Scotland's Sacred Goddess E-Book

Stuart McHardy

• Herausgeber: Luath Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 305

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

In Scotland's Sacred Goddess: Hidden in Plain Sight, Stuart McHardy delves into the rich tapestry of pre-Christian Scottish beliefs, uncovering the enduring presence of ancient mythologies in today's landscape. Long before the arrival of Christian monks, the Scots revered a pantheon of deities, with the Cailleach Goddess at its heart.  McHardy skillfully weaves together ancient oral traditions, place names, local folklore and the shapes of the land itself to reveal the lingering echoes of these ancient beliefs. He traces how the stories of witches, the Devil and other supernatural beings are rooted in these early mythologies, highlighting a powerful feminine force central to creation and understanding the world. This book explores how ancient stories, though transformed over millennia, continue to influence Scotland's cultural and physical landscape, offering a fresh perspective on how ancient myths and the sacred feminine still influence the modern world. McHardy's work is a profound testament to the enduring legacy of Scotland's sacred goddess.

Leseprobe

STUART MCHARDY is a writer, historian and storyteller. He has long lectured on many aspects of Scottish history and culture both in Scotland and abroad. Combining the roles of scholar and performer gives McHardy a particular insight into tradition. As happy singing old ballads as analysing ancient legends, he has held such posts as Director of the Scots Language Resource Centre and President of the Pictish Arts Society. McHardy lives in Musselburgh with his wife Sandra.

The cover image depicts Cailleach, the queen or hag of winter (also known as Beira). In Gaelic folklore, she is associated with Winter and the creation of the Scottish landscape. The Cailleach is rarely depicted, but in the few images of her, she is seen as an ancient, hagggard, white-haired being, reflecting the harshness of Scottish winter.

By the same author:

Tales of Whisky and Smuggling (House of Lochar, 2002)

Scots Poems to be Read Aloud (ed.) (Luath Press, 2003)

MacPherson’s Rant and other tales of the Scottish Fiddle (Birlinn, 2004)

The Silver Chanter and other tales of Scottish Piping (Birlinn, 2004)

School of the Moon (Birlinn, 2004)

Tales of the Picts (Luath Press, 2005)

On the Trail of Scotland’s Myth’s and Legends (Luath Press, 2005)

The Well of the Heads and other Clan Tales (Birlinn, 2005)

The White Cockade and other Jacobite Tales (Birlinn, 2006)

On the Trail of The Holy Grail (Luath Press, 2006)

Tales of Edinburgh Castle (Luath Press, 2007)

Edinburgh and Leith Pub Guide (Luath Press, 2008)

Tales of Loch Ness (Luath Press, 2009)

Tales of Whisky (Luath Press, 2010)

Speakin o Dundee (Luath Press, 2010)

A New History of the Picts (Luath Press, 2011)

Tales of Bonnie Prince Charlie & the Jacobites (Luath Press, 2012)

Arthur’s Seat (Luath Press, 2012) with Donald Smith

Scotland the Brave Land (Luath Press, 2012)

Pagan Symbols of the Picts (Luath Press, 2012)

Calton Hill (Luath Press, 2013) with Donald Smith

Edinburgh Old Town (Luath Press, 2014) with John Fee & Donald Smith

Scotland’s Democracy Trail (Luath Press, 2014) with Donald Smith

Scotland’s Future History (Luath Press, 2015)

Scotland’s Future Culture (Luath Press, 2017)

The Stones of the Ancestors (Luath Press, 2020) with Douglas Scott

The Nine Maidens: Priestesses of the Ancient World (Luath Press, 2023)

First published 2025

ISBN: 978-1-80425-263-5

Typeset in 10.5pt Sabon by Lapiz

All photographs by Stuart McHardy unless otherwise stated.

The author’s right to be identified as author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.

© Stuart McHardy 2025

for mothers everywhere and everywhen

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Cailleach and Story

Chapter 2 The Naming of Places

Chapter 3 Mother Mountain

Chapter 4 Spilled Aprons

Chapter 5 The Breasts of the Goddess

Chapter 6 Figures in the Landscape

Chapter 7 Dualities: The Cailleach and Bride

Chapter 8 Wells and Water

Chapter 9 Waifs and Strays

Chapter 10 And So…

Glossary

Endnotes

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

THANKS TO HUGH MCARTHUR, Seannachie of Clan Arthur, for permission to use photographs of Dumbarton Rock, Inchcailloch and the Sleeping Warrior.

Thanks to Dougie Scott for the photograph of Tomnaverie.

And thanks to the Luath mob, and in particular Rachael Murray for forbearance and support.

MAP A

A1 Barvas

A2 Calanais

A3 Eilean Mhealasta (Mealastadh, Lewis)

A4 River Laxay (Laxay, Lewis)

A5 Caillich na Mointich

A6 Scalpay

A7 Reibinish

A8 Boreray

A9 Hirta (St Kilda)

A10 Benbecula

A11 Kilmuir

A12 Loch Fada

A13 Glen Bracadale

A14 Raasay

A15 Beinn na Caillich

A16 Beinn na Caillich

A17 Loch Alsh

A18 Loch Carron

A19 Loch Kishom

A20 Gruinard Bay

A21 Cape Wrath

A22 A’ Cailleach/Am Bodach

A23 Strath na Cailleach

A24 Foinaven

A25 A’ Cailleach

A26 Inchnadamph

A27 Little Loch Broom

A28 Beinn Dearg (Bad Cailleach)

A29 A’ Cailleach, Wester Ross

A30 Beinn a’ Bhathaich Àrd (Beinn a Bha’ach Ard)

A31 Glen Affric

A32 Beinn na Caillich

A33 Sgùrr na Cìche

A34 A’Cailleach

A35 Loch Arkaig

A36 Ben Nevis

A37 Na Gruagaichean

A38 Mamores

A39 Am Bodach

A40 Beinn a Bhric

A41 A’ Chailleach

A42 Am Bodach

A43 The Pap of Glencoe

A44 Beinn na Caillich

A45 Mam a Gualainn

A46 Onich

A47 Beinn a’ Bheithir

A48 Ballachulish

A49 Allt a’ Chaorainn

A50 Glen Etive

A51 Glen Orchy

A52 Dalmally

A53 Ben Cruachan

A54 Creag a Bodaich

A55 Pass of Brander

A56 Kinlochmoidart

A57 Loch Moidart

A58 Carn na Caillich

A59 Caliach Point

A60 Loch Tuath

A61 Loch Ba

A62 Carsaig Bay

A63 Nun’s Cave

A64 Bunessan

A65 Tiree

A66 Coll

MAP B

B1 Ring of Brodgar

B2 Maiden Pap

B3 Ben Kilbreck

B4 Loch Shin

B5 Cnoc na Caillich

B6 Rogart

B7 Dornoch

B8 Tarbat Ness

B9 Ben Wyvis

B10 Little Wyvis

B11 Beinn a’ Guilbhein

B12 Cioch Mhor

B13 Lochluichart

B14 Knockfarrel

B15 Contin

B16 Muir of Ord

B17 Glen Urquhart

B18 Loch Ness

B19 Carn a’Bhodaich

B20 Glen Kyllachy

B21 The Witches Stone

B22 Carn na Cailliche

B23 Caird’s Hill

B24 Tap o’ Noth

B25 Cnoc Calliche

B26 Bennachie

B27 Ben Newe

B28 Tomnaverie

B29 Strathdon

B30 Glen Morven

B31 Glen Gairn

B32 Corgarff

B33 Clach Bhan

B34 Ben Avon (Glen Avon)

B35 Braemar

B36 Lochnagar

B37 Morrone

B38 Ben Gulabin (Ben Gulbin)

B39 Beinn a’ Ghlo

B40 Beinn Bhreac

B41 Braeriach

B42 Loch Einich

B43 Glen Feshie

B44 Loch Garten

B45 Ben Goolabin

B46 A’Chailleach

B47 Kingussie

B48 Newtonmore

B49 Loch Ovie

MAP C

C1 Ben Alder

C2 Glen Errochty

C3 Schiehallion

C4 Priory Island

C5 Tigh nam Bodach

C6 Loch Tay

C7 Killin

C8 Gleann Dubh

C9 Ben Ledi

C10 Callander

C11 Ben Gullipen

C12 Ben Lomond

C13 Beinn Bhreac

C14 Loch Awe

C15 Kilmelford

C16 Scarba

C17 Gulf of Corryvreckan

C18 Colonsay

C19 Nave Island

C20 Laggan Bay

C21 Beinn na Caillich

C22 Craighouse Bay

C23 Ardnahoe Loch

C24 Paps of Jura

C25 Jura

C26 Lochgilphead

C27 Beinn Caillich Beathrach

C28 Clachan of Glendaruel

C29 Loch Eck

C30 Beinn Bhreac

C31 Inchcailloch

C32 River Forth

C33 Duncryne

C34 Dumgoyne

C35 Craigmaddie Muir

C36 Loch Caillich

C37 Kintyre

C38 Saddell

C39 Mull of Kintyre

C40 Glen Sannox

C41 Goatfell

C42 Isle of Arran

C43 Craigs of Kyle

C44 Ailsa Craig

C45 Rhins of Galloway

C46 Calliedown Bay

C47 Kirkmaiden

C48 Cailiness Point

C49 Cairnsmuir

MAP D

D1 Ben Vrackie

D2 Strathardle

D3 Glen Isla

D4 White Caterthun

D5 Dunnichen

D6 Carmyllie

D7 Saint Vigeans

D8 Carlingheugh Bay

D9 Craigowl Hill

D10 Kinnoull Hill

D11 Abernethy

D12 Stirling Gap

D13 Maiden Bower

D14 Glen Vale

D15 Lomond Hills

D16 Carlin Maggie

D17 Mount Melville

D18 Drumcarro

D19 Largo Law

D20 Isle of May

D21 Loch Leven

D22 Witch’s Stone

D23 Ballingry

D24 Navitie Hill

D25 Benarty

D26 Capel Stane

D27 Calton Hill

D28 North Berwick Law

D29 Garleton Hills

D30 Traprain Law

D31 Arthur’s Seat

D32 Maiden Castle

D33 Tinto Hill

D34 Kippithill

D35 Carlops

D36 Earlston

D37 Eildon Hill

D38 Dunion

D39 Rubers Law

D40 Maiden Paps

D41 Carlin Tooth

D42 Lochar Moss

D43 Carlingwark Loch

D44 Criffel

D45 Solway Firth

D46 Skiddaw

Introduction

MANY PEOPLE THINK that in the distant past, before the development of patriarchal religions, most if not all human societies believed in a Mother Goddess figure and many books have been written on the subject. Hilda Davidson summarised:

There is general agreement that the concept of a goddess goes back into the remote European past.1

Such ideas have been noted in the mythologies of societies in many parts of the world and F Guirand distilled the idea of the goddess thus:

She was the great Goddess, the universal mother in whom were united all the attributes and functions of divinity. Above all she symbolized fertility… 2

We can see in this emphasis on fertility what may have been the origin of such belief, or more properly beliefs, in that humans, like all animals, were given birth to by a mother. Probably as important is the reality that human children, again like many animals, are directly fed by their mothers who give them both life and nurture. Much of the analysis to date has centred on Middle Eastern and Mediterranean evidence but as the material presented here will show, it seems that such beliefs were in existence here in Scotland, quite possibly up to the arrival of Christianity in the middle of the first millennium. How far back such beliefs go is impossible to tell, but it is distinctly possible that such ideas were already part of the culture of the first people who arrived here after the Last Ice Age.

This work is a collection of a variety of evidence that suggests the concept of a Mother Goddess was part of the belief system of early peoples in Scotland. Recent evidence shows that people were living here as long ago as 12,000BCE.3 This is relatively recent in the history of humanity and it seems certain that such peoples would already have had some kind of mythology to explain how the world, and the universe, worked. Mythology is essentially a means of describing the functioning of reality in terms of beings, modelled on human behaviour, who come to be seen as goddesses and gods. I have noted elsewhere that for mythology to work in pre-literate societies the stories they tell are set within the known environment of the communities in which they flourish.4 It is accepted that the earliest settlers were what is known as hunter-gatherers and had a nomadic or semi-nomadic life, in that they travelled the landscape to take advantage of different food sources throughout the year. The scholarly differentiation between such lifestyles and those of settled agricultural and pastoral societies has blinded us to the reality that these hunter-gatherer groups travelled known and settled paths. They thus developed relationships with the landscape that would have allowed such a localisation process, and this may be the reason that so many human societies have, over time, developed tales of supernatural beings associated with prominent mountains which can be seen over considerable distances.

Most of the material considered herein concerns the ‘Cailleach’, a Gaelic word that has come to mean both an old woman and a nun, but which in earlier times appears to have signified a supernatural being whose attributes clearly mark her out as some kind of goddess figure. Throughout this work there will also be material that refers to the ‘Carlin’, or the ‘Gyre Carlin’, a Scots term for a creature very much akin to the Cailleach, although apparently through the influence of Christianity she became particularly associated with witchcraft.

These figures were gigantic, they had supernatural power over the weather and the landscape and, in some surviving material, over death itself. In other material the Cailleach turns, every Beltain, into the young, beautiful and fertile figure of Bride, a deep mythological construct that makes it clear we are dealing with a Mother Goddess figure. A Goddess who, while an integral part of the cultural traditions of every locale where her stories survived, appears to have been part of a wider system of belief, suggesting that the material presented herein is only a fragment of what once existed.

Much of the surviving material is presented here as not much more than lists. However, those lists are evidence in themselves that the stories of the mythological creature who ruled the weather and formed the landscape were common to all, reflecting that wider system of belief. That belief itself is likely to already have been part of the culture of the first settlers who came here after the Last Ice Age. Different types of material will be presented here, but central to understanding the nature of belief in the far distant past is the corpus of stories that have survived, initially through the oral tradition and subsequently through a wide range of literary collections of such material. It was precisely through coming across so many stories of (usually giant) supernatural females associated with specific locales that I began to realise how extensive these creatures were in traditional culture, and, as we shall see, she is still with us. Listing the material like this may provide a basis for the future identification of patterns of place names reflecting as yet unclear relationships with the landscape.

It is possible the Carlin originally derived from the Cailleach, but it is in the survival of material regarding both figures that we can discern their cultural relevance to the communities in which oral traditions regarding them survived. I have no intention of becoming bogged down in the particulars of linguistics, but some clarity at this stage is necessary. As far as we can tell, at the time the Romans arrived in this part of the world the majority of the tribes living in Scotland spoke CELTIC languages. These have been sub-divided into two main branches, P- and Q-CELTIC. The latter survives in the modern world as Irish and Scottish Gaelic, and the recently revived Manx; P-CELTIC survives in parts of Wales, Brittany and also in the recently revived Cornish. At the time of the Roman invasion, the majority of Scotland’s indigenous tribal populations are believed to have spoken a form of P-CELTIC, akin to Old Welsh, while in Argyll and at least some of the Hebrides, the tribes spoke a Q-CELTIC tongue which was the ancestor of today’s Gaelic. The other language we will be dealing with is Scots, a north Germanic language related to English but which has much in common with the languages of Scandinavia. While this tongue is generally supposed to have arrived in post-Roman times, cultural links showing ongoing connections with Europe from prehistoric times suggest that older forms of this language could have been heard here thousands of years ago, spoken by visitors from the Continent, if not by settled groups.

Given that much of the material, particularly in the case of place names which form a significant part of the evidence, is in Gaelic, a Glossary has been provided, and this includes some of the more archaic Scots terminology as well. In both Gaelic and Scots terms the original forms have been retained, with no attempt to comply with current usage.

Due to the variety of types of material, their physical distribution and the irregular nature of their survival, some specific examples appear in multiple sections of this work, generally with different emphases. I am unaware of any previous attempt at gathering such diverse material pertaining to what are essentially unclassifiable belief systems, and therefore beg the reader’s indulgence if such repetition and variety is at times troublesome, but attempting to lasso smoke is not easy.

The material is organised round specific themes, each having its own chapter. In Chapter 1 we look at the process of story itself; how oral transmission was central to all human culture before the advent of literacy and how the spoken word can retain significant material over millennia. Chapter 2 is concerned with the naming of places, and shows that some place names have a significance well beyond that of simple landscape description. The creation of mythological interpretations of the physical world is common to societies across the globe and the setting of story within the known landscape of each community played a vital part in the development of localised culture.

In Chapter 3 we look specifically at the Cailleach within the mountains of Scotland. Throughout human history, and across the entire planet, mountains have played a considerable role in a wide range of cultural activity, encompassing mythology, religion and tradition, and Scotland is no different than elsewhere. Chapter 4 concentrates on a series of stories that refer to the direct creation of parts of the landscape by supernatural female agency. Such material is in no way unique to Scotland, but here there is a great diversity of protagonists from the Cailleach herself, through various witches and Amazons to the Christian Devil. I suggest the evidence clearly points to the origin of such material being the figure of the Cailleach herself, and many of the variants are later, Christianised – perhaps even sanitised – versions of truly ancient ideas. Chapter 5 focusses on the remarkable amount of suggestive material that is associated with those prominent hills, known as Paps, Ciochan in Gaelic, that are shaped like female breasts, and thus apparently were understood at some level as symbolic of fertility, and perhaps of the supernatural females themselves. A considerable number of these, like the Paps of Jura, The Paps of Fife, the Eildon Hills and the Pap of Glencoe, can be seen as the foci of a wide range of cultural material regarding story, belief and possible ritual practice. This includes stories, significant place names and archaeological sites, all of which may well have initially resulted from a deep psychological reaction to such clear shapes. While each locale is unique, many of them share aspects that underline their central cultural importance. Chapter 6 moves on to consider specific landforms other than the Paps, specifically those where the landscape has been interpreted as a reclining figure, most of which were apparently considered to be female. Some of these, like Caillich na Mointeach on Lewis and Inchcailloch in Loch Lomond, are quite clearly understood as feminine, while there is evidence to suggest that others, like Arran’s Sleeping Warrior and the Sleeping Giant on the southern shore of Fife’s Loch Leven, may well have originally been the same. Noted Scottish folklorists such as Donald Mackenzie and Marian McNeil have drawn attention to the importance of dualities in Scottish culture; one of the most striking is the story of the Cailleach turning from her persona as the Hag of Winter into that of the Bride, effectively the Goddess of Summer and fertility.

Chapter 7 looks at how this duality can actually be seen in the landscape of Scotland, along with material that reflects that other fundamental duality of male and female. In such material, the Cailleach’s partner is the Bodach, a Gaelic word generally meaning Old Man and deriving from ‘bod’, penis, again with strong overtones of fertility. As with other chapters, there is considerable overlap between themes. Without water, there is no life, so the role of wells and water in general is central to all notions of fertility and this is considered in Chapter 8. In addition to their relevance to ideas concerning fertility, wells were often regarded as having healing properties, underlining how many ideas that we associate with folklore from the past arose from the practicalities of everyday life. There is a wide variety of types of material regarding the Cailleach and Carlin in Scotland’s landscape and culture that can be understood as echoes of an apparent belief in the underlying feminine aspect of life itself; some of these are considered in Chapter 9.

This work is not an attempt to catalogue all the material regarding possible remnants of ancient belief in a Scottish Mother Goddess figure; it is an attempt to start mapping out such material, and in Chapter 10 I suggest some conclusions. That so much material is hidden behind attempts by the various manifestations of Christianity to suppress what were considered dangerous ‘pagan’ ideas and practices is undeniable, but to point this out is not a value judgement. Nor is it a value judgement to note that the rootedness of all Western education in systems developed by Christianity, and utterly reliant on literacy, has led to a lack of awareness of the potential for study of oral tradition to enhance understanding of our human past. Hopefully that is in an accelerating process of change.

1

The Cailleach and Story

IN 2016 I WAS in the village of Knockando in Strathspey with my old friend, local storyteller Ben Hinnie. We were heading up to the moorland above Knockando, the high point of which is called Carn na Cailliche, which can be translated as ‘the Knoll of the Hag’. We met with a couple who were friends of Ben’s and lived nearby. Although not native to the district, they had lived there for many years and I asked if they had heard any stories of powerful women in the area. They proceeded to tell me a local tale concerning a man from somewhere further up Strathspey who was walking over the hill one day, late in the year, when he met an old woman, who happened to be a local witch. She asked where he was going and what he was doing. He told her that he was simply checking his route over the moors as he was going to go north to Elgin the next day. She said he wouldn’t manage that. On being asked why, she replied, ‘Because I’ll stop ye.’ Dismissing her as a daft old biddy, he went on his way for a mile or two, checked the route and returned home. The following morning, he awoke to find the hills covered in snow to a depth of several feet. He didn’t get to Elgin.

I would suggest, given the name of the high point of the moorland as Carn na Cailliche, that this story may well have been originally told of the Cailleach, a supernatural female being of great power who, as the material to be considered will show, was said to be capable not just of controlling the weather, but the seasons, and who created mountains, lochs and other parts of the landscape throughout Scotland. She was known in the Gaelic-speaking areas of the Highlands as the Cailleach or the Cailleach Bheur, and in many Scots-speaking parts of the Lowlands as the Carlin or Gyre Carlin. This local tale could well be a remnant of what was once effectively an indigenous mythology of Scotland that survived in the oral traditions of the Scottish people. As we shall see, the capacity of oral transmission to pass on not just culturally important but provably accurate information was, for far too long, considered of little value by most people who made a living from studying the past; as I hope this book will show, such material can shed a great deal of light on the lives of our ancestors for those who have the eyes to see and the ears to listen.

Before we consider how stories happen to survive, we must look at the Cailleach herself. Throughout this book there will be variations in how the name is spelt, including Caillich, Cailliche, Caillach and even Kylach, all these being forms reflected in place names or reported in written versions of the tales. The original collectors of place names for the Ordnance Survey rarely had any knowledge of Gaelic, the orthography of which has been subject to considerable modification since the maps were begun in the early 19th century. What the variants do reflect, however, is that a great many references to this supernatural being survived more than half a century after the eradication of Gaelic culture had begun in the period after the Battle of Culloden in 1746.1 Tales survive by being told and the material referenced in this book can only be a fragment of what existed when the Highlands of Scotland were still populated by people whose ancestors had inhabited the same ground for millennia. The evidence of the 1740s Roy maps, drawn up for the British government, shows the settlement patterns of the Lowland areas of Scotland, where the fermtouns were strikingly similar to the bailes and clachans of the Highlands, suggest the situation there was little different.2

Before the development of centralised, hierarchic religion in human society, there was mythology. Myths grow out of the need to have a comprehensible idea of how life originated and how humanity fits in with a world that was, and increasingly is, unpredictable and always potentially dangerous. Myths arose peopled with beings who, while clearly supernatural, were modelled on how we humans understand ourselves. I believe that all ideas of godhead arise from such mythic roots and are thus human creations. Before the advent of literature, a relatively recent event in human history, such material was handed down through word of mouth. And that process took place over tens of millennia within widely separated communities in a very similar fashion. Unlike later, written religious texts which transform over time into dogma, the mythic tales of early humanity survived in many variations of the same central ideas. The stories that have survived were told within relatively small communities and many such communities existed over remarkable spans of time in the same locale, or within the same immediate area. This is particularly, and provably, the case in Scotland. Such stories were, then as now, rooted in the landscape of the communities that told them. For these communities, they were part of that landscape and the understanding of the world they helped to foster was localised within such communities.

The explanation of how the world works was given through tales that were set within the everyday environment of the people who formed the communities in which the tales were told, and re-told, over and over, such stories becoming part of a personal mental map of their locale that every individual developed as they grew up – a cultural atlas of inherited knowledge. There is an old cliché that every rock and stream in the Scottish Highlands had its own story, and while this may not be literally true, it is reflective of a reality that existed for millennia in which peoples’ relationship with their environment was shaped by the stories they had been told. Much of this would have been almost subconscious, in that both the understanding of how the world functioned and the individual’s role in it would not have been constantly thought about.

The perceptual differences between such societies and the present can perhaps best be understood through their different conceptualisations of time. We are almost constantly aware of time, with our clocks, watches and mobile devices that remind us that we share this concept of time with millions of others. Even a couple of centuries ago here in Scotland, as elsewhere, time was much less structured, and also much more localised. Sunrise, sunset, midday and nightfall were constant, but the perception of them, certainly before the growth of railways necessitated a shared adherence to one system of timekeeping, was again considerably less detailed than we nowadays accept as normal. Further to this, the perception of time in a wider sense was also different. Lara Bacelar Alves shows in a work on the illiterate ‘peasant’ communities of Portugal in the 1950s that time was perceived as essentially cyclical.3 What mattered was where you were in the seasonal calendar of the turning year. This can best be understood through noting the importance of the old seasonal festivals of Imbolc, 1st February; Beltain, 1st May; Lammmas, 1st August; and Samhain, 1st November, which nowadays we call Halloween. Works such as Mary Macleod Banks’ Calendar Customs give us ample evidence of how these dates were of importance well into modern times, and together with the solstices and equinoxes provided foci for a whole range of communal activities.4 F Marian McNeill makes the point that

… in the pre-Christian era the calendar in general use was lunar; time-reckoning was lunar; festivals began on the rising of the moon – that is on their eve and many agricultural operations were governed by its phases.5

Such attitudes towards time would not have just been the norm in pre-literate Scotland before the advent of the clock, but were probably part of a continuum that stretched back millennia – potentially tens of millennia and more. For most people, the world was smaller, but the stories were bigger.

The process of oral transmission created a cultural landscape that was absolutely rooted in the local environment and inseparable from it. This is why a local tale that has echoes in many other places still belongs in its own locale. The reams of print that have been devoted to searching for the origin points of stories miss this point completely. The cultural relevance and value of stories come directly from them being part of the inheritance of local communities, not from them having been brought from elsewhere. The stories of Arthur sleeping with his warriors inside Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, in the Eildon Hills near Melrose and at Sewingshields near Durham and elsewhere, are, like the tales of Finn MacCoul and his companions, the Fianna, in Tomnahurich in Inverness or a cave underneath Dublin were, and to some extent still are, part of local culture.

They survived because they were passed from lip to ear, down the generations in these different locations, from long before literature came on the scene. It is this continuity of local-based, disparate instances of oral transmission that underpins human culture as a whole, and though the stories initially may have arisen from a common source, their survival was absolutely centred in the process by which the tales became effectively embedded in the landscape. My suggestion of each individual having a mental map of their own environment may have been similar to the song lines of Australia investigated by both Bruce Chatwin and Lynne Kelly. 6 And such mental maps were not only interpretative of the physical world, but incorporated wide-ranging aspects of culture and belief that had accrued over considerable periods of time. Like all the tales, mythological or legendary, they were part of the inheritance from the ancestors in all communities.

Before going any further, we need to understand the power of story, how oral transmission passes on ideas and knowledge. In a truly remarkable work published in Australia by the late Jennifer Isaacs, she showed that the indigenous people of Australia, through their Dreamtime stories, have held on to provable ideas for over 30,000 years.7 The proofs of this were the Dreamtime stories of giant marsupials that had died out tens of millennia ago. The indigenous people had no writing but their traditions of storytelling inherited from their ancestors were absolutely central to their way of life. Fossils of giant marsupials dating from over 30,000 years ago were discovered in the 19th century and given the name Diprotodon in the Western-derived scientific nomenclature of the time.8 Knowledge of them had survived through the process of oral transmission even when the animals themselves had become extinct.

A different kind of example of the same process occurred in a bbc programme about archaeology in Orkney from a few years ago. An open-air discussion was taking place concerning how the local people had managed to shift the giant megaliths that form the stone circles and other structures around Brodgar. Various attempts had been made using ropes and rollers, and the muscle power of numerous volunteers, but nothing seemed to work very well. Then a local man, David Tulloch, mentioned that locals had always been told the people in the old times had moved the stones by sliding them on seaweed, this being something that was plentiful in the islands of Orkney. And it worked.

This, I suggest, directly shows the potential usefulness of local oral transmission. In virtually all contemporary societies, knowledge is understood as something acquired through education, and education is nowadays primarily, if not exclusively, delivered through written media. In pre-literate societies, knowledge was acquired through experience, observation and, most of all, through listening to the spoken word. In human terms, literacy is very recent and during the millennia in which oral transmission was the central component not just of culture, but of practical knowledge of how to live in the world, it developed remarkable sophistication. The notion that the telling of stories is never more than ‘Chinese whispers’ comes from the belief that non-literacy is akin to, if not outright savagery, or certainly a state of ignorance. The idea that bards, seannachies and other tradition bearers in this part of the world shared the habits of ‘witch-doctors’ and other tradition bearers in different parts of the world, in that their main function was to flatter their overlords, is part of an essentially Imperialist and racist view of the world. I have written of this elsewhere, but the role of storytelling in the socialisation of children and their response to it is as fundamental today as it has always been.9

There is no denying that much of the material herein presented arising from the oral tradition(s) in Scotland has only survived because it was eventually written down. However, the fact that some such material is still extant today shows the tenacity of the ideas underpinning the stories, given the possibility that at least some of the notions regarding the Cailleach and Carlin were already well-established when this part of the planet was settled after the Last Ice Age.

While the survival of oral material is not unique to Scotland, there is evidence showing that the occupation pattern of Scotland into the 18th century was not much different from hundreds, and potentially thousands, of years earlier.10 This means that instances of linkage between the Cailleach figure and a specific mountain locale may have had a long history indeed within the communities who kept the story alive.

Later, we will consider specific ideas concerning the role of the Cailleach that gave rise to particular place names, but we must always be aware of how traditional stories tie communities to their land, reinforcing their attachment to both the land itself and the cultural inheritance that the tales embody. The role of the ancestors, of the community rather than specific individuals, in the creation and transmission of such cultural inheritance was something that, like much of the awareness of the specifics of the landscape, can perhaps be best understood as a form of permanent, visceral mood music. It was something that was constant, and could be brought to mind, but which did not have to dominate thinking on a day-to-day basis. To continue the musical analogy, the key to becoming proficient on a musical instrument is developing the effectively instinctive playing of individual notes to create a melody. One has to develop the capacity of not thinking how to create each individual note, or chord. I believe it is likely that the repetition, over generations, of stories inherited from the past could have functioned in a similar way for both individuals and communities.

The survival of some of this material can perhaps be understood when we look at the 18th-century military maps of General Roy referred to previously. Initially created as a precaution against further uprisings by the restless natives in the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, the name ‘Ordnance Survey’ makes it plain why such maps were created. What they show is remarkable. In both Highland and Lowland areas, the vast majority of the population, even in the middle of the 18th century, was living in small, essentially economically self-sufficient and generally kin-based groups of around half a dozen families. This was much the same as their ancestors had been doing for hundreds if not thousands of years, for most of which time the dominant socio-economic structure would have been kin-based, or tribal. The Scottish clans, including Border reiving families, were tribal, the word ‘a’ clann’ itself meaning ‘the children’, the future members of the clan. These small townships were known in the Lowlands as ‘fermtouns’ and in the Highlands as ‘bailies’, though nowadays they are often spoken of as ‘clachans’. In the Highland areas these communities were linked together in tribal structures which survived into the 18th century, and as late as the 15th century much of the Border area with England still had similar kin-based structures underpinning their communities. In this respect, it is important to note that the Romans who first wrote about the inhabitants of this part of the world described them as tribal and, as noted elsewhere, the underlying pattern of all Scottish societies throughout the first millennium ce was essentially tribal.11 The clannit aspect of Scottish society remarked upon by visitors into the 18th century echoed, and was in all likelihood a direct inheritance of, the tribal structures noted by those temporary visitors, the Romans.

The actual communities would have moved over time but only within their own local territory and this meant that they had a relationship with their environment, socially, economically, physically and culturally, that I suggest would have been visceral as well as intellectual. Truly, they lived on the land of their ancestors. The attachment to place that was so integral to such societies came under threat with the advent of what was for many generations presented as an Age of Improvement, when land was no longer the basis of self-sufficiency but a vehicle for profit for the few. The Lowlands were cleared first, but much of the population was retained to work the larger, more economically efficient land units of farms or estates, giving rise to most extant Scottish Lowland villages and town.12