Winter and Summer "Goddesses"

A look at the relationship between Bride and an Cailleach Bheur, and the origins of their seasonal roles in Scottish myth.

Picture credit: John Duncan, "The Coming of Bride".

We've already looked at the role of an Cailleach Bheur as a creatrix in modern myth, shaping the mountains with her hammer of frost and dropping the islands from her creel: but we barely touched on her other major role, that of winter goddess. So let's delve into that.

As inventive as Donald Alexander Mackenzie, the main modern mythographer of the Cailleach, could get, it's important to stress that he also did a lot of genuine research, and it’s often hard to parse out what predates him from what he invented. And of course, being older than 1917 (when his book Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend was published) and coming from oral sources doesn’t necessarily mean that lore is ancient. I talked in the article linked above about how the Cailleach seems to have evolved as a character before Mackenzie, and how she only really became a goddess-like figure in fairly modern times. It’s also true that the earliest comprehensive studies of the character, the most important being that of Eleanor Hull, come from the 1920s and are influenced by Mackenzie, which muddies the waters even further. But I’m going to do my best to dissect Mackenzie’s story, and identify its different sources, specifically which of them genuinely belong to an Cailleach Bheur.

Mackenzie tells us that:

“Dark Beira was the mother of all the gods and goddesses in Scotland.” (As discussed in the previous article, "Beira" is his mistaken name for the Cailleach.) “She was of great height and very old, and everyone feared her... Each winter she reigned as Queen of the Four Red Divisions of the world, and none disputed her sway. But when the sweet spring season drew nigh, her subjects began to rebel against her and to long for the coming of the Summer King, Angus of the White Steed, and Bride, his beautiful queen, who were loved by all, for they were the bringers of plenty and of bright and happy days. It enraged Beira greatly to find her power passing away, and she tried her utmost to prolong the winter season by raising spring storms and sending blighting frost to kill early flowers and keep the grass from growing.

“Beira lived for hundreds and hundreds of years. The reason she did not die of old age was because, at the beginning of every spring, she drank the magic waters of the Well of Youth which bubbles up in the Green Island of the West. This was a floating island where summer was the only season, and the trees were always bright with blossom and laden with fruit. It drifted about on the silver tides of the blue Atlantic, and sometimes appeared off the western coasts of Ireland and sometimes close to the Hebrides... Men have caught glimpses of it from the shore, but while they gazed on its beauties with eyes of wonder, it vanished suddenly from sight by sinking beneath the waves like the setting sun. Beira, however, always knew where to find Green Island when the time came for her to visit it.

“The waters of the Well of Youth are most potent when the days begin to grow longer, and most potent of all on the first of the lengthening days of spring. Beira always visited the island on the night before the first lengthening day – that is, on the last night of her reign as Queen of Winter. All alone in the darkness she sat beside the Well of Youth, waiting for the dawn. When the first faint beam of light appeared in the eastern sky, she drank the water as it bubbled fresh from a crevice in the rock. It was necessary that she should drink of this magic water before any bird visited the well and before any dog barked. If a bird drank first, or a dog barked ere she began to drink, dark old Beira would crumble into dust.

“As soon as Beira tasted the magic water, in silence and alone, she began to grow young again. She left the island and, returning to Scotland, fell into a magic sleep. When, at length, she awoke, in bright sunshine, she rose up as a beautiful girl with long hair yellow as buds of broom, cheeks red as rowan berries, and blue eyes that sparkled like the summer sea in sunshine. Then she went to and fro through Scotland, clad in a robe of green and crowned with a chaplet of bright flowers of many hues. No fairer goddess was to be found in all the land, save Bride, the peerless Queen of Summer.

“As each month went past, however, Beira aged quickly. She reached full womanhood in midsummer, and when autumn came on her brows wrinkled and her beauty began to fade. When the season of winter returned once again, she became an old and withered hag, and began to reign as the fierce Queen Beira.”

Now let’s pause here for a moment. The story of the Cailleach renewing her youth is not one of Mackenzie’s inventions. It’s invoked in older folklore to explain her long life, but he’s the first writer to explicitly connect it with her seasonal role. Indeed, she was traditionally supposed to have visited the well once a century, not every year. And although the aged winter goddess becoming young and beautiful in the spring is a powerful image, it doesn’t actually fit very well in Mackenzie’s seasonal myth, because he’s about to introduce a different beautiful young goddess of spring, whom he paints as the Cailleach’s bitter enemy. She seems redundant when he’s already turned the Cailleach herself into effectively the same character. And, in later versions of the myth, they would indeed become the same. But let’s get back to Mackenzie’s text.

“All the long winter Beira kept captive a beautiful young princess named Bride. She was jealous of Bride’s beauty, and gave her ragged clothing to wear, and put her to work among the servants in the kitchen of her mountain castle, where the girl had to perform the meanest tasks. Beira scolded her continually, finding fault with everything she did, and Bride’s life was made very wretched.”

So far, this seems like a basic Cinderella story. From here, Mackenzie goes into a rather rambling side story about Beira commanding Bride to wash a brown fleece white, which she can’t do until she takes advice from Father Winter, who also tells her to show Beira the snowdrops that have sprung up. This enrages the hag.

This episode feels more like a fairy tale than a myth, and there’s no trace of it in Scottish Cailleach lore before Mackenzie. Mark Williams, in his book Ireland’s Immortals, has suggested that fairy tale is exactly what it is – and not a Scottish one. He points out that Bride’s imprisonment at Beira’s hands, and being set impossible tasks, and completing them with the advice of a helpful associate of her captor, all parallel the famous Russian story of Vasilisa the Beautiful – and that only the previous year, 1916, Mackenzie had published Stories of Russian Folk Life.

There is one problem with this, which is that neither Vasilisa nor her captor Baba Yaga are mentioned in Stories of Russian Folk Life. But many English language versions of the story did exist by then. And in 1916, there was a spike of interest in Russian folklore in Britain, with the publication not only of Mackenzie’s book, but also of Russian Fairy Tales by Leonard A. Magnus, and of one of my own childhood favourites, Old Peter’s Russian Tales, by Arthur Ransome of Swallows and Amazons fame. Magnus’ book includes a retelling of the Vasilisa story, and Ransome mentions it in passing. It could very easily have been on Mackenzie’s mind, especially when writing about the Cailleach. She’s a powerful, morally ambiguous supernatural force in the form of an old woman living in the wilds – just like Baba Yaga.

(Quick sidenote here on the name "Bride". In Gaelic, it's pronounced approximately "Breej"; but the pronunciation is often Anglicised in accordance with the spelling, to be identical with the English word "bride". Mackenzie's rhymes show that he clearly pronounced it that way. Similarly, the Irish form of the name, Brigid, is pronounced "Breeyid" in Irish but "Bridjid" in English, when not fully Anglicised into "Bridget".)

Mackenzie goes on.

“Bride turned away, but not in sorrow. A new joy had entered her heart, for she knew that the wild winter season was going past, and that the reign of Queen Beira would soon come to an end.

“Meanwhile Beira summoned her eight hag servants, and spoke to them, saying: ‘Ride to the north and ride to the south, ride to the east and ride to the west, and I will ride forth also. Smite the world with frost and tempest, so that no flower may bloom and no grass blade survive. I am waging war against all growth.’

“When she had spoken thus, the eight hags mounted on the backs of shaggy goats and rode forth to do her bidding. Beira went forth also, grasping in her right hand her black magic hammer. On the night of that very day a great tempest lashed the ocean to fury and brought terror to every corner of the land.

“Now the reason why Beira kept Bride a prisoner was because her fairest and dearest son, whose name was Angus-the-Ever-Young, had fallen in love with her. He was called ‘the Ever Young’ because age never came near him, and all winter long he lived on the Green Isle of the West, which is also called the ‘Land of Youth’.”

Angus the Ever Young

Ok, let’s talk about Angus. This is of course the Irish god Óengus Óg: but before Mackenzie, he was almost invisible in Scottish folklore. His name comes up occasionally in Gaelic poetry, and one Scots-language lullaby, “Dream Angus”, from around 1850, but he simply isn’t the major figure that Bride and the Cailleach are. His myths are preserved almost entirely in Ireland: and Mackenzie has completely distorted them. He certainly isn’t the son of an Cailleach Bheur, and in fact the goddess Brigid is his sister in Irish mythology.

The Land of Youth is Tír na nÓg, the Irish Otherworld (though that particular name for it is a very late addition to Irish mythological literature, from around 1750); and the Green Isle is a sort of remote terrestrial paradise in Highland and Hebridean folk tales, which often has a Fountain of Youth. They’re not explicitly the same place, and Óengus isn’t directly linked to either of them, but these are pretty reasonable connections to make. Unfortunately Mackenzie isn’t going to stay reasonable.

“Angus first beheld Bride in a dream, and when he awoke he spoke to the King of the Green Isle, saying: ‘Last night I dreamed a dream and saw a beautiful princess whom I love. Tears fell from her eyes, and I spoke to an old man who stood near her, and said: “Why does the maiden weep?” Said the old man: “She weeps because she is kept captive by Beira, who treats her with great cruelty.” I looked again at the princess and said: “Fain would I set her free.” Then I awoke. Tell me, O king, who is this princess, and where shall I find her?’

“The King of the Green Isle answered Angus, saying: ‘The fair princess whom you saw is Bride, and in the days when you will be King of Summer she will be your queen. Of this your mother, Queen Beira, has full knowledge, and it is her wish to keep you away from Bride, so that her own reign may be prolonged. Tarry here, O Angus, until the flowers begin to bloom and the grass begins to grow, and then you shall set free the beautiful Princess Bride.’“

This part is lifted directly from an early Irish text called The Dream of Aengus. But in that text, the young god was dreaming about an entirely different woman, called Caer. Bride isn’t in that story at all, and neither is the Cailleach; Mackenzie just stole it.

“Said Angus: ‘Fain would I go forth at once to search for her.’

“‘The wolf-month (February) has now come,’ the king said. ‘Uncertain is the temper of the wolf.’

“Said Angus: ‘I shall cast a spell on the sea and a spell on the land, and borrow for February three days from August.’

“He did as he said he would do. He borrowed three days from August, and the ocean slumbered peacefully while the sun shone brightly over mountain and glen.”

There are quite a few instances in Scottish folk belief where one month borrows three days from another, but so far as I’ve been able to find out they’re always adjacent months, not half a year apart. The Wolf Days borrowed by February are supposed to have come from January: and for them to be warm was considered bad luck, because it was a sign of bad weather to come.

“Then Angus mounted his white steed and rode eastward to Scotland... He was clad in raiment of shining gold, and from his shoulders hung his royal robe of crimson which the wind uplifted and spread out in gleaming splendour athwart the sky.”

The horse that can gallop over the surface of the waves is a common motif in Highland and Irish folklore.

“An aged bard looked eastward, and when he beheld the fair Angus he lifted up his harp and sang a song of welcome, and the birds of the forest sang with him. And this is how he sang:--

Angus hath come--the young, the fair,

The blue-eyed god with golden hair—

The god who to the world doth bring

This morn the promise of the spring;

Who moves the birds to song ere yet

He hath awaked the violet,

Or the soft primrose on the steep,

While buds are laid in lidded sleep,

And white snows wrap the hills serene,

Ere glows the larch’s vivid green

Through the brown woods and bare. All hail!

Angus, and may thy will prevail. . . .

He comes . . . he goes. . . . And far and wide

He searches for the Princess Bride.”

Not for the first time, Mackenzie’s word choice here makes me think of Angus as Westley searching for Buttercup, but I suppose we can’t blame him for that.

“Beira was angry when she came to know that Angus was searching for Bride, and on the third evening of his visit she raised a great tempest which drove him back to Green Isle. But he returned again and again, and at length he discovered the castle in which the princess was kept a prisoner.

“Then came a day when Angus met Bride in a forest near the castle. The violets were blooming and soft yellow primroses opened their eyes of wonder to gaze on the prince and the princess. When they spoke one to another the birds raised their sweet voices in song and the sun shone fair and bright...

“Bride said: ‘To me this is a day of great joy.’

“Said Angus: ‘It will be a day of great joy to all mankind ever after this.’

“That is why the first day of spring--the day on which Angus found the princess--is called ‘Bride’s Day’.”

So here Mackenzie is using more elements from The Dream of Aengus to explain the origins of Imbolg. We'll address that later - for now, on with the story.

Spring storms

“Through the forest came a fair company of fairy ladies, who hailed Bride as queen and bade welcome to Angus. Then the Fairy Queen waved her wand, and Bride was transformed... Instead of ragged clothing, she then wore a white robe adorned with spangles of shining silver. Over her heart gleamed a star-like crystal, pure as her thoughts and bright as the joy that Angus brought her. This gem is called ‘the guiding star of Bride’. Her golden-brown hair... was decked with fair spring flowers... In her right hand she carried a white wand entwined with golden corn-stalks, and in her left a golden horn which is called the ‘Horn of Plenty’."

So we’ve got a fairy queen, another transformation, and a cornucopia out of Roman mythology. A big old mish-mash that really doesn’t have much to do with Scottish beliefs about Bride pre 1917. After this, we get a number of different birds coming to hail the happy couple and getting given names like “Bird of Bride”, “Page of Bride”, and so on, which do come from Highland folklore, but didn’t have any recorded stories behind them before Mackenzie got hold of them. And so spring begins.

“Beira was wroth when she came to know that Angus had found Bride. She seized her magic hammer and smote the ground unceasingly until it was frozen hard as iron again... She knew well that when the grass flourished and Angus and Bride were married, her authority would pass away. It was her desire to keep her throne as long as possible.

“‘Bride is married, hail to Bride!’ sang the birds.

“‘Angus is married, hail to Angus!’ they sang also.

“Beira heard the songs of the birds, and called to her hag servants: ‘Ride north and ride south, ride east and ride west, and wage war against Angus. I shall ride forth also.’

“Her servants mounted their shaggy goats and rode forth to do her bidding. Beira mounted a black steed and set out in pursuit of Angus. She rode fast and she rode hard. Black clouds swept over the sky as she rode on, until at length she came to the forest in which the Fairy Queen had her dwelling. All the fairies fled in terror into their green mound and the doors were shut. Angus looked up and beheld Beira drawing nigh. He leapt on the back of his white steed, and lifted his young bride into the saddle in front of him and fled away with her.

“Angus rode westward over the hills and over the valleys and over the sea, and Beira pursued him.

“There is a rocky ravine on the island of Tiree, and Beira’s black steed jumped across it while pursuing the white steed of Angus. The hoofs of the black steed made a gash on the rocks. To this day the ravine is called ‘The Horse’s Leap’.”

(This is a real ravine, Sloch Leum an Eich, and there does seem to have been a tradition of the Cailleach pursuing her unnamed son and his bride – with a lower-case b – that way. The earliest detailed reference I can find to it comes from Kathryn Whyte Grant, who was writing a few years after Mackenzie but had done a lot of primary research. It seems as if this story really was a fragment of a forgotten longer narrative: though whether the lost legend had anything much in common with Mackenzie’s story is something we’ll probably never know.)

“Angus escaped to the Green Isle of the West, and there he passed happy days with Bride. But he longed to return to Scotland and reign as King of Summer. Again and again he crossed the sea; and each time he reached the land of glens and bens, the sun broke forth in brightness and the birds sang merrily to welcome him.

“Beira raised storm after storm to drive him away.”

(Here we get an account of various storms that raged through February and early March, and the names traditionally given to them in the West Highlands.)

“Angus, however, waged a fierce struggle against the hag servants, and at length he drove them away to the north, where they fumed and fretted furiously.

“Beira was greatly alarmed, and she made her last great effort to subdue the Powers of Spring... Northward she rode on her black steed, and gathered her servants together, and called to them, saying: ‘Ride southward with me, all of you, and scatter our enemies before us.’

“Out of the bleak dark north they rode in a single pack. With them came the Big Black Tempest. It seemed then as if winter had returned in full strength and would abide for ever. But even Beira and her hags had to take rest. On a dusky evening they crouched down together on the side of a bare mountain, and, when they did so, a sudden calm fell upon the land and the sea...

“That night she borrowed three days from Winter which had not been used, for Angus had previously borrowed for Winter three days from August. The three spirits of the borrowed days were tempest spirits, and came towards Beira mounted on black hogs. She spoke to them, saying: ‘Long have you been bound! Now I set you at liberty.’

“One after another, on each of the three days that followed, the spirits went forth riding the black hogs. They brought snow and hail and fierce blasts of wind. Snow whitened the moors and filled the furrows of ploughed land, rivers rose in flood, and great trees were shattered and uprooted. The duck was killed, and so were her six ducklings; sheep and cattle perished, and many human beings were killed on land and drowned at sea. The days on which these things happened are called the ‘Three Hog Days’.”

Yet again, Mackenzie has appropriated an unconnected story, and misunderstood it. This is another of those folk beliefs about borrowed days: in this case, the last three days of March, which March borrowed from April to give itself a last chance to freeze the young lambs. But the hoggs in that story are hoggs with a double G, young half-grown sheep, and they don’t do anything except withstand three days of wintry blasts. Mackenzie turns them into pigs, and makes them the mounts ridden by his winter spirits! A very dramatic image, but completely invented. It’s fakelore. Or at least, it was fakelore in 1917. It’s been out there for a hundred years now, and all folklore starts somewhere.

“Beira’s reign was now drawing to a close. She found herself unable to combat any longer against the power of the new life that was rising in every vein of the land. The weakness of extreme old age crept upon her, and she longed once again to drink of the waters of the Well of Youth. When, on a bright March morning, she beheld Angus riding over the hills on his white steed, scattering her fierce hag servants before him, she fled away in despair. Ere she went she threw her magic hammer beneath a holly tree, and that is the reason why no grass grows under the holly trees.

“Beira’s black steed went northward with her in flight. As it leapt over Loch Etive it left the marks of its hoofs on the side of a rocky mountain, and the spot is named to this day ‘Horse-shoes’. She did not rein up her steed until she reached the island of Skye, where she found rest on the summit of the ‘Old Wife’s Ben’ (Ben-e-Caillich) at Broadford. There she sat, gazing steadfastly across the sea, waiting until the day and night would be of equal length. All that equal day she wept tears of sorrow for her lost power, and when night came on she went westward over the sea to Green Island. At the dawn of the day that followed she drank the magic waters of the Well of Youth.”

This all seems to be genuine Highland Cailleach lore that predates Mackenzie. No problems here, except for the way he ties it in to his invented grand narrative.

“On that day which is of equal length with the night, Angus came to Scotland with Bride, and they were hailed as king and queen of the unseen beings. They rode from south to north in the morning and forenoon, and from north to south in the afternoon and evening. A gentle wind went with them, blowing towards the north from dawn till midday, and towards the south from midday till sunset.”

Then just in case we hadn’t got it, Mackenzie concludes by spelling out that:

“The story of the struggle between Angus and Beira is the story of the struggle between spring and winter, growth and decay, light and darkness, and warmth and cold.”

The origins of Bride

So, let’s talk a bit more about Bride.

We don’t actually know for certain that Brigid, her Irish original, was a spring goddess at all. The earliest Irish references link her to poetry and song, and identify her as part of a triad of goddesses of the same name, the other Brigids being associated with smithcraft and with healing. (Kris Hughes has a good video on YouTube bringing together all the surviving medieval references to the goddess.) The ancient British and Gaulish goddess Brigantia or Brigindo may be the same character: but unfortunately, we know next to nothing about her, except that she may have been identified with Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom and law.

So why is she connected with Imbolg and spring today? Well, 1st February is not only Imbolg: it's also the feast of Saint Brigid, a sixth century Abbess of Kildare.

The saint pretty obviously acquired attributes of the goddess over time, to the point where they effectively became conflated in the Brigid or Bride of modern Irish and Scottish folklore, and nobody can really tell where one begins and the other ends. So people tend to assume that the goddess was celebrated at this time of year. And she may well have been, we just can’t be sure. A lot of modern pagans have tried to reconstruct her cultus from that of the saint - which is legitimate, it’s the only real source we have. But some of them go further, insisting that every practice linked to the saint down to the twentieth century was really an ancient celebration of the goddess - or even that the saint never existed, when she almost certainly did.

There also isn’t really any pre-Mackenzie evidence for the enmity he depicts between Bride – saint or goddess – and the Cailleach. We do know that beds prepared for Bride on the eve of her feast often had a corn dolly or even a sheaf from last year’s harvest laid in them, which was sometimes called "the Cailleach": but there are a lot of cailleachs besides the big one, and it’s not clear whether this is significant. There is a pre-Mackenzie tradition in the Hebrides of a saint who comes out of Ireland to banish an Cailleach Bheur at the start of spring... but it’s St Patrick, on his feast day on 17th March! It's probably not a coincidence that that’s very close to the equinox, when Mackenzie says Angus and Bride won their final victory. So too is Lady Day, or Old New Year, the Feast of the Annunciation on 25th March – which in many parts of Scotland was called Là na Caillich, or Auld Wife’s Day in Scots. Hardly a respectful way to refer to the Virgin Mary: but appropriate if the festival was linked in some way to an Cailleach Bheur.

I pointed out earlier that Mackenzie’s use of Bride is kind of redundant, since he also tells the story of the Cailleach herself restoring her youth every spring, and that it was as if he’d included two different versions of the same figure. That’s also what occurred to the folklorist Florence Marian McNeill. In 1959, she published The Silver Bough, Volume 2: A Calendar of Scottish National Festivals – Candlemas to Harvest Home. And there she claimed that the Cailleach actually became Bride or Brigid when she restored her youth in the spring.

McNeill was a lot more conscientious than Mackenzie, and not in the habit of making stuff up out of whole cloth, but it’s possible here that she either misunderstood the older stories (including Mackenzie’s), or simply saw the redundancy in Mackenzie’s version and concluded that this simpler story must be the original. And it is logical to conclude that a myth of an elderly winter spirit restoring her youth refers to the coming of spring. (Though obviously there are problems with that. As I've already stated, the older versions of the story have her only doing it once a century; there's also the inconvenient fact that the Cailleach wasn’t traditionally a winter spirit outside Scotland, but stories of her magically restoring her youth are found in Ireland too.) Modern pagans have seized on McNeill’s version – which isn’t surprising, it’s a very powerful concept. But there really isn’t any evidence for it as a traditional belief at all, even in Scotland. And all too often, you’ll find ideas from Mackenzie and McNeill imposed onto Irish lore, which they never even claimed to be writing about.

Now, Mackenzie’s book is over a hundred years old. Some of the real oral Cailleach traditions were written down not that much earlier. The very earliest references we have to the Cailleach as a winter spirit are from the 1790s, and as a creatrix, later than that. Myth and folklore always evolve, are always influenced by outside sources and the decisions of individual storytellers. So the division between the real and the fake, the folkloric and the individually crafted, is a lot less clear cut than it might seem. And Mackenzie’s version now has decades of wide popular acceptance behind it. But I still think it’s important to be aware of how his story came into existence, and how much of it would be unrecognisable to anyone before 1917.

The Wonder Tales are what they are – not ancient myths, but modern ones, that have evolved beyond Mackenzie and have a validity of their own. If you want to make them part of your spiritual belief system, that’s great. Go and do it. Just don't make false claims about its antiquity.