I think you are right and I think many of us feel it, although perhaps in different ways. When I went into the woods this time last year, it felt significant somehow that the group I joined turned out to be all women. How harmonious and gentle and peaceful those few days were. It was a slow way of living in which I really began to feel called back to the land, it showed me that we can live sustainably in partnership with nature. I cried when I left. My husband once said that all the small things I did in support of nature were impacting on our sons, and I hadn't even realised. Maybe as women we are turning our mothering skills to other areas, and by doing we are teaching, and that is a quiet underground revolution, or movement that can't be prevented by the gardaí, or government's, or the judiciary. I love Mary Reynold's idea of ARKs - Acts of Restorative Kindness - linking up across the country; she's talking about rewilding the land, but I think women are also rewilding themselves, we are all individual ARKs connecting across the land. And the fact that the patriarchy defending a soldier who beat a woman to within an inch of her life, at this solstice time of year, as the Cailleach is preparing to step back into her power, has certainly got women across Ireland rising up in shared anger.
Thank you Ali. I really love the image of ARKs connecting across the land. That is what it feels like (across the planet, even). I've also been thinking about the horrendous, appaling verdict on Natasha O'Brien's case. It made me think of something I heard a sociologist in the States say (and I'm paraphrasing terribly) about how the challenge for the next few decades is how to dismantle the androcentric systems (i.e. patriarchy) that are causing damage without those systems feeling so threatened that they regress to an even more restrictive and destructive state. Certainly. this week, the Irish judicial system has come under the full force of roused women.
Thank you Annette. Really interesting and lovely to hear your experience and how you feel the pull too. And yes, that coming together gives me so much solace too. I feel like we can survive anything when we're in those spaces together!
Yes! I feel (more than think) the same. Also, unsure how to articulate. Its important and relevant to share felt sense as much as fully formed ideas, maybe more so. Thank you
Thank you Michaela, and love that you're at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. Well done :) It's a place on my bucket list to try to get accepted to one day! Enjoy xx
Hello there, what a moving post. I think the poster you saw may have been for YES festival— a Molly Bloom celebration— in Derry last weekend. The catch line was - THE FUTURE: A Female Vision. I have the honour of being the writer in residence for the Derry / Donegal part of the Europe wide project. If it wasn’t for that , I guess this project is one you’re still gonna be interested in.
I hear you sister, and feel this in my bones. Thanks for sharing your heart x
Oooooh yes, highly likely that was the poster. It fits! It must have been an amazing experience to be the writer in residence to celebrate such an icon of literature! Xx
I am half-Irish, half-English, born and brought up in England; I moved to Ireland 6 years ago now, having never known it before. And for the first time in my life, I feel at home on the land; it speaks to me and through me. My work is all about bringing elderwomen without children together, and although the work took off like a rocket in the UK when it began almost 15 years ago, here in Ireland it is more of a slow burn, but feels deep and sustainable. I've been writing a novel for 8 years which features the sovereignty goddess of Ireland, and of her role in the necessary rebalancing of the masculine/feminine principles as necessary to how will will find our way through the 'great turning' (Joanna Macy) of this time as humans on this earth.
I love that you shared your thoughts before you felt you had "fully metabolised and intellectualised" them; that is the feminine right there, pushing its tendrils up through the masculine :) x
Thank you Jody for sharing your experiences. I'm glad Ireland has been a place of soft landing for you. Hearing you are writing a novel which features the sovereignty goddess made my heart leap with joy -- her role in rebalancing the masculine/feminine is a theme/concept that I'm very drawn to. Can't wait to read it one day xx
Belinda. Thank you for this very timely post and keen observation. I believe many of us are feeling this inexplicable sense of what you speak of. Having just returned to live in Ireland after 40 years in the United States I came back here because of Eiru’s calling.
In 2017 I had the great pleasure of studying with Clarissa Pinkola Estés author of women who run with the wolves.
Dr. Estes‘s speaks of the notion of having a too good Mother, that’s some thing I am exploring in a book I am writing myself now.
If some of the mothering we received was too good, can it almost be a smothering as not good enough?
In the Taoist tradition of Qigong we speak of giving birth to a new self, by way of self-cultivation.
Perhaps unlike our mothers or grandmothers, many of us, have gone out into the world on our Šamanić journeys or journeys of any kind and come back with the kind of stories only going away, traversing through the streets, forests, mountain tops or depths of difficult terrain.
Many of us learned the benefits of going to therapy, something which was totally taboo when I was growing up in the 70s.
Meeting other fellow travelers on our paths for me in New York for yourself in London.
Spreading our self seeding spirits out to the world we flew in every direction we landed in every direction but now I believe we are finding our roots back home, bringing back the medicine of our travels.
This combined with one of the best outcomes of the pandemic was us all reconnecting online and realizing we could have community in ways that were not available to previous generations .
Dr. Estes’s speaks of the worst thing is to not have a story to tell. I believe Ireland and the women of Ireland have that story to tell, to share now.
Gosh Nadiya, thank you. YES.... all what you say about us going out to different places and parts of the world and on different journeys, learning and picking up all sorts of new experiences along the way and now coming to reconnecting to where we have come from, in our own ways, and bringing what we have with us... I feel that very strongly too. Thank you for articulating and naming this xx
I'm so taken with the imagery of women journeying to all corners of the earth, and coming to sense a call to return with the unique wisdom of their Odysseys.
Living in the Middle East, I'm often part of female only spaces. It's a part of life here that certain areas are reserved as female only: areas in the gym where women can remove their hijab, female seating areas in waiting rooms etc. I used to struggle with the idea but actually really enjoy it now. I find the sense of sisterhood strong here. It's comforting to be in an all female spaces sometimes; it feels like a sanctuary.
I think the women of Ireland are incredibly strong, creative and nurturing. When I get homesick I think of our gorgeous landscapes, the soft way of life, our sense of community. The female is indeed rising. Any female friends who have returned home love it! My friends and I rush to the sea when home to soak up that natural energy. I walk. I run. I just want to be outside as much as possible. The smells are so rich after coming from a desert. What is Mother Ireland? We are Mother Ireland.
Thank you Edel. "Strong, creative and nurturing", I've been working on a chapter of the book this week that touches on these very traits :) Living away from Ireland (although in a landscape not dissimilar to Ireland) I feel the same about that need to just be outside and in nature when I get home. Nowhere else can match it!
Edel, I recognise the name and reference to life in the Middle East. We both did an online novel writing course with CBC that I was unable to finish.Lovely to reconnect through Belindas wonderful words.
Fantastic! I must look into how to apply for retreats/residencies. School is winding down, thankfully so I'll get back to the novel shortly. Glad to hear you're back at it.
I appreciate this post and am glad you went ahead and shared it as is. Felt senses are such a natural language and your words make perfect sense to me. I feel a pull to Ireland to know the place where so many of my kin came from. When I see pictures of Ireland, I see people who look so much like me and my family and wonder how many thousands of people I'm related to, who are still there. When I think of Ireland, I think of a homecoming. I hope to visit soon.
There is no word in English for a group of women together without men. Sisterhood is too specific. Hen party: insulting. All the other words: group, team, sodality, alliance, imply both sexes.
Is there an Irish word for a group of women together without male supervision?
Oooooh, Linda, this is such a good point. One I have never thought of. Do you know, I have no idea if there is a word in Irish for a group of women without male supervision. Although I'd be surprised if there wasn't. I'm going to have to look into this.
It does make me think of the old, no longer practiced, custom of booleying, where people used to take dairy cattle into the hills and remote places to graze over the summer. It was usually a job for teenage girls and young women, so women would spend a whole summer away from the wider community living together out on the land, sharing stories and tending the cattle.
It’s so interesting. A few years back I began to develop a growing interest in Ireland. The land called me, the poetry put me on my knees and the myths rang true in my bones. Then suddenly it seemed Ireland was everywhere I looked. In my music, books, research on medicinal plants and the rage I felt at the history of oppression of the Roman Catholic church (I am not catholic or religious). I began to work with women and anger, supporting women to feel and express the sacred rage that sat in their wombs from generations of trauma. I was born in England, lived most of my life in Canada but as I traced back, my family comes from the Crowley clan of the County Cork. Yes, I feel the Cailleach rising and the divine grid of feminine energy that feels particularly strong in Ireland.
I love this Madeleine. So fascinating to hear how that call and interest in Ireland just seemed to appear and weave it's way slowly into your awareness :)
I feel it too, Belinda. Even though I'm not from this land (French born and bred), Éire is also calling me home, and has been for longer than I can remember. I've lived here with my Irish husband and 4 French-Irish kids for over 13 years, and I can't explain the pull I still feel to make home here. It's like something is moving and riding within and through me that simply isn't present elsewhere.
Just as the world is hurtling ever faster towards catastrophe, women from all walks of life are gathering and coming together in ever increasing numbers, and this gives me solace.
I feel such a deep ping of recognition reading this. Especially the part about people being called to Éire in this time. I'm definitely one of those -- visited for the first time in 2019 and moved to Ireland permanently in 2022. It changes you, especially this difficult to describe rising divine feminine energy you are touching on. I'm so glad you chose to release this before you had it fully metabolized. It can be difficult to name or define a movement while you're in the midst of it. I'm thinking of the waves of feminism, only clearly defined and delineated in hindsight. I've wondered myself if this resurgence of interest will someday be called a second wave celtic revival (this time much more women centered and led!) Thank you to Belinda and everyone in the comments for sharing your thoughts, so much to mull over here.
After our discussion last month, I wrote this retelling of one of Ireland's myths. The First People in Ireland and Where They Went
Once there was a Lake at the Center of the World.
Around the Lake lived people who never knew hunger or war.
The Lake and the fertile shore provided everything the people needed.
They gathered fish from weirs and seeds from the grasses. The animals of the barnyard gave them milk, wool, and hide.
Around the lake were three villages named Banba, Fódla, and Ériu. The women of these villages lived exactly like their neighbors, gathering fish from weirs and seeds from the grasses. The animals of the barnyard gave them milk, wool, and hide. But they did not choose husbands, and the women lived together without male supervision. They had a word for women living together without men, a word that we do not remember.
People lived around the Lake at the Center of the World for thousands of years.
One day, the lake water lost its sweetness, and day by day the water rose. Shoals of dead fish rotted on the beach. Grain wilted to the roots along the shore. Orchards flooded, grain stored in cool caves under the earth molded.
The people of the Lake at the Center of the World knew hunger for the first time. They needed a story to explain this calamity and so told themselves they had sinned, and brought it upon themselves. But they did not know what the sin was.
They only knew that they must leave the lake of their ancestors and find a new land where they could live in peace as before.
Although starved and sorrowful, they worked to build great boats, and filled them with seeds and the animals of the barn yard. They would sail across the lake to the rivers, find new lands and restore their peaceful life. As they toiled, heartsick and mind-muddled, they argued, they blamed, and for the first time, they stole and hoarded food. They no longer lived in peace, but feared the ghosts of the ancestors they would leave behind, and feared for their children who would live in a new and dangerous land.
When the women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu attempted join the exodus, the people’s heartsickness and mind-muddle formed a lie that poisoned them forever.
“Two-by-two we leave this place, two-by-two we we must go forth and multiply. Your sin brought this Flood upon us, you women who refuse to live with a husband. Join us two-by-two with husbands, or stay here and die.”
The women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu said, “Women are not born to be mothers and wives. Women are born to befriend, to invent, to create and enjoy the life we are given. Women who live together without husbands are not sinners, but necessary to a peaceful life. This is how it has been and how it always shall be.”
“That world is ended in Flood, “ their neighbors said. “In our new lands, no woman will live without a husband, else her sin destroy the world again.”
And so the People of the Lake at the Center of the World sailed away. They told their children a story about a woman who refused male authority and so brought sin and suffering to the world. And women never again knew peace.
The women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu knew it was not they who sinned. But they refused to starve on the shore of a salt-flooded lake. So they built their own three ships, each carrying the fifty women. They elected a leader, who changed her name to Cessair, Sorrow, because their exile was sad and unnecessary. Like their neighbors, they loaded their ships with seed and the animals of the barnyard.
Cessair’s little fleet sailed the western sea for weeks. When they came to the Alps, they met some of their neighbors who had escaped the Flood. They asked to join them, and live as before, offering a village for women who preferred to live without men. They were turned away of course, but fifty women of one of the ships came ashore to an island, and built a village in secret for women who prefer to live without men.
The two remaining ships sailed on, passed through the strait at the end of the western sea, and sailed north on the great ocean. When they reached the warm coast of Spain, they found more of their neighbors who had escaped the Flood. They offered to build a village for the women who preferred to live without men. But they too refused. So the second ship of fifty women came shore to an island, and built a village in secret for women who prefer to live without men.
At last, far north beyond Spain and Gaul, Cessair and the remaining fifty women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu found the island that had only recently shook off its icy winter cloak. Here no one had ever lived, and here no one could sin.
Cessair and fifty women from Banba, Fódla, and Ériu became the first people of Ireland, and the names of their ancient villages became the names of Ireland’s sovereignty.
The women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu divided themselves into three villages. One they built at the place of the three rivers, where the grain grows tall and strong. One they built in Kerry and lived under the bounty of the forest. Cessair and her sisters built a third village, in the west, between the plains of Mayo and Galway Bay, with its gifts of the sea.
Cessair’s people lived in peace for many years, living in kinship with the earth. They gathered fish from weirs and seeds from the grasses. The animals of the barnyard gave them milk, wool, and hide. They never knew hunger or war. They lived as friends, inventing, creating, and enjoying the life they were given. They had a word for women living together without men, a word that has been forgotten.
One by one the women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu grew old, and died, beloved and revered. Their bones rest to this day in hilltop cairns. At last only Cessair was left. When she knew she was about to die, she entered a temple of bones on a mountain in Mayo. You can see her cairn today, at Knockma, also known as Hill of the Fairies.
No where else in the world was there a place for women who would not choose husbands. But into every village, every day are born women who prefer to live without husbands. And these women still build secret villages, and no one knows the word for women gathered together without men.
I think you are right and I think many of us feel it, although perhaps in different ways. When I went into the woods this time last year, it felt significant somehow that the group I joined turned out to be all women. How harmonious and gentle and peaceful those few days were. It was a slow way of living in which I really began to feel called back to the land, it showed me that we can live sustainably in partnership with nature. I cried when I left. My husband once said that all the small things I did in support of nature were impacting on our sons, and I hadn't even realised. Maybe as women we are turning our mothering skills to other areas, and by doing we are teaching, and that is a quiet underground revolution, or movement that can't be prevented by the gardaí, or government's, or the judiciary. I love Mary Reynold's idea of ARKs - Acts of Restorative Kindness - linking up across the country; she's talking about rewilding the land, but I think women are also rewilding themselves, we are all individual ARKs connecting across the land. And the fact that the patriarchy defending a soldier who beat a woman to within an inch of her life, at this solstice time of year, as the Cailleach is preparing to step back into her power, has certainly got women across Ireland rising up in shared anger.
Thank you Ali. I really love the image of ARKs connecting across the land. That is what it feels like (across the planet, even). I've also been thinking about the horrendous, appaling verdict on Natasha O'Brien's case. It made me think of something I heard a sociologist in the States say (and I'm paraphrasing terribly) about how the challenge for the next few decades is how to dismantle the androcentric systems (i.e. patriarchy) that are causing damage without those systems feeling so threatened that they regress to an even more restrictive and destructive state. Certainly. this week, the Irish judicial system has come under the full force of roused women.
Thank you Annette. Really interesting and lovely to hear your experience and how you feel the pull too. And yes, that coming together gives me so much solace too. I feel like we can survive anything when we're in those spaces together!
Yes! I feel (more than think) the same. Also, unsure how to articulate. Its important and relevant to share felt sense as much as fully formed ideas, maybe more so. Thank you
Thank you Michaela, and love that you're at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. Well done :) It's a place on my bucket list to try to get accepted to one day! Enjoy xx
Do! It's magical, you will love it. X
Hello there, what a moving post. I think the poster you saw may have been for YES festival— a Molly Bloom celebration— in Derry last weekend. The catch line was - THE FUTURE: A Female Vision. I have the honour of being the writer in residence for the Derry / Donegal part of the Europe wide project. If it wasn’t for that , I guess this project is one you’re still gonna be interested in.
I hear you sister, and feel this in my bones. Thanks for sharing your heart x
Thank you so much Kerri.
Oooooh yes, highly likely that was the poster. It fits! It must have been an amazing experience to be the writer in residence to celebrate such an icon of literature! Xx
Still onging, hand in is September! YES YES YES! 🤍
It's not only Ireland where this feeling is occurring. SHE is rising.
I am half-Irish, half-English, born and brought up in England; I moved to Ireland 6 years ago now, having never known it before. And for the first time in my life, I feel at home on the land; it speaks to me and through me. My work is all about bringing elderwomen without children together, and although the work took off like a rocket in the UK when it began almost 15 years ago, here in Ireland it is more of a slow burn, but feels deep and sustainable. I've been writing a novel for 8 years which features the sovereignty goddess of Ireland, and of her role in the necessary rebalancing of the masculine/feminine principles as necessary to how will will find our way through the 'great turning' (Joanna Macy) of this time as humans on this earth.
I love that you shared your thoughts before you felt you had "fully metabolised and intellectualised" them; that is the feminine right there, pushing its tendrils up through the masculine :) x
Thank you Jody for sharing your experiences. I'm glad Ireland has been a place of soft landing for you. Hearing you are writing a novel which features the sovereignty goddess made my heart leap with joy -- her role in rebalancing the masculine/feminine is a theme/concept that I'm very drawn to. Can't wait to read it one day xx
I look forward to reading the results of your painstakingly coded interviews too :) xx
Belinda. Thank you for this very timely post and keen observation. I believe many of us are feeling this inexplicable sense of what you speak of. Having just returned to live in Ireland after 40 years in the United States I came back here because of Eiru’s calling.
In 2017 I had the great pleasure of studying with Clarissa Pinkola Estés author of women who run with the wolves.
Dr. Estes‘s speaks of the notion of having a too good Mother, that’s some thing I am exploring in a book I am writing myself now.
If some of the mothering we received was too good, can it almost be a smothering as not good enough?
In the Taoist tradition of Qigong we speak of giving birth to a new self, by way of self-cultivation.
Perhaps unlike our mothers or grandmothers, many of us, have gone out into the world on our Šamanić journeys or journeys of any kind and come back with the kind of stories only going away, traversing through the streets, forests, mountain tops or depths of difficult terrain.
Many of us learned the benefits of going to therapy, something which was totally taboo when I was growing up in the 70s.
Meeting other fellow travelers on our paths for me in New York for yourself in London.
Spreading our self seeding spirits out to the world we flew in every direction we landed in every direction but now I believe we are finding our roots back home, bringing back the medicine of our travels.
This combined with one of the best outcomes of the pandemic was us all reconnecting online and realizing we could have community in ways that were not available to previous generations .
Dr. Estes’s speaks of the worst thing is to not have a story to tell. I believe Ireland and the women of Ireland have that story to tell, to share now.
Gra Mor
Gosh Nadiya, thank you. YES.... all what you say about us going out to different places and parts of the world and on different journeys, learning and picking up all sorts of new experiences along the way and now coming to reconnecting to where we have come from, in our own ways, and bringing what we have with us... I feel that very strongly too. Thank you for articulating and naming this xx
I'm so taken with the imagery of women journeying to all corners of the earth, and coming to sense a call to return with the unique wisdom of their Odysseys.
Living in the Middle East, I'm often part of female only spaces. It's a part of life here that certain areas are reserved as female only: areas in the gym where women can remove their hijab, female seating areas in waiting rooms etc. I used to struggle with the idea but actually really enjoy it now. I find the sense of sisterhood strong here. It's comforting to be in an all female spaces sometimes; it feels like a sanctuary.
I think the women of Ireland are incredibly strong, creative and nurturing. When I get homesick I think of our gorgeous landscapes, the soft way of life, our sense of community. The female is indeed rising. Any female friends who have returned home love it! My friends and I rush to the sea when home to soak up that natural energy. I walk. I run. I just want to be outside as much as possible. The smells are so rich after coming from a desert. What is Mother Ireland? We are Mother Ireland.
Thank you Edel. "Strong, creative and nurturing", I've been working on a chapter of the book this week that touches on these very traits :) Living away from Ireland (although in a landscape not dissimilar to Ireland) I feel the same about that need to just be outside and in nature when I get home. Nowhere else can match it!
Edel, I recognise the name and reference to life in the Middle East. We both did an online novel writing course with CBC that I was unable to finish.Lovely to reconnect through Belindas wonderful words.
Hi Michaela!
This is gas - connecting across two separate lines! We're destined to be friends.
I received your email and will reply soon. I hope the writing is going well for you.
'Gas' indeed! Currently at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, feeling very privileged. Hope you're writing away too.
Fantastic! I must look into how to apply for retreats/residencies. School is winding down, thankfully so I'll get back to the novel shortly. Glad to hear you're back at it.
I appreciate this post and am glad you went ahead and shared it as is. Felt senses are such a natural language and your words make perfect sense to me. I feel a pull to Ireland to know the place where so many of my kin came from. When I see pictures of Ireland, I see people who look so much like me and my family and wonder how many thousands of people I'm related to, who are still there. When I think of Ireland, I think of a homecoming. I hope to visit soon.
Thank you so much Darcy. What a beautiful comment. Éire will be there to welcome you whenever you can visit her xx
There is no word in English for a group of women together without men. Sisterhood is too specific. Hen party: insulting. All the other words: group, team, sodality, alliance, imply both sexes.
Is there an Irish word for a group of women together without male supervision?
Oooooh, Linda, this is such a good point. One I have never thought of. Do you know, I have no idea if there is a word in Irish for a group of women without male supervision. Although I'd be surprised if there wasn't. I'm going to have to look into this.
It does make me think of the old, no longer practiced, custom of booleying, where people used to take dairy cattle into the hills and remote places to graze over the summer. It was usually a job for teenage girls and young women, so women would spend a whole summer away from the wider community living together out on the land, sharing stories and tending the cattle.
Bit about that here:
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2021/0831/1211486-booleying-ireland-summer-migration/
It’s so interesting. A few years back I began to develop a growing interest in Ireland. The land called me, the poetry put me on my knees and the myths rang true in my bones. Then suddenly it seemed Ireland was everywhere I looked. In my music, books, research on medicinal plants and the rage I felt at the history of oppression of the Roman Catholic church (I am not catholic or religious). I began to work with women and anger, supporting women to feel and express the sacred rage that sat in their wombs from generations of trauma. I was born in England, lived most of my life in Canada but as I traced back, my family comes from the Crowley clan of the County Cork. Yes, I feel the Cailleach rising and the divine grid of feminine energy that feels particularly strong in Ireland.
I love this Madeleine. So fascinating to hear how that call and interest in Ireland just seemed to appear and weave it's way slowly into your awareness :)
I feel it too, Belinda. Even though I'm not from this land (French born and bred), Éire is also calling me home, and has been for longer than I can remember. I've lived here with my Irish husband and 4 French-Irish kids for over 13 years, and I can't explain the pull I still feel to make home here. It's like something is moving and riding within and through me that simply isn't present elsewhere.
Just as the world is hurtling ever faster towards catastrophe, women from all walks of life are gathering and coming together in ever increasing numbers, and this gives me solace.
I feel such a deep ping of recognition reading this. Especially the part about people being called to Éire in this time. I'm definitely one of those -- visited for the first time in 2019 and moved to Ireland permanently in 2022. It changes you, especially this difficult to describe rising divine feminine energy you are touching on. I'm so glad you chose to release this before you had it fully metabolized. It can be difficult to name or define a movement while you're in the midst of it. I'm thinking of the waves of feminism, only clearly defined and delineated in hindsight. I've wondered myself if this resurgence of interest will someday be called a second wave celtic revival (this time much more women centered and led!) Thank you to Belinda and everyone in the comments for sharing your thoughts, so much to mull over here.
Thank you Heather. It is almost excrutiating, at times, how much I want to write about this ‘thing’ but how I just cannot find the words!
After our discussion last month, I wrote this retelling of one of Ireland's myths. The First People in Ireland and Where They Went
Once there was a Lake at the Center of the World.
Around the Lake lived people who never knew hunger or war.
The Lake and the fertile shore provided everything the people needed.
They gathered fish from weirs and seeds from the grasses. The animals of the barnyard gave them milk, wool, and hide.
Around the lake were three villages named Banba, Fódla, and Ériu. The women of these villages lived exactly like their neighbors, gathering fish from weirs and seeds from the grasses. The animals of the barnyard gave them milk, wool, and hide. But they did not choose husbands, and the women lived together without male supervision. They had a word for women living together without men, a word that we do not remember.
People lived around the Lake at the Center of the World for thousands of years.
One day, the lake water lost its sweetness, and day by day the water rose. Shoals of dead fish rotted on the beach. Grain wilted to the roots along the shore. Orchards flooded, grain stored in cool caves under the earth molded.
The people of the Lake at the Center of the World knew hunger for the first time. They needed a story to explain this calamity and so told themselves they had sinned, and brought it upon themselves. But they did not know what the sin was.
They only knew that they must leave the lake of their ancestors and find a new land where they could live in peace as before.
Although starved and sorrowful, they worked to build great boats, and filled them with seeds and the animals of the barn yard. They would sail across the lake to the rivers, find new lands and restore their peaceful life. As they toiled, heartsick and mind-muddled, they argued, they blamed, and for the first time, they stole and hoarded food. They no longer lived in peace, but feared the ghosts of the ancestors they would leave behind, and feared for their children who would live in a new and dangerous land.
When the women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu attempted join the exodus, the people’s heartsickness and mind-muddle formed a lie that poisoned them forever.
“Two-by-two we leave this place, two-by-two we we must go forth and multiply. Your sin brought this Flood upon us, you women who refuse to live with a husband. Join us two-by-two with husbands, or stay here and die.”
The women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu said, “Women are not born to be mothers and wives. Women are born to befriend, to invent, to create and enjoy the life we are given. Women who live together without husbands are not sinners, but necessary to a peaceful life. This is how it has been and how it always shall be.”
“That world is ended in Flood, “ their neighbors said. “In our new lands, no woman will live without a husband, else her sin destroy the world again.”
And so the People of the Lake at the Center of the World sailed away. They told their children a story about a woman who refused male authority and so brought sin and suffering to the world. And women never again knew peace.
The women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu knew it was not they who sinned. But they refused to starve on the shore of a salt-flooded lake. So they built their own three ships, each carrying the fifty women. They elected a leader, who changed her name to Cessair, Sorrow, because their exile was sad and unnecessary. Like their neighbors, they loaded their ships with seed and the animals of the barnyard.
Cessair’s little fleet sailed the western sea for weeks. When they came to the Alps, they met some of their neighbors who had escaped the Flood. They asked to join them, and live as before, offering a village for women who preferred to live without men. They were turned away of course, but fifty women of one of the ships came ashore to an island, and built a village in secret for women who prefer to live without men.
The two remaining ships sailed on, passed through the strait at the end of the western sea, and sailed north on the great ocean. When they reached the warm coast of Spain, they found more of their neighbors who had escaped the Flood. They offered to build a village for the women who preferred to live without men. But they too refused. So the second ship of fifty women came shore to an island, and built a village in secret for women who prefer to live without men.
At last, far north beyond Spain and Gaul, Cessair and the remaining fifty women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu found the island that had only recently shook off its icy winter cloak. Here no one had ever lived, and here no one could sin.
Cessair and fifty women from Banba, Fódla, and Ériu became the first people of Ireland, and the names of their ancient villages became the names of Ireland’s sovereignty.
The women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu divided themselves into three villages. One they built at the place of the three rivers, where the grain grows tall and strong. One they built in Kerry and lived under the bounty of the forest. Cessair and her sisters built a third village, in the west, between the plains of Mayo and Galway Bay, with its gifts of the sea.
Cessair’s people lived in peace for many years, living in kinship with the earth. They gathered fish from weirs and seeds from the grasses. The animals of the barnyard gave them milk, wool, and hide. They never knew hunger or war. They lived as friends, inventing, creating, and enjoying the life they were given. They had a word for women living together without men, a word that has been forgotten.
One by one the women of Banba, Fódla, and Ériu grew old, and died, beloved and revered. Their bones rest to this day in hilltop cairns. At last only Cessair was left. When she knew she was about to die, she entered a temple of bones on a mountain in Mayo. You can see her cairn today, at Knockma, also known as Hill of the Fairies.
No where else in the world was there a place for women who would not choose husbands. But into every village, every day are born women who prefer to live without husbands. And these women still build secret villages, and no one knows the word for women gathered together without men.