Traditionally, in the Gaelic (Irish and Scottish) cultures, Samhain was a time – among other things – for honouring the ancestors. Samhain, as you’ll be aware, was a ‘thin’ time of year: a time when the veil between worlds thins, and the Otherworld...
Sometimes, I think I’m one of the luckiest people on the planet. As well as living in a place I love, with a family I love (husband, dogs, cat and all), I also deeply love my work. After a few early decades of twists and turns and too much time off the path, now my...
(Image by Catherine Hyde.) In my last post, I wrote about building a new folk culture based on our native traditions. This seems especially urgent to me now, surrounded as we all are at this time of year by the consumption-driven madness that calls itself Christmas....
Last week I was the guest speaker at a joint meeting of the Trinity College Dublin Literary and Environmental Societies. I was speaking at their request about the intersection of myth, feminism and ecology in my writing, and as I always do, I was stressing the value...
There is something about the all-too-fleeting days between Samhain and Winter Solstice. Something about the sudden sharp shock of early-morning air, about the mists rising from the surface of a thousand scattered Connemara lochs. The bog grasses have transformed...
One of my favourite stories in Irish mythology is called ‘The Only Jealousy of Emer’ – the Emer in question being the wife of the great warrior (but not so great husband) Cú Chulainn. I love it because it wonderfully subverts the usual ‘betrayed...
