More Than a Muse: Maud Gonne

I first heard of Maud Gonne while I was researching the history of the tarot. She is one of four women who are the subjects of "The Women of the Golden Dawn," by Mary K. Greer. (It's available on the Internet Archive.)

You always hear about her in connection with W. B. Yeats. They were friends for most of their lives, and she is the subject of many of his poems. She refused his marriage proposals, and she is often referred to only as his muse. Few people know her work in the world, or her legacy. 

Recently I heard about a kickstarter campaign raising money for a statue of Maud Gonne in Dublin. The campaign met its first goal in 48 hours. 

Orna Ross is the organizer, and if you're interested in Maud Gonne, start here. Orna was on a podcast called What's Her Name, telling Maud's story. 

I just finished reading Gonne's memoir, A Servant of the Queen. The "queen" in the title is not the English queen, but the allegorical Sovereignty of Ireland.

Maud Gonne inherited a fortune from her mother's Ascendancy family. When she was a very young woman, her military father was posted to Ireland. She saw how the Irish people lived in the British empire, and she began many campaigns to free Ireland, prevent recruitment of Irish men to British military, and to end evictions of the poor. 

She was said to be the most beautiful woman of her age, but even more, she was an effective public speaker, rousing people's emotions and building solidarity. People who heard her speak long remembered her political clarity in the face of authority. 

Yeats was not the only man who wanted to marry her, as is shown in the following story from her memoir that takes place in Donegal. 

She visited the area of Ireland I live in several times. In the chapters "Evictions" and "Woman of the Sidhe" she describes staying at the priest's house in Dunfanaghy, and organizing to help helping tenants evicted by the Olpherts, the local landlord.(Their house and garden, Ballyconnell, is now a public park where I often walk.)

Gonne helped organize campaigns to build "Land Huts" for families who had been evicted, either for non-payment of rent or because the landlord wanted the land for sheep pasture instead of farms. But it was difficult to find land to build these houses on, and they were very crowded. People who offered their own homes to anyone evicted would be evicted themselves. Maud used her wealth and influence to do what she could. 

She collaborated with the local priest, Father McFadden who begins this story. 

“Before you go, I want you to come round the farms with me and put some spirit into those who are to shelter the evicted families. They will do anything for Maud Gonne,” and he and Father Stephens laughed. “There are saying you are a woman of the Sidhe who rode into Donegal and a white horse surrounded by birds to bring victory. No one can resist this woman; she confabs with the bishop, she releases prisoners; even the police can’t stand against her.”

For the first time, I heard of the legend that was growing. It has small foundation, but it explained why Irish-speaking women who could not understand a word I said kissed my hand after meetings and boys and old men looked at me with adoration. I had attributed this to their astonishment, seeing on their side, a woman, better dressed, and much more triumphant looking than Olphert’s ladies, and I was always careful to say that Ireland would win; Ireland could not be defeated. Once, when I was going through a mountain glen with young Paddy, we had come upon a group of police guarding for prisoners, arrested for defending their homes; a sergeant was in charge; they were waiting for the police car. I had noted that my good clothes impress the police, always respectful to ascendancy. Even the DI made way for me and sergeants would willingly have helped me on or off my car if I had let them.

I went up to the sergeant and asked him why he had arrested these boys, and speaking in a tone of authority told him it was a stupid mistake as I was interested in them and knew them to be good, honest fellas. “Let them go now; I will take full responsibility,” and I waved to the prisoners to go. They went. The police made no move, and with a careless nod to the sergeant, I walked on as if nothing unusual has happened, followed by the astonished Paddy, while the prisoners disappeared up the mountain. The bluff had worked. How the young sergeant explained matters to his superiors, I do not know. Many of the police were halfhearted and hated eviction duty. Young Paddy had spread this tale, and it had helped the legend; next day, it was to be further illuminated.

… The following day, on Father McFadden‘s car, we made an early start. … The road became worse and worse; the driver got down and led the horse; soon we all had to get down and walk over the bog to the houses. Young Paddy turned up, as by magic he always did, to help me over the hard places. I was exhausted when we got to the first house and gladly sat down by the turf, while the tousled-haired, Ban na Tigh poured me out a strong cup of tea and father McFadden and Pat O’Brien talked to the men outside. In an incredibly short time, the news of our arrival had spread to neighboring farms, and there was quite a crowd outside and children posted as sentries to give warning if the police cars were coming. A scout ran in and announce two cars coming along the road from Gweedore—not police cars. Soon they were visible from the hill we were on. “English sympathizers,” I said wearily. But how have they found us out? They should’ve been attending evictions the other side of Falcarragh. On the first car, beside the driver, there was a strange-looking bundle of fur; on the second two men, one with a wide hat which the winds succeeded in grabbing, and which some of our ragged scouts were dexterously endeavoring to recapture. Some of the men went down the road to help the visitors; I returned to the fire. The woman of the house was showing me an ejectment notice her husband had just received. It was a big house without buildings, which we had hoped would shelter several evicted families.

Father McFadden came in with a tall old gentleman who had unrolled himself from the fur rug on the car, but was still protected by a fur-lined coat with a fur collar. He was explaining that, being a member of parliament, he thought it his duty to see the evictions, which were being so much debated in Westminster. I recognize Sir John —. The boys had evidently recaptured the hat of the man on the other car, for its owner was taking it off, bowing ceremoniously, and presenting me with a letter of introduction from Millevoye. He was a French journalist who could not speak a word of English, but had picked up an interpreter in Dublin and wanted to know all about the eviction campaign. At this juncture, Sir John importantly announced that he wanted to speak with Miss Gonne alone. Tactfully father McFadden withdrew everybody out of the crowded cottage to an impromptu meeting outside at which he said Sir John would speak after he had rested a few moments.

“I went to Dublin to see you and, hearing you were in Donegal, decided to come and follow you here and renew our conversation. I want you to see how, if you listen to me, you will really be able to do far more for Ireland than by wasting your time on the bogs in this impossible climate.” He was pursuing his idea that, as his wife, I would make an ideal hostess for a great liberal salon in London. To show my aptitude as a hostess, I suggested to the tousled-haired hostess of the house that Sir John would enjoy a cup of tea, and I was amused watching his disgusted refusal. He brought out from his pocket a neat little parcel, which he handed to me. Astonished, I unwrapped it and, still more astonished, I disclosed a big diamond pendant. “It is not beautiful enough for you, but I got it in Dublin. I will get you something much more beautiful in London.” My amusement was turning to anger. Did he imagine I could be bought by such a bobble?

“I don’t care for jewelry, Sir John. But I thank you for the gracious thought, and your kindness shall not be wasted. This jewel will save this family from eviction.” And calling to the woman who, with her husband was standing in the doorway, trying to hear what father McFadden was saying and at the same time what the strangers in her home were saying, I put the diamond pendant in her hand: “Sell this and pay your rent. You need not fear of eviction now and you can shelter the others. This kind gentleman has brought it for you.” “Michael, look at it, “ said the woman. “But we can’t take this,” said the man. “It would not be right.”

“Oh, but you can. Have no fear; it will bring you luck. Put it in your pocket and come hear what Father McFadden is saying. Sir John, they are waiting outside for you to speak,” and I went out into the cold. Sir John wouldn’t speak. He left early next morning. The legend had grown. When I returned to Donegal, the people were saying, the woman of the Sidhe scattered jewels, which brought luck and stopped evictions.

Next day, Father McFadden was raging. He had heard the story. “And the mean hound,” he said, “Went back later to the cottage and bought his diamond from Michael for the exact sum he owned for the rent. Michael didn’t know the value and was glad to let it go. Why didn’t you tell me, Miss Gonne? If I had known, he wouldn’t have got it back and we would’ve had money to help all the people.” I laughed. “How can I have thought of that? “

“It is hard to be up to the English.”

A Servant of the Queen, Maud Gonne, 1938.

More Reasons Why I Still Live in Ireland

I often say I love living in Ireland because of the people.

What Irish people will do for each other.

Kindness, and also defiance of authority. 

This interview from the Rio Olympics will never be surpassed. 

I know something about Irish nurses. This is a spoof, but so true.

Everything in "Things not to say to Irish people"is true. If you're coming to visit, study it.

The First People in Ireland and Where They Went

Many nations and peoples tell themselves that they came to their home place from out of the earth; an example you probably know are the Hebrew and Greek myths where men are created from clay by their god. Irish mythology lacks a creation myth, but begins with stories of how people came to this island from somewhere else.

The most complete compilation of these stories is Lebor Gabála Érenn, The Book of the Taking of Ireland, also known as The Book of Invasions.


It contains six immigration stories. The first three stories finish by saying everyone died. However, after the first story, the rest of them say the next wave of people met people already living in Ireland. So entire Book of Invasions is an example of the both/and Hiberno-consciousness.

Scholars believe monks compiled The Book of Invasions in an attempt to reconcile their belief in the Bible as history with the obvious fact that Ireland is never mentioned in it. The Bible’s Noah story was familiar to them because like so many cultures, the Irish already had a story of flood, escape by boat, and settling in a new land.

People around the world tell Flood stories because when the glaciers of the last Ice Age melted, sea levels rose, sometimes quite suddenly. Some of the Flood stories of Europe might be related to an event that happened around 5500 BCE.

At that time, the Black Sea, north of modern Turkey and south of modern Ukraine, was a freshwater lake, fed by long rivers surrounded by fertile plains. People made the lake shore their home for thousands of years. At some point the ocean waters of the Mediterranean catastrophically flooded the lake with sea water, killing the fish and poisoning the land. (I think this event is why that body of water is called “black,” which in many languages also means “sorrow.” The Greek name was “Inhospitable Sea.” 

Survivors of the Black Sea flood–we might call them climate change refugees–fled their ancient homeland in boats laden with seed and small domesticated animals: the inventions of the Neolithic that feed us to this day.

Archeological and linguistic evidence indicate they settled everywhere: eastern Europe, Asia Minor, both shores and all the islands of the Mediterranean, and up the west coast of Europe all the way to Britain and Ireland. They traveled east too, but land travel is harder. All of these people told stories of a flood survived by clever people who knew when to get hell out.

The Flood story in the Book of Invasions goes like this, as retold on Herstory.ie.

Cessair was the daughter of Bith, a son of the Biblical Noah. In one of several different versions of the story, Noah tells her to take her people and sail to the western edge of the world to escape the oncoming Flood, because there is no more room on the Ark. And so Cessair leads 150 women and just three men out of Egypt along the River Nile, across the Mediterranean Sea, up the west of coast of Europe and, after losing two ships and a hundred women in a storm, lands with the survivors in the south-west of Ireland just forty days before the Flood. Cessair takes Fintán as a husband, Barrfhind takes Bith, and Alba takes Ladra; the rest of the women divide themselves up evenly among the three men. But after Bith and Ladra die, Fintan finds himself left alone with all the women, and flees. Cessair then dies of a broken heart, and when the Flood comes, Fintán is the only one to survive.

A longer version of the story recounts the voyage with confused geography, saying that Cessair and her followers began in Egypt at the confluence of two rivers, sailed the Caspian Sea (which is east of the Egypt we know), then west over the Sea of Azov, to “Asia Minor” (geographically this might mean the Black Sea). They then sailed up rivers past “the Alps,” to Spain, and finally arrived in Ireland.

In this version the monks tell us how many days each leg of the trip took, and what day of the month one last remaining ship arrived in Ireland. The most dramatic part of the story would be the voyage and struggles that destroyed two ships and 100 women, but the monks left that part out. All we know is that fifty women and three men arrived in Ireland forty days before the Biblical Flood. The monks then spend the rest of the story detailing how the fifty women were assigned to the three men, and then when one man died, how the fifty women were reassigned to the remaining two guys. The story ends with everyone drowned in the Flood except a seven year old boy, who turns himself into an immortal salmon, who lives until centuries later when he is eaten by superhero Fionn mac Cumhaill.

Nothing to that story but the fantasies of a celibate brotherhood.

A pre-Christian Irish version of the Flood story survives, which names the first person in Ireland as Banba. She arrived her two sisters, Fódla and Ériu, with their husbands Mac Cuill (son of hazel), Mac Cecht (son of the plow), and Mac Gréine (son of the Sun). Banba, Fódla, and Ériu lead fifty women, whose names represent the world’s ancestral mothers: “Alba” (British), “German” (Germans), “Espa” (Spanish), “Triage” (Thracians), “Gothiam” (Goths), among others.

In other words, the first wave of immigrants to Ireland came from everywhere, just like climate refugees now.

The story of Cessair has long attracted me for its cast of female characters. A few months ago I visited Knockma in Mayo, where Cessair is said to be buried under a cairn. I’ve been thinking about her ever since, so I wrote my own version of the story. The medieval monks’ tale reflects their homosocial world, and so does mine.

The First People in Ireland and Where They Went

Once there was a Lake at the Center of the World.

Around the Lake lived people who never knew hunger or war. The Lake and the fertile shore provided everything the people needed. They gathered fish from weirs and seeds from the grasses. The animals of the barnyard gave them milk, wool, and hide.

Around the lake were three villages named Banba, Fódla, and Ériu. The women of these villages lived exactly like their neighbors, gathering fish from weirs and seeds from the grasses. The animals of the barnyard gave them milk, wool, and hide. But they did not choose husbands, and the women lived together without male supervision. They had a word for women living together without men, a word that we do not remember.

People lived around the Lake at the Center of the World for thousands of years.

One day, the lake water lost its sweetness, and day by day the water rose. Shoals of dead fish rotted on the beach. Grain wilted to the roots along the shore. Orchards flooded, grain stored in cool caves under the earth molded.

The people of the Lake at the Center of the World knew hunger for the first time. They needed a story to explain this calamity and so told themselves they had sinned, and brought it upon themselves. But they did not know what the sin was.

They only knew that they must leave the lake of their ancestors and find a new land where they could live in peace as before.

Although starved and sorrowful, they worked to build great boats, and filled them with seeds and the animals of the barn yard. They would sail across the lake to the rivers, find new lands and restore their peaceful life. As they toiled, heartsick and mind-muddled, they argued, they blamed, and for the first time, they stole and hoarded food. They no longer lived in peace, but feared the ghosts of the ancestors they would leave behind, and feared for their children who would live in a new and dangerous land.

When the women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu attempted join the exodus, the people’s heartsickness and mind-muddle formed a lie that poisoned them forever.

“Two-by-two we leave this place, two-by-two we we must go forth and multiply. Your sin brought this Flood upon us, you women who refuse to live with a husband. Join us two-by-two with husbands, or stay here and die.”

The women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu said, “Women are not born to be mothers and wives. Women are born to befriend, to invent, to create and enjoy the life we are given. Women who live together without husbands are not sinners, but necessary to a peaceful life. This is how it has been and how it always shall be.”

“That world is ended in Flood, “ their neighbors said. “In our new lands, no woman will live without a husband, else her sin destroy the world again.”

And so the People of the Lake at the Center of the World sailed away. They told their children a story about a woman who refused male authority and so brought sin and suffering to the world. And women never again knew peace.

The women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu knew it was not they who sinned. But they refused to starve on the shore of a salt-flooded lake. So they built their own three ships, each carrying the fifty women. They elected a leader, who changed her name to Cessair, Sorrow, because their exile was sad and unnecessary. Like their neighbors, they loaded their ships with seed and the animals of the barnyard.

Cessair’s little fleet sailed the western sea for weeks. When they came to the Alps, they met some of their neighbors who had escaped the Flood. They asked to join them, and live as before, offering a village for women who preferred to live without men. They were turned away of course, but fifty women of one of the ships came ashore to an island, and built a village in secret for women who prefer to live without men.

The two remaining ships sailed on, passed through the strait at the end of the western sea, and sailed north on the great ocean. When they reached the warm coast of Spain, they found more of their neighbors who had escaped the Flood. They offered to build a village for the women who preferred to live without men. But they too refused. So the second ship of fifty women came shore to an island, and built a village in secret for women who prefer to live without men.

At last, far north beyond Spain and Gaul, Cessair and the remaining fifty women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu found the island that had only recently shook off its icy winter cloak. Here no one had ever lived, and here no one could sin.

Cessair and fifty women from Banba, Fódla, and Ériu became the first people of Ireland, and the names of their ancient villages became the names of Ireland’s sovereignty.

The women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu divided themselves into three villages. One they built at the place of the three rivers, where the grain grows tall and strong. One they built in Kerry and lived under the bounty of the forest. Cessair and her sisters built a third village, in the west, between the plains of Mayo and Galway Bay, with its gifts of the sea.

Cessair’s people lived in peace for many years, living in kinship with the earth. They gathered fish from weirs and seeds from the grasses. The animals of the barnyard gave them milk, wool, and hide. They never knew hunger or war. They lived as friends, inventing, creating, and enjoying the life they were given. They had a word for women living together without men, a word that has been forgotten.

One by one the women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu grew old, and died, beloved and revered. Their bones rest to this day in hilltop cairns. At last only Cessair was left. When she knew she was about to die, she entered a temple of bones on a mountain in Mayo. You can see her cairn today, at Knockma, also known as Hill of the Fairies.

No where else in the world was there a place for women who would not choose husbands. But into every village, every day, are born women who prefer to live without husbands. And these women still build secret villages, and no one knows the word for women gathered together without men.

Worst Housemate Ever

We live in an old house in the country, and it’s normal in the winter to hear rodents running around the ceiling between the sitting room and the bedrooms above.

But in January they started to get bold.

I’ve killed dozens of mice and rats in Santa Cruz. I know all about them. I knew what to do. I got a bunch of traps at the Co-op and killed a few mice. Victory!

But then there was this.

And they started eating the sitting room door if we closed it at night.

These weren’t mice. They kept coming. 

I replaced the mousetraps with rat traps, but the rats had already learned how to avoid them. 

So I called a professional. Ben of Alklear Pest Control in Fintown. His facebook page is hilarious, but don’t click the link if you can’t handle seeing dead rats held up by their tails. (A post from this week: “Mondays special being transported into the hearse, mass this Wednesday @11 all welcome.”)

He set up a few traps in the hall and bathroom, and neatly covered each one in a cardboard cowling. 

They chewed more holes in the carpet to avoid the traps. Then they chewed holes into the kitchen.

Ben put a trap on that hole above the cupboard, so they chewed a hole in the ceiling across the room, somehow knowing if they did, they could use the drying rack to get to the floor. 

I put a piece of duct tape over the hole. They chewed through it. 

So I got super-clever and taped a flattened cider can over the hole. 

They chewed another hole. Ben eventually did some kind of fantastic anti-rodent engineering to secure the ceiling hole, but now that they had found the kitchen, they got into the food. 

We moved most of the pantry to the back seat of the car. The bread spent every night in the fridge, which made for sad sandwiches. 

They got into the liquor. 

They started eating the lids off the cans.

Ben was coming by a few times a week. He had an arsenal of traps and explained how he uses different traps to kill immature rats because they feed differently than adult rats.

He would talk to himself, working out the spacial geometry of the rats’ world, predicting their movements as he blocked one hole after another. 

He trapped a female rat and four babies.

But then.

Ben said it was “Some buck.”

I thanked Ben many times for coming out so much, because this kind of service isn’t what I came to expect in Santa Cruz. He said, “Oh aye, it’s personal.”

We had to put the bar of soap at the sink into a plastic container because he was eating it. He ate the silicon spatulas and the handle of the scissors. 

He ate the labels off the glass jars left in the pantry.

He chewed a hole under the cupboard, and just for fun, I taped another cider can over it. You know what happened. Ben put a board over the hole he chew in the aluminum. The rat pushed that board away, so I nailed it in. You know what happened. The texts below were sent on two successive mornings. 

The rat was getting desperate. One morning I came in to find he had muscled open the cupboard and pushed a flour bin off the shelf again.

Ben said it was “A buck and a half.”

Finally, Ben cornered the rat to one cupboard under the sink, and we secured its doors at night with chairs. There was no way out but through a trap. 

The next day, I pulled the chair away and peaked inside. 

Artemis was so happy. 

I’m proud to say Ben featured us on his facebook page. 

Ben said to leave out a little dry porridge if we hear rodents in the house again. Mice will eat only the seed and leave the husk behind. Rats eat the whole thing, leaving the plate clean. 

He made me promise to never set another mouse trap.

Ella Young and George Russell

In April, Ella Young biographer Dorothea MacDowell and I gave a talk at the George Russell Festival in his home town of Lurgan, Co. Armagh. 

 

It’s really better to watch it on YouTube, not this tiny window. 

The evening included another talk, between two gifted illustrators who also love Ella Young. Now that we’ve met, we’ve decided to do a project together. I’ll make an announcement when it’s more developed. 

Temple to the Book

While I was in Mayo for The Last Woodland Walk, I stopped in Balinrobe to visit the Harry Clarke windows at St. Mary’s again. As I walked to the center of town, I noticed this archway. 

That sign says “public library” but there’s a letter missing, so I wondered if it really was still the library. 

A wooded path….

And a Church of Ireland! With a monument to literature instead of Jesus!

Inside: the library!

The windows, the pulpit, the monuments to the dead: all remain. I didn’t take many photographs, it seemed blasphemous in such a sacred place.  

If they can turn one church into a library, why not them all? 

The Last Woodland Walk

A friend took this photo of me the day I met John Willmott. John was one of my oldest Irish friends, and last week, I attended his burial under the trees.

On my second trip to Ireland in 2012, I took a “sacred Ireland” tour. John had been hired to be our guide to Carrowkeel, followed by a few hours at his cottage and tree labyrinth at Carrowcrory. I was never the same.

After climbing down from Carrowkeel, we took our minibus to his cottage nearby.

I had no idea what to expect.



John Willmott at Carrowcrory Cottage, 2012


Some of the women were excited to learn how to make a Bridget’s Cross.






I had no idea what a Bridget’s Cross was.



Others wanted to hear John’s partner Claire Roche play the harp and sing old songs.





Normally, I would have been sitting at her feet, but I needed to get outside and take in the view.

This is Keash, in Sligo, one of many places in Ireland where the goddess’s breasts are visible on the horizon. Here, her pregnant belly rises to the sky, and she throws her head back in labor. I contemplated that screaming mountain outside John’s house and tried to integrate what I had experienced that morning on Carrowkeel.

We had crawled into a neolithic passage tomb, and sat under a corbeled stone ceiling, dry and water tight for these thousands of years. Inside, John held a Tibetan bowl bell in his lap. He ran ran the stick around the edge of the bowl, filling the room with sounds on sound, casting a spell, setting us apart from the mundane world.

What is this place for? we asked him, when we could speak again.

It depends on when you’re asking, he told us.

Maybe it started as a grove of trees at the top of a hill, and when those trees died, they were memorialized as a ring of wooden pillars. When the pillars rotted, they were replaced with standing stones. Some hundreds or thousands of years latter, someone moved the ring stones to build this cave or womb facing the summer solstice sunset. Uses change. Beliefs change.





Later, because it had become sacred, people left the bones of their dead, just like we do in churches. Then the entrance was lost, and people only knew it as a cairn. They climbed Carrowkeel carrying sacred stones, building the cairn higher, and lay on their backs to search the skies, or the spirits within, or the sidhe for inspiration.

John’s approach to Irish mythology and archeology was new to me. I had come in search of facts and knowledge. Seeing and touching the places I had read about, like a pilgrim and a collector. Because of John, I found poetry instead. His approach to Irish culture became mine too. I’m pretty sure this was the first day of the trip. Spiritually, I never left Ireland. 

On many later Irish vacations, I caught up with John a few times on a Sunday for “Bards in the Woods.” He would organize a “woodland walk” in a public forest or old estate. People would bring their poems and songs. John would read his poetry, mostly about trees.


Then there would be a fantastic potluck picnic. It was the nearest thing to a church that I would ever join. (“Best of” Bards in the Woods.)


One time, the Bards in the Woods looked for a lost holy well he had seen on the Ordnance map. We found it, choked with its own vandalized stones. To the scandal of a trained archeologist who happened to be with us, we lifted the stones from the well and restored it.








Since I’ve moved to Ireland, John had to stop hosting Bards in the Woods. Even though they were just informal gatherings, he “advertised” them on facebook, so landowners and public works functionaries wanted to charge him money, and get insurance; so he gave them up. John replaced the Bards in the Woods with Sunday Sessions on Youtube. He always encouraged people to share their songs and poetry with each other; now we did it online, which was particularly good during lockdown.

Back in 2015 John and Claire did a West Coast tour in support of the book. We held a house concert in Santa Cruz, which served as the launch party for his book, Bathing in the Fae’s Breath.

John and Claire see the book for the first time. 

His book is an Irish version of shinrin-yoku, Japanese Forest Bathing. 

Claire’s harps in our living room 

A few years ago John had a stroke and I visited him at Sligo hospital. It was my first trip out after the chemo and lockdown. 

Sometime after that, John moved from Carrowcrory and continued his work, sometimes interrupted by a hospital stays. 

Recently he started a substack called Nature Folklore where he published his extensive research, filtered through his syncretic, scientific, and poetic mind. He has seen plenty of weird shit in his life, and met a lot of people with fantastic tales and full blown fantasies about Ireland. He always listened, curious and never pedantic. These writings pulled it all together. 

He was writing a book. His chapters in Nature Folklore about First Harvests, Bridgid, the Sidhe, Bealtaine, Midsummer Joy, Winter Magic are the best I’ve ever read on these topics. My favorite he called “Ale House Wives,” which used folklore and history to draw a thread from the brewers of ancient Persia, to medieval beer makers with pointed hats, to the creation of sacred wells, where a taboos protected the water’s purity. Combined with what we know about the herbal concoctions known as “wine” in ancient times, I now know where witches came from. I hope his family is able to publish the book someday. 

In March, he posted he was in the hospital again, and then came the sad news from his family. My feed filled with grief of my fellow John Willmott fans, and a few lovely photos.

His burial was planned a week hence, in Knockma Woodland Burial in Mayo.

I decided to go. 

John’s gravesite. 

As we walked to where his wicker coffin waited, we looked just like Bards in the Woods. Mostly older folks, folklore nerds, healers, cooks, poets, musicians, seekers and teachers. 

Someone standing next to me said, “This is the last woodland walk.” We sang “Wild Mountain Thyme.”

Everyone said they didn’t know that woodland burials were possible in Ireland, and how perfect that John’s body would become a forest.  

John’s son read a poem from Bathing in the Fae’s Breath. 

When my spirit departs from my body,
It will rejoin the river of spirt that flows
not to any particular place,
but to all places at the same time. 

My body will rejoin the earth
and commune as one, once again.

A tree will be born from where my body faded,
and melted from its unique singular vessel
into an acceptance of letting go,
no longer protecting what it does not own.

What was “my” temple
will nourish another body again.

The tree grows, holding and caring for
another singular drop of spirit,
separated from that timeless river,
to guide the tree into reaching out and sharing.

From that tree another living temple being
will be nourished again. 

John’s walking stick at Carrowkeel, 2012.