In Celtic cultures, the goddess of winter is the Cailleach, the old hag. The Cailleach is a wrinkled old woman with blue skin, rust colored teeth, and one immense eye in the center of her forehead. Her hair is long and wild and bone white. The goddess of winter appears at Samhain (Halloween) and rules until Beltane (May Day), when she is superseded by her daughter, Bride, the goddess of the spring.
As Patricia Monaghan writes in The Goddess Companion, quoting a Scottish song about the Cailleach:
“Her face had the blue-black shine of coal.
Her one bony tooth was red like rust.
Her hair was thick and dense and gray
like brushwood in a dying forest.
In her head was one eye like a pool,
swifter than a star in the winter sky.
That one stone eye in the hag’s head
moved quicker than mackerel after a lure.”
The Cailleach is more than a weather witch. She is a Neolithic Scottish creation goddess, a sort of giantess with amazing size and strength. The hag fashioned the Scottish mountains with her hammer. The goddess made the islands by dropping chunks of peat and rock from a basket on her back. Hikers see her hand print or footprint on rock formations.
Along with deliberate landscape fashioning, the winter goddess sometimes created land features by mistake. For example, after a long day of milking her deer herds, she lifted a rock on the side of Ben Cruachan to reveal a spring of fresh water to drink and bathe in. She was so tired, and the water was so refreshing, that she fell asleep without replacing the rock cap. When she awoke, the waters had rushed down the side of Ben Cruachan to form Lake Awe, the largest fresh water lake in Scotland.
The Cailleach, also known as the “Veiled One,” functions in many roles, including as a kind of wise old grandmother goddess. The hag crone gently encourages those whose earthly time is ended to cross to the spirit world while she stretches her veil across the winter landscape. Her association with Bride, however, indicates the promise of rebirth. She is a guardian and midwife of spring, for she protects the seeds so that they may sprout when her daughter comes to power.
The hag goddess of winter rides a wolf and has a particular affinity for black cats. She is also a fierce protector of all animals, especially horned animals such as wild cattle, goats, and deer. When her singing is heard in the forest, Scottish hunters give up their quest, knowing there will be no meal to catch.
Once, a desperate man with a large family to feed kept on searching until night fell, though not a deer was to be found. Eventually he built a fire, and inspired by the Calliach’s tune ringing through the forest, he sang a song about her clever ways. When he looked across the fire, the old hag was there with a twinkle in her eye. She explained that her herd was growing too large and she could use a brave hunter to cull it. If he would follow her song the next day, she would lead to him a deer he could shoot. From that time forth, he was always a successful hunter, thanks to the Cailleach’s respect for his cleverness in calling on her by singing her praises.
As the goddess of winter, the hag brings the wind, snow and ice. She plunges her staff into the ground to freeze it. Her magic can thicken lakes into icy slabs by dropping her plaid into the water. The Cailleach is also the goddess of the harvest, urging folk to gather in the crops when her gusts turn cold and the morning fields are rimmed with frost. In some places, a farmer’s wife makes a corn dolly, tossing it onto the field of a neighbor who has not finished his harvest. That neighbor, in turn, finishes and tosses it to another. Farmers are in fierce competition to not be the last to have the corn dolly, for then they will have to keep it throughout the winter, meaning they have to feed and house the winter hag all season as well.
As a goddess, the Cailleach has many complicated qualities that can be called upon by the worshipper. She has fierce strength, the power to both destroy and build, the power the protect life, whether of the animals or of the seeds, the power to grant the rejuvenation of deep sleep.
Deep in Glen Lyon, inaccessible by car, lies the tiny Glen Cailleach where an ancient indigenous shrine to the Cailleach can be found.
Legend has it that if the small stone statues of the Cailleach and her husband and children are placed carefully inside this small turf roofed stone hut at Samhain (Halloween), the land will prosper. These same statures are brought out into the meadow in front of the hut at Beltane (May Day) to protect the land during the spring and summer months. The local people re-roof her hut at this time in a ceremony of gratitude to the Goddess. Researchers think this ritual has been performed at this site for thousands of years, and it is still performed today.
The Cailleach has a famous daughter, the beautiful spring goddess Bride (known as Brigid in Ireland). The Cailleach is threatened by her daughter’s beauty, for it is so great that she is able to make ice melt and flowers grow merely by her glance. The Cailleach’s fear forces her to keep Bride imprisoned on the top of Ben Nevis, Scotland’s tallest mountain. Every day the hag forces Bride to do impossible tasks, and then punishes her when she fails.
One day, while Bride is trying unsuccessfully to wash the Cailleach’s plaid in the lake, a kindly old man appears. He is sympathetic to her plight and hands her a bouquet of snowdrops, suggesting that she show them to the Cailleach. The girl, determining she has nothing to lose, does so. The Cailleach, who knows that the flowers mean her power is beginning to wane, is furious. She rides to every corner of Scotland, shaking her staff and burying the land in snow, ice and frost.
The kind old man turns out to be Angus, the prince of summer, in disguise. He rescues Bride from the imprisonment of the Cailleach and flies with her to the Isle of Summer. They dwell there happily, but the goddess Bride misses Scotland, so the couple returns to visit again and again. Each time, the sun shines brighter, the earth warms more, the trees bud and leaf, and the flowers grow more plentiful. The winter goddess throws wind and cold at them with less and less success, until finally the Cailleach gives up in exhaustion on Beltane (May Day), going to sleep again until Samhain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joKYWzzjuro
Bride, the Celtic goddess of spring, is welcomed across Scotland and Ireland on Imbolc (February 1) because Angus first rescues her then, and also because it is when ewes first give milk. Bride is not only the goddess of spring, but also of fire, of the forge, of light itself, of dawn, of fertility, of healing, of water (she has many holy wells and rivers associated with her), and of inspiration, especially for writing poetry. She is also associated with serpents, because they shed their skins and are thus symbols of regeneration.
Bride is a liminal goddess, meaning that she reigns over the in-between. Spring is a slow and subtle time between winter and summer. Dawn is a subtle time between night and day. Bride, according to legend, was born in a doorsill, thus neither inside nor outside.This goddess governs becoming, emerging, forming. She governs the forge, in which metal is formed, and poetry, in which meaning and image are formed. She governs water, which is the original womb of all life on earth.
One of her most ancient names was Breo-saighead, the fiery arrow, the goddess who brings light from darkness. The season of Imbolc does not bring the bright sun of summer, but rather the subtle shift of the angle of the sun’s rays slowly marches toward the equinox and eventually the summer solstice. Once again, she is a subtle goddess, the slow birther.
As a goddess associated with light, Bride is involved with spiritual wisdom, truth, healing, prophecy, and divination. These arts grow slowly to fruition, though their ultimate flowering may appear as a sudden burst. This is also true of the plant and animal kingdoms, where the slow period of gestation ends with the sudden birthing of a baby animal or a flowering tree. She is thus associated with healthy livestock and crops.
Fire, of course, melts snow and warms things. The Druids, who worshipped Bride, are said to have kept a perpetual fire alive in her honor. Such fires may have been burned for her up to the fifteenth century, by which time she had been conflated with Saint Brigid of Kildare and had found favor with nuns. The Druids also associated the goddess with their important bardic traditions, which preserved history through the recitation of poetry.
Today in Scotland, it is common to leave a strip of cloth or a piece of clothing outside on the eve of Imbolc so that it collects dew overnight. Bride bestows this dew as a blessing for the health and well-being of the family. People fashion special “Bride’s crosses” (AKA “Brigid’s Crosses”) from reeds or straw and hang them on the door for protection. Traditionalists eat special bannocks (Scottish quick bread), and may drink the milk of ewes if it is available. They cleanse the hearth of old ashes and lay a new fire for Bride. In homes lacking a hearth, people light candles in her honor. Young girls make Bride dolls of straw or reeds and carry them from home to home to bring blessings.
The weather on Imbolc determines the length of remaining winter. If the weather is sunny, the Cailleach is gathering a large amount of firewood and winter will be long. If the weather is foul, she gathers less and spring will come sooner. This Scottish tradition is the precursor to the American tradition of Groundhog Day. In this small way, the goddesses of Scotland still influence those of us in the “New World.”
