Reading Notes: Week 12 "Celtic Fairy Tales" Part A

 

The Horned Women. 1892. John D. Batten (Source: Celtic Fairy Tales)

    I've been really excited to read this unit! I'll be continuing with Celtic fairy tales next week, and I'm looking forward to it so much. The majority of my family history and ancestors are from Ireland, so I love learning everything I can about the country. Reading through these, I wondered how heavily they were Christianized. I know there's relatively nothing pre-Christianity in regard to mythology, folklore, and fairy tales, so I really wonder how some of these would've red without that influence entirely.

    The story that caught my interest and held my attention the most was "The Horned Women." Seeing the title and knowing Irish fairy tales, I had no idea what direction it was going to go in. The direction ended up being witches, to which I replied, "Yeah, that's fair." I wonder why each witch has a different number of horns. The first witch has one, the second two, the third three, and so on until we reach the twelfth witch with 12 horns. I wonder if the number of horns means something, or if it's just one of those fairy tale details.

    One of the things the woman has to do is carry water in a sieve. She can't do it for obvious reasons, so the Spirit of the Well calls to her and tells her to plug the holes with clay, then carry the water. This caught my eye because the first time I read that solution was in a Baba Yaga story. It got me to wondering how common of a trope it was in fairytales. Certainly, it can't be uncommon, but it did set my mind off in the direction of connecting Baba Yaga to the Spirit of the Well in this story.

    All these things caught my curiosity, but it wasn't until the very end that the story really grabbed my attention. At the end of the story, while the witches are all fleeing, one of them drops their mantle. The woman's family keeps it and passes it down from generation to generation for 500 years. What an awesome inheritance! But...why only 500 years? What happened after that? Did the witch take it back? Was it lost? Did the family even believe the story by that point? I would love to write a story of what happens after that 500 years is up.

Bibliography

The Horned Women from Celtic folklore by Joseph Jacobs