storytelling sacred stories stories
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The Legend of Columcille and Nessie by Harriet Cole
Columcille, the saint known as the “Dove of the Church,” went travelling through Scotland, living out his vow to bring as many wild blue Picts to Christ as there were souls who had lost their lives in his battle against the High King of Ireland. One day, as he led his faithful band of…
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Two Favorite Tricksters by RoseAnne Belk
I knew the concept of the trickster was widespread in many cultures, but I was excited to learn how important the concept of the trickster has been in American culture, up to and including the 21st…
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Tricksters: Hopping Jays and Treasured Elders by Ty Nolan
One of the last times I heard my relative Sobiyax (Bruce Miller) tell a story was at a conference in Las Vegas. He was in a wheelchair and looked frail. I still thought of him as being so large and strong. He had once punched out a horse. He broke his hand. When our…
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Some Challenges in Using Native American Stories by Ty Nolan
Native American stories are considered to be a type of “Medicine,” which is often the closest English can come to a combination of Power, the Sacred, and Community. Unfortunately, they have often suffered from censorship and simplification when they were recorded by non-Native ethnographers and historians. Two of the finest works I know that explore…
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My Travels at a Glance
View Ireland 2009 in a larger map Google has a cool tool for creating interactive maps. Click on the blue balloons for brief descriptions of where I traveled this summer. On the map I created, the straight line that runs from Derry to Roscommon actually went through Donegal and Sligo. I'm not sure why it…
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SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE BARN by Eileen McIlwaine
I've written posts here, here, and here about a great session at Ballyeamon Barn on Saturday night, June 27. Eileen McIwaine, a regular on Saturday nights and at the weekly writer's group also held at the barn, thought it was a great session, too. She wrote the poem below in praise of it. Thank you, Eileen! Do you…
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As You Do
A phrase that really caught my attention this summer in Ireland was “as you do”. I first encountered it in a newspaper article in, I think, the Irish Independent. I wish I’d cut it out, but alas, I did not. The article was entitled something like, “Mystery Solved”. It described how the strange hairless animal…
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An Chailleach Bhéara – The Hag of Beara
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…
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A Day of Beauty in Counties Cork and Kerry
On Monday Mark and I left Killarney for the Beara Peninsula a little later than we expected. When I tried to unlock the car with the fob, it wouldn’t work. Mark thought maybe the battery in the fob had gone dead. But when we got in the car, it was the car battery that was dead. …
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A Find on the Beara Peninsula
Mark and I drove from Killarney to the Beara Peninsula yesterday. Our specific mission was to find the Cailleach Beara, and we did find and meet her. I’ll write more about that later. As we drove back along twisty, narrow, fuchsia-laden Ring of Beara road, we saw a sign that said, “Pottery”. We drove up…
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Two Sheela-na-gigs in Athlone Castle
Mark and I went to Athlone Castle on Saturday, on our last full day in Athlone, to see the Sheela-na-gig. I read in Sacred Ireland by Cary Meehan that there was one there, right in my Irish backyard. Imagine our surprise when we were let into the musty, dusty museum in the castle’s round tower…
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The Irish National Stud – and Japanese Gardens?
How do these two things go together? Well, it all started with a wealthy English man, Colonel William Hall-Walker, who had a stud farm in Tully, just outside Kildare. In 1906 he arranged for a famous Japanese garden builder to come to his stud farm and build a garden. It was completed in 1910. The…