The Hag of Beara


The Hag of Beara is a mythic Irish Goddess: a Cailleach, or divine hag, crone, or creator deity; literally the veiled one. She is associated with the Beara Peninsula in County Cork, Ireland, and was thought to bring winter. She is best known as the narrator of the medieval Irish poem "The Lament of the Hag of Beara", in which she bitterly laments the passing of her youth and her decrepit old age. The Great Book of Lecan contains a collection of stories concerning her.
The Hag of Beara is said to have been born in Dingle, County Kerry, at "Teach Mor" or the Great House, described as "the house farthest west in Ireland", and today identified as Tivore on the Dingle peninsula.
Along with County Kerry, she is also closely associated with County Cork. She is said to have been a mother or foster mother to the ancestors of a number of prominent clans in the region, including the Corca Dhuibhne and Corca Loighdhe. In some tellings, she lived several lives, or had several successive periods of youth, during which she birthed the ancestors of these clans.

Literature

One of the earliest references to the hag is in the late 11th–early 12th century satire "Vision of Mac Conglinne", in which she appears in a list of eight people about whom lays are sung, as Caillech Bérre bán "a white nun, of Beare".
The untitled Middle Irish medieval poem of 35 verses, known as "The Lament of the Hag of Beara", has been described by folklorist Eleanor Hull as "a beautiful example of the wide-spread idea that human life is ruled by the flow and ebb of the sea-tide, with the turn of which life will dwindle, as with the on-coming tide it waxes to its full powers and energy". The narrator is clearly unhappy with her lot, and remembers that in her youth she spent her time "with kings, drinking mead and wine", but she now lives a lonely life in "the gloom of an oratory" among "shrivelled old hags".
The introductory text before the poem, recounts a few details. It tell us her name was Digdi and that she was of the Corcu Duibne, about whom Finan prophesied that their race "should never be without a famous illustrious woman", mentioning other famed women of the Corcu Duibne: "Brigit, the daughter of Iustan, Liadain, the wife of Cuirither and Uallach, the daughter of Muinegan". She is called "the Old Woman of Beare" because she had fifty foster-children in Beare. She had seven periods of youth, one after the other, outliving every man that lived with her, so that her descendants were tribes and races. For a hundred years she wore the veil blessed by Cuimine, thereupon old age and infirmity came to her. Kuno Meyer identified this Cumine as "probably Cummine Fota, Bishop of Clonfert, who died in 661". Hull suggests that this blessed veil is a Christian appropriation of her hood, "for, as in many other cases, the pagan goddess reappears in later days as a Christian nun."
Two copies of the poem are found in the manuscript 1337/1-4 held at Trinity College Dublin. Meyer published a critical edition of the poem and a full translation in Otia Merseiana in 1899. Eleanor Hull published a 19-verse poetic translation in 1912 and Lady Augusta Gregory contributed a 21-verse translation in 1919.
The following example verses are taken from Meyer.
Patrick Pearse's poem Mise Éire, composed in 1912, mentions the cailleach in the opening and closing verses:

Landmarks

A number of pre-historic archaeological and geographical features in Munster are associated with her, in particular the "Hag of Beara" rock chair, in reality a natural boulder, in Kilcatherine, Béara, County Cork, which is said to be either her fossilized remains, or the chair of which she sits waiting for Manannán mac Lir, the god of the sea, variously described as her husband or father.
She is sometimes associated with the Hag's Head rock formation on the southerly most point of the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare.

Irish Script on Screen

  • , p. 42 col. 2 mid, Trinity College MS 1337/1-4.
  • , p. 764, Trinity College MS 1337/1-4.