Women in Celtic History and Lore

 

                                           Photo by Nigel Cox

The Celtic world spread over a large territory, from central Europe to Spain to the British Isles. Celtic culture originated in the Iron Age and continues to this day in places such as Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Brittany.

The Romans, in particular, wrote about the Celts because their armed forces invaded Celtic territory and enslaved the Celtic people. Most Celts had been absorbed into the Roman Empire by the 1^st century C.E. By 500 C.E., Celtic culture was confined to Brittany and the British Isles. Because of their commonly-held language and traditions, these Celts stood out from other cultures and became the historical model for Celtic culture.

Celtic women were protected throughout their lives: first, by their fathers; secondly, by their husbands; and lastly, by their sons. But Celtic women were not weak and dependent creatures. They were highly regarded as daughters, wives, mothers, and warriors, if the need arose. They were expected to give good counsel, keep their households in good order, and remain virtuous and loyal to husband, family, and tribe.

Queen Boudicca

The best historical example of a fierce Celtic woman is Queen Boudicca of the Iceni tribe, who reigned in the East Anglia region of Britain. In 60 C.E., she led a revolt against the Romans. Bravely driving a chariot against Roman forces, she fought for the liberation of her tribe and vengeance for the rape of her two daughters by Roman soldiers. Although defeated, she went down in history as a British folk hero.

The Old Hag of Beara

The Old Hag of Beara is a legendary Irish Cailleach (divine crone) whose story originated in the Beara Peninsula in County Cork, Ireland. She represented a woman’s life cycle. In her youth, she was the consort of kings, toasting the king and giving sage advice to her royal lover. As an ugly old crone, she sits on the Beara Peninsula as a pile of stones, wielding power over the wind and sea. She has been associated with the coming of winter.

The Old Woman of Beare Poem

It is of Corca Dubhne she was, and she had her youth seven times over, and every man that had lived with her died of old age, and her grandsons and great-grandsons were tribes and races.

And through a hundred years she wore upon her head the veil Cuimire had blessed. Then age and weakness came upon her and it is what she said:

Ebb-tide to me as to the sea; old age brings me reproach; I used to wear a shift that was always new; to-day, I have not even a cast one.

It is riches you are loving, it is not men; it was men we loved in the time we were living.

There were dear men on whose plains we used to be driving; it is good the time we passed with them; it is little we were broken afterwards.

When my arms are seen it is long and thin they are; once they used to be fondling, they used to be around great kings.

The young girls give a welcome to Beltaine when it comes to them; sorrow is more fitting for me; an old pitiful hag.

I have no pleasant talk; no sheep are killed for my wedding; it is little but my hair is grey; it is many colours I had over it when I used to be drinking good ale.

I have no envy against the old, but only against women; I myself am spent with old age, while women's heads are still yellow.

The stone of the kings on Feman; the chair of Ronan in Bregia; it is long since storms have wrecked them, they are old mouldering gravestones.

The wave of the great sea is speaking; the winter is striking us with it; I do not look to welcome to-day Fermuid son of Mugh.  

I know what they are doing; they are rowing through the reeds of the ford of Alma; it is cold is the place where they sleep.

The summer of youth where we were has been spent along with its harvest; winter age that drowns everyone, its beginning has come upon me.

It is beautiful was my green cloak, my king liked to see it on me; it is noble was the man that stirred it, he put wool on it when it was bare.

Amen, great is the pity; every acorn has to drop. After feasting with shining candles, to be in the darkness of a prayer-house.

I was once living with kings, drinking mead and wine; to-day I am drinking whey-water among withered old women.

There are three floods that come up to the dun of Ard-Ruide: a flood of fighting-men, a flood of horses, a flood of the hounds of Lugaidh's son.

The flood-wave and the two swift ebb-tides; what the flood-wave brings you in, the ebb-wave sweeps out of your hand.

The flood-wave and the second ebb-tide; they have all come as far as me, the way that I know them well.

The flood-tide will not reach to the silence of my kitchen; though many are my company in the darkness, a hand has been laid upon them all.

My flood-tide! It is well I have kept my knowledge. It is Jesus Son of Mary keeps me happy at the ebb-tide.

It is far is the island of the great sea where the flood reaches after the ebb: I do not look for floods to reach to me after the ebb-tide.

There is hardly a little place I can know again when I see it; what used to be on the flood-tide is all on the ebb to-day!

From The Kiltartan Poetry Book by Lady Augusta Persse Gregory, 1919.

Dawn Pisturino

August 24, 2021

Copyright 2021 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.

 

"The Look" and "The Meaning of the Look" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 

Artwork by Eero Jarnefelt

The Look

The Saviour looked on Peter. Ay, no word,

No gesture of reproach; the Heavens serene

Though heavy with armed justice, did not lean

Their thunders that way: the forsaken Lord

Looked only, on the traitor. None record

What that look was, none guess; for those who have seen

Wronged lovers loving through a death-pang keen,

Or pale-cheeked martyrs smiling to a sword,

Have missed Jehovah at the judgment call.

And Peter, from the height of blasphemy --

'I never knew this man' -- did quail and fall

As knowing straight THAT God; and turned free

And went out speechless from the face of all,

And filled the silence, weeping bitterly.

The Meaning of the Look

I think that look of Christ might seem to say --

'Thou Peter! art thou then a common stone

Which I at last must break my heart upon,

For all God's charge to his high angels may

Guard my foot better? Did I yesterday

Wash thy feet, my beloved, that they should run

Quick to deny me 'neath the morning sun?

And do thy kisses, like the rest, betray?

The cock crows coldly. -- Go, and manifest

A late contrition, but no bootless fear!

For when thy final need is dreariest,

Thou shalt not be denied, as I am here;

My voice to God and angels shall attest,

Because I KNOW this man, let him be clear.'

~Elizabeth Barrett Browning, from POEMS, 1844~

BIO: Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born on March 6, 1806 and died June 29, 1861. During the Victorian age, she was considered England's Greatest Living Poet. This was a rare honor for a woman as women did not have the rights and privileges that they enjoy today. By her teen years, Barrett had been self-taught in Greek and Latin, with an adequate knowledge of Greek and Roman literature. Many of her poems refer to heroes and philosophers from Greek and Roman culture. She suffered a spinal injury and became an invalid. Later on, she developed lung problems which may have been due to tuberculosis. She was confined to the house, where she read books and wrote poetry. She would later admit that "books and dreams were what I lived in and domestic life only seemed to buzz gently around, like bees about the grass." She was living with her family at 50 Wimpole Street, London, when the poet Robert Browning discovered her book, Poems, published in 1844. He wrote to her in January of 1845, saying, "I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett." Their love affair progressed against the wishes of her father, and they were secretly married on September 12, 1846. 

During their courtship, Barrett wrote her most beautiful collection of poems, thanking her husband for loving her in spite of her disability and age (she was six years older than her husband.) She finally showed them to him several years later. He persuaded her to include them in her upcoming collection of poetry, Poems, which was published in 1850. These love poems are now known as Sonnets from the Portuguese and include her most famous poem, "How do I Love Thee?"

POWER

 

The wave plunges and the sea-birds cry;

Power is in the ocean and the sky.

The wind-driven tide

That would come whispering on still days

With a long ripple breaking in a sigh,

Now crashes down;

The wind-blown gulls

That stood in tranquil days

Like metal birds fixed on the lobster-floats,

Mirrored gray-silver in the glass tide,

Rush with the gale and, when they turn,

Struggle upright, tossed again back.

Heart that, once as still as they,

Idled with an unmeaning sigh,

Or gazed at bygone days in memory's glass,

Now with hard passion buffeted,

Beats up against the gale,

Or crashes on the shattered glass of memory,

And cries that there is power in destiny

As well as in the ocean and the sky.

~ Duncan Campbell Scott ~

April 1941

BIO: Duncan Campbell Scott (1862-1947) was a career civil servant with the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs. In 1913, he was appointed Deputy Superintendent and retired in 1932. He was a member of the Confederation Poets, a group comprised largely of Charles G.D. Roberts (1860-1943), Bliss Carman (1861-1929), and Archibald Lampman (1861-1899). The group focused primarily on nature and the Canadian wilderness. It was strongly influenced by English Victorian poetry and the Romantic School. Scott's travels across Canada while working for the Department of Indian Affairs, and his interactions with First People culture, inspired his poetical works.

"Renascence" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

Photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1933

All I could see from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood;

I turned and looked the other way,

And saw three islands in a bay.

So with my eyes I traced the line

Of the horizon, thin and fine,

Straight around till I was come

Back to where I'd started from;

And all I saw from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood.

Over these things I could not see;

These were the things that bounded me;

And I could touch them with my hand,

Almost, I thought, from where I stand.

And all at once things seemed so small

My breath came short, and scare at all.

But sure, the sky is big, I said;

Miles and miles above my head;

So here upon my back I'll lie

And look my fill into the sky.

And so I looked, and, after all,

The sky was not so very tall.

The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,

And -- sure enough! -- I see the top!

The sky, I thought, is not so grand;

I 'most could touch it with my hand!

And, reaching up my hand to try,

I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

I screamed, and -- lo! -- Infinity

Came down and settled over me;

And, pressing of the Undefined

The definition on my mind,

Held up before my eyes a glass

Through which my shrinking sight did pass

Until it seemed I must behold

Immensity made manifold;

Whispered to me a word whose sound

Deafened the air for worlds around,

And brought unmuffled to my ears

The gossiping of friendly spheres,

The creaking of the tented sky,

The ticking of Eternity.

I saw and heard, and knew at last

The How and Why of all things, past,

And present, and forevermore.

The universe, cleft to the core,

Lay open to my probing sense

That, sick'ning, I would fain pluck thence

But could not, -- nay! But needs must suck

At the great wound, and could not pluck

My lips away till I had drawn

All venom out. -- Ah, fearful pawn!

For my omniscience paid I toll

In infinite remorse of soul.

All sin was of my sinning, all

Atoning mine, and mine the gall

Of all regret. Mine was the weight

Of every brooded wrong, the hate 

That stood behind each envious thrust,

Mine every greed, mine every lust.

And all the while for every grief,

Each suffering, I craved relief

With individual desire, --

Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire

About a thousand people crawl;

Perished with each, -- then mourned for all!

A man was starving in Capri;

He moved his eyes and looked at me;

I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,

And knew his hunger as my own.

I saw at sea a great fog-bank

Between two ships that struck and sank;

A thousand screams the heavens smote;

And every scream tore through my throat.

No hurt I did not feel, no death

That was not mine; mine each last breath

That, crying, met an answering cry

From the compassion that was I.

All suffering mine, and mine its rod;

Mine, pity like the pity of God.

Ah, awful weight! Infinity

Pressed down upon the finite Me!

My anguished spirit, like a bird, 

Beating against my lips I heard;

Yet lay the weight so close about

There was no room for it without.

And so beneath the Weight lay I

And suffered death, but could not die.

Long had I lain thus, craving death,

When quietly the earth beneath

Gave way, and inch by inch, so great

At last had grown the crushing weight,

Into the earth I sank till I

Full six feet under ground did lie,

And sank no more, -- there is no weight

Can follow here, however great.

From off my breast I felt it roll,

And as it went my tortured soul

Burst forth and fled in such a gust

That all about me swirled the dust.

Deep in the earth I rested now;

Cool is its hand upon the brow

And soft its breast beneath the head

Of one who is so gladly dead.

And all at once, and over all,

The pitying rain began to fall;

I lay and heard each pattering hoof

Upon my lowly, thatched roof,,

And seemed to love the sound far more

Than ever I had done before.

For rain it hath a friendly sound

To one who's six feet underground;

And scarce the friendly voice or face:

A grave is such a quiet place.

The rain, I said, is kind to come

And speak to me in my new home.

I would I were alive again

To kiss the fingers of the rain,

To drink into my eyes the shine

Of every slanting silver line,

To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze

From drenched and dripping apple-trees.

For soon the shower will be done,

And then the broad face of the sun

Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth

Until the world with answering mirth

Shakes joyously, and each round drop

Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.

How can I bear it; buried here,

While overhead the sky grows clear

And blue again after the storm?

O, multi-colored, multiform,

Beloved beauty over me,

That I shall never, never see

Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,

That I shall never more behold!

Sleeping your myriad magics through,

Close-sepulchered away from you!

O God, I cried, give me new birth,

And put me back upon the earth!

Upset each cloud's gigantic gourd

And let the heavy rain, down-poured

In one big torrent, set me free,

Washing my grave away from me!

I ceased; and, through the breathless hush

That answered me, the far-off rush

Of herald wings came whispering

Like music down the vibrant string

Of my ascending prayer, and -- crash!

Before the wild wind's whistling lash

The startled storm-clouds reared on high

And plunged in terror down the sky,

And the big rain in one black wave

Fell from the sky and struck my grave.

I know not how such things can be

I only know there came to me

A fragrance such as never clings

To aught save happy living things;

A sound as of some joyous elf

Singing sweet songs to please himself,

And, through and over everything,

A sense of glad awakening.

The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,

Whispering to me I could hear;

I felt the rain's cool finger-tips

Brushed tenderly across my lips,

Laid gently on my sealed sight,

And all at once the heavy night

Fell from my eyes and I could see,--

A drenched and dripping apple-tree,

A last long line of silver rain,

A sky grown clear and blue again.

And as I looked a quickening gust

Of wind blew up to me and thrust

Into my face a miracle

Of orchard-breath, and with the smell, --

I know not how such things can be! --

I breathed my soul back into me.

Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I

And hailed the earth with such a cry

As is not heard save from a man

Who has been dead, and lives again.

About the trees my arms I wound;

Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;

I raised my quivering arms on high;

I laughed and laughed into the sky,

Till at my throat a strangling sob

Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb

Sent instant tears into my eyes;

O God, I cried, no dark disguise

Can e'er hereafter hide from me

Thy radiant identity!

Thou canst not move across the grass

But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,

Nor speak, however silently,

But my hushed voice will answer Thee.

I know the path that tells Thy way

Through the cool eve of every day;

God, I can push the grass apart

And lay my finger on Thy heart!

The world stands out on either side

No wider than the heart is wide;

Above the world is stretched the sky, --

No higher than the soul is high.

The heart can push the sea and land

Farther away on either hand;

The soul can split the sky in two,

And let the face of God shine through

But East and West will pinch the heart

That cannot keep them pushed apart;

And he whose soul is flat -- the sky

Will cave in on him by and by.

BIO: Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) grew up in poverty but managed to earn a degree from Vassar College when Caroline B. Dow offered to pay for her education. Millay was an independent, outspoken, and brash feminist, openly bisexual, and rabidly anti-Fascist during World War II. She married Eugen Jan Boissevain in 1923, even though she always feared that marriage and domestic responsibilities would hamper her writing.

By the age of fifteen, Millay had published poems in St. Nicholas' Children's Magazine, the Camden Herald, and the Current Literature Anthology. But her national recognition as a poet began when she entered her poem "Renascence" in a poetry contest in 1912. Although the poem only won fourth place, other winners in the contest openly declared Millay's poem to be the best in the contest. In 1923,  she won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her poem, "The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver." In 1943, she was awarded the Robert Frost Medal for her lifetime achievements. She died in 1950 after falling down a flight of stairs. Her death was ruled a heart attack.