She above all resonates most greatly with me. Being that shes irish and her home is said to be not far from where i live i love her. Maybe that i am too a crone now. The picture here not to be seen in the negative as it just depicts her as old and we all get old. I call on her often but especially each Samhain.
‘Cailleach’; a word that is older than the Irish language itself and a concept that has been deeply entrenched in Irish consciousness for millenia.
In mythology, she is seen as the personification of wintertime, her veil a symbol for a land hidden under a coating of frost. She is usually depicted beating back summer vegetation, or stirring up waves in the sea. Although this imagery seems sinister, she is more of a necessary force; a catalyst for the needed change the land and its people need to regenerate.
This concept is best depicted in the most famous ‘cailleach’, Cailleach Bhéarra, who was the daughter of the little sun of winter, and grew younger and stronger as winter progressed; eventually, transforming into Brigit at the beginning of spring, bringing new life and growth once more.
In the more modern interpretations of the ‘cailleach’, she is depicted as an old woman, often veiled, who doesn’t follow the conventions of society and therefore holds special powers. Communities throughout Ireland would have their own localised stories about the cailleach, often based around actual people and the powers they possessed.
