The Song of the Cailleach

The Song of Cailleach

"Sad the day, woe is me,
That I sail not on youth's sea!
All my years of beauty gone
And my lusty flesh forlon."
    __ "Death Song of the Cailleach B eare,"
            early Irish poem (trans. CM)


    The Cailleach Beare (KAHL'lee-ak BEEira) - the Old Woman or Grandmother of the Beare Peninsula in Ireland - is remembered in many land features as the one who formed the mountain ranges by tossing rocks from her apron - a titanic figure who rules the wintertide, whose hammer freezes the ground.

   This long poem laments the passing of her youth and of the many excitements, lovers, horseraces, and gifts she once enjoyed. In her decrepitude, she no longer savors the company of young people or feasts on tasty food with kings as she was wont. Instead she is incarcerated with veild nuns whose only conversation is dull and dreary prayer. The Cailleach sings of her former life as the flowing tide of incoming waters, but she begins to see that her later life is of the ebbing tide.

   As youth's vigor passes from our limbs and we enter the wider sea of age, so we all become old ones of memory and experience, the new remembers and guardians in our turn. We cannot reach that role without relinguishing our youthful greasp on life, however. Only when we become aware of the changing tides of our life can we enter the ebb tide and step out  of the flowing tide; only then are the gifts of age available. If we continue to swim against the tide, we will not find them.

   Not only for the 'aged and the wise,' but also for the young and the inquiring, the Cailleach sings her song. She is the mistress of winter's heart. Now we can hear her song clearly and understand that the changing of the tides heralds no ending, only a renewal of all that we are.

"What is flowing and ebbing the tides of your own life right now?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]