RIVERVOICES: Celtic Myths for a Woman' s Journey

RIVERVOICES

Celtic Myths for a Woman's Journey

Copyright © 2012 by Peg Elliott Mayo

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Peg Elliott Mayo

20971 Logsden Rd.

Blodgett, OR 97326

[email protected]

www.rivervoices.com

May blessing rain upon:

The Conclave of Sisters in my life with whom I’ve wept,

wondered, laughed, raged, consoled and learned.

My precious granddaughters,

Jane Allan and Anna Rose Pleskunas

My beloved adopted granddaughter,

Sara Bartlemay

My ripening daughter,

Katie Elliott

My sons’ good wives,

Kelly and Suzanne Pleskunas

And, particularly, my great-grandmother,

Evangeline Lamkin,

a wild Celtic spirit: her voice instructs me yet.

Circle to Circle

Season to Season

Table of Content

Chapter: 1. Preface: The Seasons of Life

Chapter: 2. Great-Grandmother: A Fortunate Origin

Chapter: 3. Introduction: Finding Our Way

THE FIRST SEASON: CHILDHOOD

Chapter: 4. Ceremony

Chapter: 5. The Conclave of Women: Heron Opens a Sacred Initiation

Chapter: 6. Initiation

Chapter: 7. Young Sprout, Young Fox: Fox Tells of Her Initiation

Chapter: 8. Power

Chapter: 9. Naming: Fox Tells How She Acquired her Name

Chapter: 10. Evolution

Chapter: 11. Awakening: Fox Tells of Sorrow

Chapter: 12. Struggle

Chapter: 13. Wrong: Fox Tells of Losing Her Innocence

Chapter: 14. To A Child Dancing in the Wind

Chapter: 15. Self-Reflection

THE SECOND SEASON: YOUTH

Chapter: 16. Discovery

Chapter: 17. Gathering: Fox Learns of Danu’s Requirements

Chapter: 18. Sacrifice

Chapter: 19. Brenna the Bold: Fox Tells of the Power of Sacrifice

Chapter: 20. Numinosity

Chapter: 21. Heron: Spirit Traveler: Heron Tells of Receiving Her Call

Chapter: 22. Self-Reflection

THE THIRD SEASON: MATURITY

Chapter: 23. Choice

Chapter: 24. The Harper of Lough Clontarf:

Fox Tells of the Hardness of Human Choices

Chapter: 25. Bliss

Chapter: 26. Fern: Sprout’s Mother Speaks of Fulfillment

Chapter: 27. Reconciliation

Chapter: 28. Queen Maeve: Fox Tells of Woman’s Wit

Chapter: 29. Sacred Space

Chapter: 30. Earthworm: Fox Tells Again of Danu’s Quiet

Chapter: 31. Earthworm Imagery

Chapter: 32. Self-Reflection

THE FOURTH SEASON: AGE

Chapter: 33. Heritage

Chapter: 34. Mede: Fox Tells of the First Remembrancer

Chapter: 35. Craft and Acceptance

Chapter: 36. Iree: The Basketmaker Speaks of the Power of Craft

Chapter: 37. Self-Reflection

EPILOGUE

Chapter: 38. Womanly Sprout: She Returns to the Conclave

Chapter: 39. Great-Grandmother’s Confession

Chapter: 40. Lake Isle of Innisfree

Chapter: 41. An Explanation and Directed Reading

Chapter: 42. About the Author

Chapter: 1. PREFACE:

The Seasons of Life

A preface properly introduces the author and her motivation for writing the book. This matter is easily disposed of. I am a woman past my first and second spring times, an Irish daughter, mother, and grandmother. The seasons of my life have not been uneventful. In that I count myself fortunate: a little ragged here and there, out at the elbows and stiff in the knees, but lucky (mostly) in love, meaningful work, and admirable companions. I live in the Coast Range of Oregon, instructed by the Spirits of the Place and enriched by an extending Family of the Heart, which includes, of course, those of my blood. I honor these in all my writing.

RiverVoices was written for the pleasure of the process and to put myself in the ancient line of Celtic storytellers. I want to share my version of the truth with others, some not yet so advanced in their seasons, who have encouraged my telling. Overshadowing all other considerations is my desire to pay tribute to my great-grandmother, Evangeline Lamkin, who has become the archetype of wisdom for me.

A large part of the effort is for my granddaughters, Jane Allan and Anna Rose, who live far away and who will probably not know me well while I am in this life. I hope, someday, these stories and ideas will touch them intimately and lovingly. Perhaps they’ll read by the river and hear my voice. These are some of the things I want to say to them. Though this book is written from my perspective, Evangeline’s life informs it. Jane and Anna Rose, I would like you to know Grandma Peg’s bit of accumulated experience, late in life. This is how I choose to reach across geography, time, and circumstance to you.

The seasons of life present themselves in an orderly manner, blending seamlessly into one another. None should be surprised at the advent of a new one, yet we are often unprepared, resentful, or in denial that the procession has overtaken us. We sense that in one lifetime we cannot exhaust the possibilities of even a single season. As with Earth cycles, each of our seasons is marked by particular opportunities and hazards

By sharing as we go, one by one, we transmit understanding and comfort. The meaning we assign each time of life governs our experience of it. If we cringe from age, it will be dreadful, however fortunate we may be with family, health and means. If we embrace it, we will be fulfilled, even if faced with immense challenges. Resistance only bruises us and does nothing to postpone the inexorable advance of the seasons. To trustingly share lessons strengthens all parties, confirming the value of enduring.

The stories in this book are meant to shine light on the trail for those following and to evoke hopeful visions. They are offered in the Spirit of ancient oral traditions. Each reader, I hope, will add her own experience, taking meaning for her own use. This is good and how, if proven worthy, my words will last.

Wisdom is experience, digested. Therefore, clearly, it is no private preserve of the elders. Every infant learning to walk digests the experience of falling. Every woman digests the experience of shedding blood. Every man learns to make his way through the hungers of life. When Brother Death claims me, I intend that my metaphorical tombstone shall read:

She LIVED her life

And has gone on to the next,

Better informed

By the miscalculations and

The good times of this one.

Chapter: 2.

Great-Grandmother:

A Fortunate Origin

My Irish great-grandmother told me stories. She did, in a rich brogue that conjured misty bogs, windswept heather and glints of gold at the foot of rainbows. There was one story she told me when I was so small I still sat on her lap, my head nestled against her soft breast, her rocking chair squeaking along in quiet duet.

In that story, God was a woman, but keep this under your hat, for no one is likely to appreciate hearing the truth at this late date. Not only was God a woman, but an old woman. One who’d felt the pinch of the poverty. One who knew what it was to have a sick child and no money for the doctor. Stretching three portions to six and serving it with a smile that blessed the meal with gratitude. That is the kind of God she told me about.

Sometimes, when the wind was favorable and the light came in long rays through ragged clouds, she’d tell me to look carefully and see if I could see God shining through the gaps. Sometimes I could.

She said that water was the wonder of the world. She’d given up trying to make a list of all the things it could do, from washing your duds to blessing your ears. She sometimes dreamed, she said, of being a mermaid and living in liquid palaces of mother-of-pearl, among waving grasses and glistening yellow fishes.

She cared for the wild things and the ones in the fields. Fed them tidbits from her plate and built houses and roosts, shelters and nesting boxes. She explained that the gander was true to the goose, even mourning her loss to his own death. The ram would charge an elephant if the mood was on him. Be careful, she warned me, of gentle-looking sheep in time of rut. I found a deer’s discarded antler in the forest and she told me I’d have luck forever after.

Ireland was her birthplace, her spiritual home, her scale of measurement, a living place in memory. She made me remember it before I ever saw it. She spoke, in the shadows of a winter’s fire, of the storyteller, telling tales in that windswept corner of the world. The little cabin, whitewashed stone within and without, would grow warm from the cozy turf fire and the human exhalations. A kettle boiled a tune of its own and added a plume of companionable steam.

Down at the edge of the foaming sea, on the rocks where the wild waves break, the seals called out in the harsh voices of drowned seamen, roaring their stories of having been men and their lives now under the sea. A cow grunted in the byre behind the wall to encourage the storytelling.

The door opened and opened again, like a fish mouthing the surface. A bubble of cold air was let in with each mouthing, containing a man or a woman or both and the children. The men smelled of tar and brine and fish or cow and pigsty. The women smelled of the smoke of turf fires, of sody bread baked in the ashes, and of the great black cast-iron pot of taties, always on the boil to feed pig or family. The neighbors settled on the benches and began to knit their stockings or mend their nets, fuming pipes in every other one’s mouth. A soft chatter of talk filled the blue atmosphere. It all came real to me as a little child, sitting in a southern sun.

She spoke, too, of the trip on the steam boat to America. It had taken nine days from Belfast—a ragin’ place, with commotion all about — lying in her narrow bunk, afraid to walk, afraid to breathe the fouled air, afraid to think of the depths of cold sea beneath the hull, mostly afraid to think of the miles between her and County Galway, between her and her mother and six younger sisters and brothers. She was afraid to think of the work waiting for her in the factory, sewing buttons on shirtwaists and knowing no one except her Uncle Tomas, who had sent the passage money. The days were hard in the beginning. Her eyes and fingers had hurt from the labor and gaslight of her workplace.

In the second year, she had sent money to bring her sister, Bridgid, who came with a bag of Irish soil and withered shamrock roots in her pocket. They grew on a windowsill in Buffalo, New York.

She met a man, Archie Knight, who worked on the railroad, a brakeman. They’d courted slowly, through many steps of glances cast, words spoken, walks beside the river, and at last had agreed to join forces and subdue the world. She gave birth to seven daughters, a lucky number, one of whom was my grandmother, Maude. Two sons, besides, to help their father with the little plot of land and the buildings needed. All had been well until Great-Grandfather fell between two boxcars and left his legs upon the track, cut off by the moving train.

Don’t move me, he ordered lucid and commanding, it’s my day to die. I’ll not live half a man. Give help to Evangeline and my poor orphaned children. Call the priest for I am finished.

She took in washing and ironing, carrying it home from fine mansions on her back in a bag. The children grew and did their part. She mourned as she worked. Another man came and said he’d like to make her life easier. She agreed, they married, and moved to a place where the sun shone daily, oranges grew on trees outside the door and money flowed in from the good man’s work. The children grew and left. She missed them, but I was a great comfort!

When I was sick with measles, feverish and confined to a dark room in isolation, Grandma came in quietly with a silver tray given her when she married the second time. On the blue linen napkin rested a blue willow plate bearing tiny toast triangles and silvery fish. A cup of tea so dark the bottom was a mystery steamed beside the milk pitcher shaped like a cow. Here ye are Darlin’, some tay and a bit of herrin’, sompin’ to sit light on yer stomach! It was ever her way to comfort.

Do you believe in God? she asked. I was a rowdy young one, full of myself, and embarrassed. She was ninety-four, and laughed. You will!

I wondered, then, how she knew.

Chapter: 3. Introduction:

Finding Our Way

As I have matured as a psychotherapist, I’ve met an increasing number of decent, functional, mature people who express confusion and disappointment with the direction of their lives. These folks have addressed their early-life traumas, examined and altered their dysfunctional patterns, meanwhile acknowledging responsibility for their personal choices. They are characterized by sensitivity to others and the environment, defined ethics, hyper-responsible behavior and inhumane time pressures. Good people, doing things right, but sadly empty when regarding the course of their existence.

Many have rejected their early traditional religious training, though paying a cost in doing so in family alienation and the loss of the comfort of ritual. Some have dipped into Eastern or emerging Western spiritual practices, finding a hint of hope in the unfamiliar. A few wander to the fringe of bizarre philosophic landscapes and then come back, frightened or embarrassed. The perilous state of Earth, despair at effecting change in the politics of greed, loss of control of personal destiny, and fear for their children’s future all sap energy. There is hunger for something more: purpose and hope.

Neither conventional religious authorities nor self-proclaimed mystics satisfy these resolutely rational modern seekers who smell flimflam in pat answers and simplistic formulas. But the restless thirst for solace and guidance is not assuaged. Many look admiringly at the (apparently) simpler tribal times when humankind lived intimately with Nature and the mythology satisfied. Others have cobbled together remnants