Liz Warren | Storyteller

            The point of our drive to the Beara Peninsula on Monday was to see An Chailleach Bhéara, a rock shaped like a head facing out to sea with her hair blowing out behind her.  The legend is that this is the head of the Cailleach, turned to stone, as she waited for her lover, the sea god Mannanan Mac Lir.

Although I’ve been to several places associated with the Cailleach, this is the first time I’ve visited a physical representation of her.  The place, and the rock were impressive.  People have placed coins, photographs, and necklaces on the rock like a clootie tree. Someone had placed a long tall rock on the rear of the rock, and under it was a photograph of two children.

This Cailleach, the Hag of Beara, is the subject of a famous poem “The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare”.  Her lament is for her lost youth and potency, “Ebb tide has come to me as to the sea”.  She bemoans the fact that her arms are no longer fit to embrace handsome kings, and criticizes the youth of the day:

    It is riches 
    you love, and not people; 
    as for us, when we lived, 
    it was people we loved.

            When I first read it a few years ago I was dismayed.  But, Miceál Ross, a Dublin storyteller and scholar, explained to me that it had probably been written by someone in the learned class of early Christian times.  The writer  was someone who appreciated the Cailleach and understood her role as the other-worldly woman.  He said the poem could also be read as a lament for the passing of the time of the goddess, the otherworldly woman so crucial to sovereignty in early Irish belief and practice.  The poem is expressing that there is a danger that her time is over, and that a new religion, one with less humor and joy, is in ascendance. 

            But these days she's returning to public consciousness. Nuala Hayes has created a new show about her entitled The Wilder Wisdom of the Auld Ones. A young poet from the Beara Peninsula, Leanne O'Sullivan, has a new book out, Cailleach: The Hag of Beara. The stories I tell about her are amongst my all-time favorites, and they are well received by listeners. More and more people are hearing about her and becoming interested in her and what she represents.

            The ebb tide does reverse, doesn’t it?

            Mark took all the pictures.  The first one shows her up close and personal, moss warts and all with me in the proper perspective.  The second is slightly up the hill from her, looking out to the ocean.  The third is head on, and the last is the view of the bay behind her.