these ancient, powerful, and pagan forces today. Maybe we see great wisdom in their awareness of the interconnectedness of all things and the balancing of male and female forces. Things we're still trying to work out ourselves right now!”

“I hadn't thought of that,” I said. “The old values resonating once again in all our current chaos of global decimation and disaster!”

“Story of life really, isn't it?” said Carey. “In the tough times, we dig back to the simpler, clearer beliefs. Yesterday I heard of a woman in town…someone called her ‘as ancient as the Cailleach Bhearra.' She's still a feared—but also very respected—Hag. In fact her code for a healthy life is still listened to today:

‘I never let the top of my head see the air

I never let the sole of my foot ever touch the ground

I never ate food but when I was hungry

I never went to sleep but when I would be sleepy

I never throw out dirty water until I've taken in the clean.'”

“So the spirit of the Hag is still alive and well,” I suggested.

Carey laughed. “Sometimes a bit more alive than seems sensible or safe! You talk to some of those folks who come over all the way from Belgium or Germany to visit The Hag rock and leave gifts and whatnot and you worry a bit about where their heads are at!”

I worried about our heads too. But we steadfastly decided to honor the required rituals, and all in all, it was a unique and pleasant experience.

We left the car at the roadside and entered the moor by a small gate. The sun was bright, and a refreshing briny breeze scampered up the hillside from the small bay below us. A mussel farm and a couple of modest fishing boats (the old kind—nothing like the mega-monsters now in Casteltownbere harbor) occupied the landward side of the bay. In the hazy distance, purpled and jaggedly mysterious, were the two Skelligs, so strangely similar in profile, like enormous schooners on the horizon.

A narrow, muddy path led us around the flank of the hill. For some bizarre reason, rather than avoiding all the bogs and peaty patches, it seemed to delight in taking us straight through them and soaking us up to our calves.

“What is this—some kind of endurance test?” I asked, annoyed to see my new hiking boots obliterated in thick black mud.

Carey gave me a warning frown and whispered (she actually
whispered
), “Best to be quiet now. We're almost there. She's just around the bend…”

And Carey as usual was correct. As we shuffled in soggy single file along the path, an oddly shaped rock rose up just ahead. Compared to all the bulky “standing stones” and stone circles on Beara this was a very modest-sized rock, barely five feet high. But it did possess a definite animate presence. In silhouette it was like a large figure sitting on the ground wrapped in a broad blanket with a small head perched on wide shoulders. And, as we got closer, we realized that, just as we'd been told, the rock was covered with and surrounded by the most bizarre types of “personal gifts”—buttons, coins, cheap rings, bracelets, necklaces, and even pens, ribbons, and a number of those popular rubber wristbands proclaiming support for worthy causes.