Creag na Cailleach

For a Monday after a lovely family weekend, today was surprisingly agreeable and interesting. It didn't begin well - my online Pilates class was maddeningly interrupted by internet failures, so that I had to do most of it on my phone, peering at it as I tried to do half planks and graceful stretches. However, the sun was bright despite the suddenly cooler air and I was able to have my coffee outside, and my lunch shortly afterwards, as well as drying all the washing generated by our trip. 

And then there was an interesting item in a group I follow on Facebook, Lost Glasgow, asking for memories of radio programmes we listened to during WW2 and in the late 40s and 50s. On the back of my reply to this I'm in the middle of signing up for an interview, which is interesting, as was a link to a recording of the very first episode from 1953 of Journey into Space. I used to listen to this in bed, because it was on at my bedtime; this meant lying in the dark terrified out of my wits by the music and sound effects. Why the dark? Because the radio from the kitchen was brought into my bedroom and connected by its cable to the light socket, there being no spare sockets in my tiny bedroom, which was the maid's room off the kitchen. It's a wonder I slept at all ...

Even with all this fascinating stuff, we got a decent walk in the afternoon. Actually, the location of our walk, the eastern end of Loch Striven, was inspired by another post I'd just seen, linking to a video about a standing stone in the Ardyne area. Several months ago now, we'd noticed a stone in a clearing in a birch wood; we thought perhaps some vegetation had been cleared to make it more visible, as we'd never before seen it in many years of walking there. Apparently it's called Creag na Cailleach, and is linked to a Celtic belief in a fertility/winter spirit in the shape of an old woman (Cailleach) who controls the seasons, the crops, childbirth - and who begins the winter as an old woman and ends it as a young one, before reverting to the stone till the following year. The Celtic farmers who used to live and farm in this very fertile area apparently left offerings of first fruits at the stone.

So I'm blipping Creag na Cailleach , the stone of the old woman, in its sunlit birch wood, with the blue sky looking not at all sinister and the mossy surroundings perfectly suited to cradling this ancient tale.

Fun, huh?


Here's the link to the YouTube video about the stone: https://youtu.be/X_Pbeuz157A