Things Remembered Accurately and Inaccurately

Every year, I light the solstice fire with coals from the year before. 

That’s not quite true. I don’t always. Some years I forget to save them. But I always light a fire.

I inherited this tradition from my ancestor, the poet Elsa Gidlow.

That's not quite true either. She’s not a blood ancestor. Elsa taught me this ritual with her poem "Chains of Fires. " I posted it yesterday.

After reading I Come With My Songs, Elsa's autobiography, she became my lifelong model for the life of a lesbian, poet, and friend. I consider her my aunt. That's no lie.

(Her life story is the first autobiography published by a lesbian using her real name. That happened in 1986.)

Maybe Elsa recorded who taught her the tradition of lighting winter solstice fires on last year's coals. I don't know because my copy is in Santa Cruz. But I wonder if the tradition has something to do with her friendship with an Irish immigrant named Ella Young.

I met Ella Young in Elsa's autobiography, but I never bothered get to know her better because the only book of hers I could find was Celtic Wonder Tales and it was too flowery and male-centered for my taste. Celtic Wonder Tales is in the Sacred Text Archive, complete with illustrations by Maud Gonne. Here's an excerpt.

When Lugh was full grown, Mananaun said to him: "It is three times seven years, as mortals count time, since I brought you to Tir-nan-Oge, and in all that time I have never given you a gift. To-day I will give you a gift."

He brought out the Sword of Light and gave it to Lugh, and when Lugh took it in his hand he remembered how he had cried to the hills and rivers of Ireland -" Some day I will come back to you!" And he said to Mananaun:

"I want to go back to Ireland."

"You will not find joyousness there, O Lugh, or the music of harp strings, or feasting. The De Danaans are shorn of their strength. Ogma, their Champion, carries logs to warm Fomorian hearths; Angus wanders like an outcast; and Nuada, the King, has but one dun, where those who had once the lordship of the world meet in secret like hunted folk."

"I have a good sword," said Lugh. "I will go to my kinsfolk."

See what I mean?

Besides her connection to Elsa, I knew Ella was a friend to W. B. Yeats. I assumed she was a lesbian, because Elsa implied she was.

Now I am obsessed with Ella Young. She is my Irish grandmother. No lie.

She wrote an autobiography in 1945, Flowering Dusk: Things Remembered Accurately and Inaccurately. A perfect title for anyone's life story.

Flowering Dusk is out of print and very expensive, but last week I read a 2005 biography by Rose Murphy who quoted it extensively. I wanted to contact Rose, but she died in November, 2017, the same week I moved to Donegal.

I now know that Ella arrived in America in 1925 to tour the East Coast, recounting Irish folk tales to eager audiences of immigrants, hungry for their culture. She never returned to Ireland, and died in 1956 in her home in Oceano, California, near Pismo.

Pismo! From Protestant Antrim to Bohemian California in one lifetime. What a trip. 

When UC Berkeley hired her to teach Irish Studies, she delivered improvised lectures in flowing robes. She told Irish stories anywhere she was invited. She sent a Carmel PTA meeting to Point Lobos and they scoured it for fairies. I found a brief item in the Santa Cruz Sentinel promoting her appearance at "Sunnyside Bookshop" on Pacific Avenue in 1931.

Ella Young was famous among the artists and weirdos of mid-century Northern California. In the network that nurtured the the LSD-fueled counter-culture decades later, the "mystic" Ella Young thrived in a nurturing community she never would have found in the theocratic Irish Republic. 

Ella Young was born into a middle-class Presbyterian family in Co. Antrim in 1867. Like many protestants of her generation, Ella Young fought to free Ireland from British control. After the revolution was won, she fought on the anti-treaty side of the civil war. Her side lost, her own comrades were executed and imprisoned by the winners. When she was in her late 50s, she found a homeland, not Western Ireland, but the American West.

As I scoured the net for Ella stories, I found an article by Aidan Kelly in Pathos, and read something that astonished me. Beside her stories, Ella Young brought an Irish occult tradition to California.

The Fellowship of the Four Jewels was founded on May 1, 1916, by Ella Young, William Butler Yeats and his beloved Maeve (Maude Gonne), A.E., and others of the spiritual leaders of the movement for Irish freedom, in memory of those who had died in the Easter Sunday uprising only a few weeks before. The leaders had been summarily executed by the British; one of them was Major John McBride, Maude’s husband. ...

I knew some about Ella Young; I had listened to her commentaries on the radical radio station KPFA when I was in high school. Now I learned that when she came to America, she brought the Fellowship of the Four Jewels with her, and here transmuted it into the Fellowship of Shasta, with the same four feasts to represent the Four Jewels of Irish myth: the Spear of Lugh, which ensured victory (Feb. 1); the Stone of Fal, which shrieked under the lawful king (May 1); the Sword of Nuada, from which none could escape (Aug. 1); and the Cauldron of the Dagda, from which none would come away unsatisfied.

Among these papers was a testament written by Gavin Arthur on the Feast of Brighid 1970. It said:

In a night-long conversation I had with Ella Young in her cottage in Oceano where she died a few weeks later, she asked me to carry on this Fellowship. . . She and I and others celebrated all four feasts in the dunes of Oceano, 1931 through 1935, and off and on thereafter until she died, July 23, 1956, in Oceano. Her ashes were scattered in the Lyman Canyon behind the Old Bail Mill between St. Helena and Calistoga, and there I started celebrations of the four Feasts from 1960 on.

 

Jonathan Nightshade comments on Aidan's post:

The modern philosopher and writer on Eastern religions Alan Watts, in his autobiography, "In My Own Way" (1972, Pantheon), in describing his poet friend Elsa Gidlow writes, "She had inherited a charisma from a Celtic white witch and nature mystic named Ella Young, who had lived for many years beside the sand dunes south of Pismo Beach ....." (p282). He thereafter briefly mentions his own meeting with Ella Young. Interesting that he refers to her as a "Celtic white witch."

(link to article)

Then I found:

America produced its own, home-grown, modern Pagan revivals during the early twentieth century. What distinguishes them from those based on Wicca is that, like earlier British and Continental revivals, they failed to create lasting movements. Thus, the quarter days, which have always been celebrated as important feasts in Gaelic areas of Britain and Ireland, were brought to California as the key festivals of an Irish mystical society founded in the early twentieth century. This was the Fellowship of Shasta, imported into America by one member whose followers remained active—although hardly noticed—until the 1960s.

Footnote: Information from Ella Young, relayed to me by Aidan Kelly, June 1993. (Modern Pagan Festivals: A Study in the Nature of Tradition by Ronald Hutton)

Ella Young is the link between Ireland's Celtic Revival and the homegrown nature-based spiritual practices of California's Bay Area. 

Whatever spirituality I seem to practice, Ella Young is responsible for it. 

This Fenian Graves page on Ella is the best summary of her life that I found.

I like this piece by Mara Freeman:

Ella felt most at home in the wild and rugged beauty of the West Coast, where she revived the old Celtic Mystery School at Mount Shasta, the sacred mountain in Northern California. It was called the “Fellowship of Shasta,” and dedicated to the Goddess in her aspect of Brigit, mother of poetry, smithcraft and healing, to whom Ella felt particularly close. In doing so, she became one of the first people in the United States to revive the religion of the Great Goddess. The Fellowship held their gatherings in places of power, which, along with Mount Shasta, included Mount Tamalpais in Marin County and Point Lobos on the Central Coast. In these then pristine and wild places they celebrated the four Fire Festivals of the Celtic year.

Her relationship with the Earth, which she saw as a "great living Being," was practical as well as mystical. When out on a picnic with her friends, she would never touch food until she had poured a libation of wine, giving thanks to "Earth, Air, Fire, Water" and the Great Goddess herself, whom she addressed in Gaelic. The Fellowship of Shasta became involved in environmental activism, working to prevent developers from building on Point Lobos (now a State Park) and also with the Save the Redwoods League which works to preserve the remaining old-growth forests of California. (Ella Young, Mara Freeman)

Irish people like Ella inspired a people with myths and half remembered stories. These stories are necessary to create anything worthwhile out of repression and colonization. But Ireland did not become the nation she dreamed of. And California may be the Visionary State, but it is not what it could have been. 

Stories are not lies. They are what binds us, season after season, family to family.

Chains of Fires

Yesterday morning the sun rose over a clear horizon at Brú na Boyne (Newgrange). Covid has closed the monument to visitors, so Ireland's OPW placed cameras inside. In the video below, you can witness the Sun's arrow filling the burial chamber like it did 5000 years ago. No crowds, no lottery winners. 

This morning, I saved a few coals from last night's fire. Who knows where we will be next winter? Who knows where any of us will be? But the sun will rise. 

Here is a poem by Elsa Gidlow, a sacred text of my winter traditions. 

Chains Of Fires

Each dawn, kneeling before my hearth,

Placing stick, crossing stick

On dry eucalyptus bark

Now the larger boughs, the log

(With thanks to the tree for its life)

Touching the match, waiting for creeping flame.

I know myself linked by chains of fire

To every woman who has kept a hearth

In the resinous smoke

I smell hut and castle and cave,

Mansion and hovel.

See in the shifting flame my mother

And grandmothers out over the world

Time through, back to the Paleolithic

In rock shelters where flint struck first sparks

(Sparks aeons later alive on my hearth)

I see mothers, grandmothers back to beginnings,

Huddled beside holes in the earth

of igloo, tipi, cabin,

Guarding the magic no other being has learned,

Awed, reverent, before the sacred fire

Sharing live coals with the tribe.

For no one owns or can own fire,

it lends itself.

Every hearth-keeper has known this.

Hearth-less, lighting one candle in the dark

We know it today.

Fire lends itself,

Serving our life

Serving fire.

At Winter solstice, kindling new fire

With sparks of the old

From black coals of the old,

Seeing them glow again,

Shuddering with the mystery,

We know the terror of rebirth.

I've Been Taking My Bath Wrong

The other day I removed twenty-five €2 coins from a small plastic box attached to a wall of the back porch and replaced them in their basket. Later that day I handed my landlady a brown envelope with a €50 note in it. If you don't understand what's going on, I'll explain below.

When I handed her the envelope, I said, "We'll be burning more electricity because I'm taking showers every day. The bath water is too cold in the mornings now."

And she said, "Oh, don't you know about the immersion? I thought I showed it to you when you moved in."

We have an immersion?

She explained how I could turn on the immersion with a switch in the hot press. 

Of course. 

I went back inside and as soon as I saw the switch near the floor  I remembered she had pointed it out when we moved in. 

Irish electricity is complicated.

At the two other houses we've lived in, consumption of electrical power registered on a meter at the back of the house. We paid the electric company for kilowatts consumed, just like I do in Santa Cruz. At this house I buy €2 coins from my landlady, and insert them into a slot, like a pay-as-you-go telephone.

Pre-covid, the landlady would have entered our back porch and with a tiny padlock key opened and emptied the box herself. Post-covid, she loaned me the key once, and I leave the lock open, recycling the twenty-five coins as needed. She trusts me that way.

I had heard about houses with coin-operated electricity before, but didn't understand it. I assumed I misunderstood because a landlord coming around to service the electricity meter like a vending machine would be silly.

Since that conversation with my landlady, I can take a hot bath anytime I want, as long as I remember a hour before I want to.

In our house "the boiler" heats water for the radiators, sinks and bathtub. We turn it on for a few hours in the morning and again in the late afternoon. (It burns kerosene.) We're comfortable enough. Water for sinks and bathtub is stored in a three-foot tank in a closet in a bedroom.

Another word for "closet" is "clothes press" so a " 'press" that is always warm because the hot water is stored there is the "hot press." It's where you keep your bed linens.

What my landlady told me is that the tank in the hot press also has an on-demand heating element. This is the immersion. Some immersions have "kitchen" and "bath" options, which heat different degrees, or maybe volumes, of water. This I don't know yet.

If you google "did you you turn off the immersion" you'll learn about an anxious and ancient Irish obsession.

This bit by comedian Des Bishop explains:

(I actually don't like this comedian. He is cringy and self-conscious. Some of his bits are sexist or just lame. But he gives Irish people the chance to make fun of Americans in Ireland, and they deserve the opportunity.) 

 

I've noticed other oddities of electricity in Ireland: hotels that require you to put the room key in a slot before the lights come on. No electrical outlets in the bathroom, and lights operated with a pull string instead of a switch. Every receptacle has an on/off switch of its own.

I understood these to be signs of electricity as a rare and dangerous force only lately introduced.

But on the other hand: there's a fecking electric on-demand heater in every shower. That one actually scared me. In my early visits I told no one I was afraid to stand naked and soaking wet six inches from a 220V appliance.

These experiences left me curious if this was "just Ireland" or if the rest of Europe did their electricity differently. Recently, my favorite podcast, The Irish Passport, devoted an episode on the electrification of Ireland that answered all my questions.

Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain when Ireland was part of the UK, but they never brought the benefits and abominations of industrialization to the Irish countryside. After independence, the government of the new country knew that generating electric power and building a national grid would be necessary for survival.

In 1925 Ireland built a hydroelectric dam across the Shannon at Ardnacrusha. Once they had a central source of electric power, a new Electricity Supply Board implemented a plan to methodically electrify the entire country.

A program about Ardnacrusha on its 85th anniversary. From a public affairs show called Nationwide which only covers good news. I am a devoted viewer.

Because Ireland was so poor, the infrastructure arrived slowly, townland by townland. One townland might move from sixteenth to the twentieth century over a summer, and the next village over could remain in a time capsule for another decade. They didn't finish until 1978. The uneven distribution of electric service contributed to the abandonment of townlands that leave Ireland with its picturesque ruins and isolated burial grounds. (Something similar is happening with the rollout of broadband, but that's another post.)

This slow deployment of the electric grid, and its relatively recent arrival is why I slip coins into my power meter.

The podcast includes wonderful interviews with women who remember the arrival of the washing machine and the electric range. Some of them signed contracts with the Electrical Services Board to hold twice-monthly workshops teaching their neighbors how to use electric appliances. In exchange for two years of their marketing meetings, they were given "a new kitchen."

The program is worth the time if you're interested in cultural history and its intersection with women's freedom and technology.

I mentioned what I had learned to a friend of mine, and she told me she cooked all her family's meals on a turf-fuel "range" until the 1990s. She is proud of how she could control the heat of the oven, measuring it with her bare hand, and raising and lowering the temperature under the pots by moving them around the cooking surface.

It might have been something like this. When I lived in an old farmhouse in Soquel, we were astounded to see that our gas range also burned wood, but were afraid to ever use it. 

She also mentioned that the house she lived in came with turbury rights: the deed of your house came with the right to cut turf from a bog. Enough for every hearth, and no more. 

A right of turbary in relation to bogland, in its simplest form, means the right to cut and carry away turf from a specific plot of bogland, and includes the right of preparing and storing on the bogland any turf that you cut from it. ...

The right to take turf for fuel in a house does not attach to the lands, but attaches to the dwelling house situate on the lands: it cannot be apportioned or severed from the dwelling house. (Irish Examiner.)

She told me that when she bought their house in the 70s, the agent took her over to a bog near Glen about eight miles away where she and her husband cut turf for their household every year. I asked how you knew where you could cut, and she said because someone showed you. 

Now that I'm finished writing this, I'd like to take a bath. 

But I forgot to turn on the immersion.

So Much Hope

 So much hope. 

That link is to an RTE feature on the election of Biden. Images of Ireland and current events with a recording of Biden reciting a Doubletake by Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney.

Obama awarding Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Irish poets are quoted. 

Biden visits Newgrange and a pub. Kisses babies. Crowd sings Fields of Athenry. 

Biden visits the Blewits of Ballina, and experiences Irish hospitality.

Celebrations of Biden's victory in Ballina

At Biden's official visit Taoiseach Enda Kenny gave him a camán and sliotar. 

"Mr. Biden! Quick word for the BBC?"

"BBC? I'm Irish."

Oweynagat

That little hole at the side of a Roscommon field is one of my favorite places in Ireland. It's called Cave of the Cats (Oweynagat). In many Irish folk tales the cave is an entrance to the Otherworld.

RTE hosts a wonderful article about Oweynagat, with lots of photos and links. The RTE series Almanac of Ireland includes a visit to the cave by Manchán Magan. He enters the cave by himself and without a light, and I sense that he had more of an adventure in there than he lets on.

Since the first time I visited the cave about eight years ago, the nearby Cruachan Aí Rathcroghan heritage center has brought their geological and archaeological research to the public online. In a way, I wish this video were not so good, so that visitors had less of an idea what to expect.

My friend John Willmott of Carrowcrory Cottage hosts a weekly online program about Irish culture and when he invited contributions to a program about Halloween's origins, I was inspired to properly tell my own experience in Oweynagat. Like the story of Nera, it's best read out loud. Nearly every word of it is true.

Oweynagat

I entered the cave of the Corvid Queen.

Her ladies waited in pines, calling “Back Back Back.”

Doughty, I undressed,

Crouched and bent,

My bare feet finding a fissure and a stone. 

They tell me that stone shouts out a man’s name,

But in here women will whisper. 

Down into the dark and wet, sliding and holding,

Deep and in, bare feet finding

Stones and rocks and mud and magic. 

At the bottom lies one sharp rock to lean on.

High above, too far for fingers’ touch: 

The arch, a fornix, a vault, a chamber.

Here I waited in the dark, not to die, not to rot, but speak at last

With the Corvid Queen. 

I entered the cave of the Corvid Queen,

On a young winter’s night when fires burn unbanked

Welcoming home beloved dead. 

I opened my ears and attended her voice,

As clear as you hear my voice right now. 

“Join my people and eat our food. Dance to our music, sleep in our beds.” 

So spoke the Corvid Queen, and I crossed into her cabin.

Not dark, but golden with firelight, and bright with loving eyes. 

Hot meat, warm bread, cold ale. 

I danced with the daughters of the Corvid Queen and sang with her sons. 

They dressed me in plaid woolen shawls and smooth leather boots. 

In one night, I lived a long lifetime, 

Welcomed to the cabin of the Corvid Queen. 

Near dawn my friends fell around me, sleeping and fading from sight. 

I gave gratitude like a good guest, made to leave, and never return.

“Take me with you,” said the Corvid Queen.

“Take me to the western edge of the western island.

Where a palace faces the sun at the bend in the river. 

Bring me where the fires burn and the mountains move. 

Take me to my crow women of tree and sea.”  

Long ago, my teachers taught me: sing and dance, dare even to eat, 

But never make a bargain with the Corvid Queen. 

I took one step in my smooth leather boots, but they dried to dust, my toes stuck in the muck.

No shawl neither, no cabin warm, nor meat nor bread nor ale. 

Just me alone, in a cold cave, my naked skin gray against stones. 

I tore my feet from the clenching mud, and twisted my flesh from the sanctuary shelf. 

I aimed to clamber the rocky slope, toward air and light, and the winter’s evening. 

“Back Back Back,” called the Corvid Queen. 

“Take me with you, Back Back Back.

You danced, you sang, took my meat, bread, and ale.” 

She flew in my face, black wings flashing, 

Her dark cloak soaked in blooded waters. 

My heart in my neck, my knees scraping raw, 

I bolted away from her commanding call.

Halfway up I heaved too high, struck my forehead, and left my blood. 

My unfeeling hands like claws, I dragged onward, and there: light, at last.

“Back Back Back” she called from below, but I left her bereft, in her corvid cave.

On the first of November I returned to my home,

To the western edge of the western island. 

Safe home to my palace facing the sun, at the bend in the river. 

Here I remember the Corvid Queen

And her ladies waiting in pines, calling “Back Back Back.”

This row of pines is what you see when emerging from Owenagat.

from The Adventures of Nera

This creep story takes place at Rath Cruachan, where people say Halloween originated. It's best read out loud.

One Hallowe'en, in the palace of the King Ailill and Queen Mebh, all the people feasted and drank celebrating the holiday marking the end of harvest and the beginning of winter. The feasting hall at Rath Cruachan was warm and bright, and the night was long. King Ailill wanted entertainment, so he decided to challenge his warriors. 

Earlier that day, two captives had been hanged, and the King offered his gold-hilted sword to the warrior who could go out and tied a willow withe to the ankle of one of the dead men. The youngest warrior leaped up, saying he would do it in a flash, but he soon returned to the feasting hall, saying he saw spooks walking around outside, and he was too scared to tie the willow withe to the corpse’s ankle. Then the oldest warrior said he wasn’t afraid of spooks, and he would claim the gold-hilted sword. But he soon returned, saying he could hear great hungry cats howling outside the palace, and he was too afraid to tie a willow withe to the corpse’s ankle.

Finally, the warrior Nera said he would do it and claim the prize.

Nera went outside and held his eyes to the ground and saw no spooks. He hummed a tune and heard no cats. He went straight up the hill where the corpses hung. He tried three times to wrap the withe around the hanged man's ankle. But the withe was long and springy, and every time he tried to weave it in, the withe sprung open and lashed him in the face. Meanwhile, Nera thought he saw a spook creeping up the hill toward the gallows. He thought he heard a cat down around the other side of the hill.

But neither spooks nor cats scared him so much as when he heard a croaking, slimy voice above him. “Peg it to my ankle,” the voice said. Nera looked up and saw the face of the corpse looking down at him. With lips unmoving in the grimace of death, the corpse said, “Peg it to my ankle and you will win the prize.”

Nera did as the corpse suggested, and soon he fastened the withe to the corpse’s ankle with a peg. “Thank you,” Nera said, and turned back toward the feasting hall and his prize.

But he heard the ghastly voice say, “I was very thirsty when I was hanged. If you would like to repay me, take me to get a drink.” 

Nera really couldn’t refuse, and the moment he agreed, the corpse slipped the noose and fell on Nera’s back, wrapping his arms around Nera’s neck, and his long legs fast around Nera’s waist.

“Whither shall I carry thee?” asked Nera.

“Just to that nearest cottage,” said the corpse, his breath rank against Nera’s ear.

They approached the cottage, but the cottage was surrounded in a lake of fire.

“There is no drink for us in this house,” said the corpse. “They must have banked their fire as they are supposed to. Let us go to the next nearest house.”

Nera carried the corpse to the next cottage, its body heavy and cold against his back. But that house was surrounded in a lake of water. 

“There is no drink for us in this house,” said the corpse. “They must have thrown out the washing tub, the bathing tub, and slop pail before sleeping. Let us go to the next house.” And what could Nera do but obey because the corpse held tight around his neck and waist, its scratchy beard at his cheek.

“Now there is my drink in this house,” said the corpse, springing from Nera’s back and walking straight in through the door.

Inside the cottage a family was sleeping, the washing tub and the bathing tub and slop pail sitting on the floor. The corpse drank a draught from each the washing tub and the bathing tub, and spit the last sip at the faces of the sleeping family, so that they all died.

“Thank you very much,” said the corpse, and smacked his terrible lips.

“What now?” asked Nera, ready for anything, and hoping he would avoid the fate of the family dead in their beds.

“Return me to my reward,” said the corpse, and he sprang onto Nera’s back once more. Nera walked past the other two houses and to hanging place. When they got there, the corpse jumped up into the noose, and there he hung, with a withe around his ankle, never to speak, and never to drink again.

And this is why every night we take care to bank the fire and protect the house from the wandering dead. Every night we take care to throw out the washing tub, the bathing tub, and the slop pail, and protect the house from restless spirits.

The rule’s one exception is Hallowe’en night, where everyone banks their home fire and gathers together at one fireside. No one sleeps that long night, and we burn fuel from our own houses in the one fire together. And while we stay at the fire, singing and feasting, our beloved dead might join us, for on that night, they come back to us to comfort with memory.



The most cited source for this story is The Adventures of Nera, translated by Kuno Meyer. I also like the version told by James Slaven.

My favorite version is told by Chris Thompson and Isolde Carmody of Story Archeology podcast.  In another episode they tell the rest of Nera's adventures, that next happened to him on that magical night. 

Live from the Carrowcrory Labyrinth Garden

 

My friend John Willmott has been hosting online Sunday Sessions, in Irish folklore and traditions. Upcoming topics will include poetry, snakes, corvids, Samhain (Halloween).

I missed the session about Apples last week, and although yesterday's session was about the Ogham, he invited me to read a poem I recently wrote, as an apple addendum. 

My reading of "Sixty is an Abundant and Unitary Perfect Number" starts around 1:05:00

I have to say that before watching John's presentation, I wasn't all that interested in Ogham stones. They seem like nothing more than a man scribbling his name in public, the same old thing whether in gold or spray paint. But John has a way of collecting complicated, controversial theories in Irish culture, and always, always, bringing it down to trees. 

John's contributions to helping people world-wide learn more about Ireland and Irish culture deserves a post of its own. Until I write that, his website links to Ronan Kelly's feature about Carrowcrory, featuring Claire Roche as guide. Start there. 

Seanfhocail (Old Words) for New Times

 

Molly NicCeile teaches Irish from her youtube channel, Gaeilge i mo chroí (Irish in My Heart). This episode is about Irish proverbs: the relatable, inspiring, and what she calls "sharp" ones.

My favorite is in the last category: Ní chreidtear an fhírinne ó bhréagadóir. The truth is not believed by a liar.

Gort na Tiobratan on TV

When we lived in Kerry we often visited Gobnait's shrine in Ballyvourney, and I wrote about it many times.

A Few Things I Like About Ireland

Kissing the Ballyvourney Stone

Everything I May Write about St. Gobnait and Hints of What I Can't

Recently on TG4, Gobnait's shrine was featured on a series about Irish townlands, her townland being Gort na Tiobratan.

You should be able to watch it with this link. It's only about 20 minutes. Make sure you turn the subtitles on.

Patterns of Things

Our house in Dunfanaghy was modern and shiny, but I like our current house more. You can see why for yourself.

 

Meditation on a Flock of Sheep, plus New Grange

 

Click the link for a bigger view on youtube. As the sheep leave the first field, the dog jumps on the back of the quad. 

Listening to Ireland

Since I'm experiencing Ireland through my own little neighborhood these days, I thought I'd share the podcasts I take with me on my walks. 

Blindboy Podcast

As he says, it is probably best to start at the beginning of his podcast a few years ago. He started it to promote a best selling book of short stories, and when his publisher told him he wouldn't sell any copies if he read them out for free on the internet, he just started talking about things that interest him: music history, how to achieve good mental health, Irish culture and history. After a few years, he started doing live gigs, and they're gas. I wrote about the one I went to. RTE listed this one first on their top five Irish podcasts, and I agree that the interview he did with Spike Lee is an excellent introduction. 

Blúiríní Béaloidis

Blúiríní Béaloidis / Folklore Fragments, used to be released monthly by the National Folklore Collection at UCD. It publishes less often now. 

History of Ireland

Each week Kevin Dolan releases a very short show telling an episode in the history of Ireland's independence from the UK.  It helps me understand current events and is relevant to other independence movements of the 20th and 21st centuries. I appreciate how he focuses on just one thing at a time. 

Irish History Podcast

This one has been online for more than ten years. Fin Dwyer has done series on the Black Death, Norman Invasion, The Great Hunger—and recently—Irish people who fought on both sides of the Spanish Civil War. He's a historian and you can depend on his well-researched and even-handed analysis. I went on a tour of north Dublin he offered a few years ago. 

Irish Times Women's Podcast

Been on my phone for ages; never listen to it. I think I can't get past the fact that it is sponsored by a chocolate company. Sometimes I'm my own worst enemy. 

The Irish Passport

Absolute favorite. A guide to Irish history, culture, and politics by two every smart and fearless reporters. They covered Brexit better than anybody, also accents, Derry, 1916, Fairies, the Catholic Church, and "the knowledge gap:" the fact that Irish people know British History, and British people don't know that Ireland is a separate country yet. 

Motherfocloir

I don't listen to Motherfocloir as much as I used to, as the hosts started getting a bit too self-righteous. The podcast is about the Irish language and therefore covers so much more. Don't let my lukewarm reaction keep you from it. 

Neil Oliver's Love Letter to the British Isles

This isn't an Irish podcast, and many people are sick of how Ireland is included in "British Isles." But the archipelago has a shared culture for thousands of years, and I learn things on Oliver's show that apply to what I experience here. Oliver is Scottish, and a popular broadcaster on BBC4. On this show, he's unleashed, and able to express his wonder at mystery, without ever leaving the firm ground of science. 

Shite Talk: An Irish History Podcast

It's like listening to two guys telling each other obscure history stories in a pub. They've been doing it for years. Last week I listened to a story from the War of Independence when a man discovered holy statues bleeding in his bedroom. The statues drew such crowds the town needed the IRA to collect tickets. Michael Collins got interested, and you won't believe what he discovered.

Story Archeology

This is another favorite that I've been listening to for years, but I heard they stopped because of illness and lack of technical support. Two geniuses, a storyteller and a linguist, examine Irish mythology and early literature.  Start with their series about Irish goddesses.