Happy Samhain: Old Customs-The Cailleach's house

 

The stone family huddle by their turf-roofed shelter, looking eastwards to the shrouded summit of Meall Daill, Perthshire, as the mists roll down from the burnt orange mountainside. The tallest of the figures, still under a foot in height, is a water-worn rock with a feminine torso and slim neck. She is the Cailleach: a seasonal deity in Gaelic mythology who bestrides the winter months, known variously as an earth-shaper, wise woman, storm-raiser and mistress of deer. Around her are ranged her husband, the Bodach, and their children.

There is no back history to this custom of putting this little stone family into their home before winter only a general custom that is adhered to through the last several generations.  But it is as good a custom as any to say goodbye to the summer and welcome the cold days of winter and perhaps not linger on ghosties and ghouls plodding around one's home on All Saints and Souls day ;)

Also there is an essay here on some of the stories round these stones.

Article Source in the Guardian

Classical writings indicate that she was known as early as the 5th Century BC, in the area known today as Galicia, which gets its name from a Celtic tribe known as the Callaeci. This tribe on the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula were first named as the ‘Kallaikoi’ by the Greek historian Herodotus in the 5th Century BC; before being Latinised by Roman writers to ‘Callaeci’ in the 3nd Century BC - a name which Ptolemy suggested as meaning ‘worshippers of the Callaec’. Interestingly, in Spanish folklore, another name for Galicia is "Terra Meiga" (Land of the Witches).

Given that recent linguistic and genetic evidence points to a possible migration from Spain to Ireland during the Bronze-Age (2500-500BCE) - It is possible that the Irish ‘Cailleach’ is a variant of an ancient sovereignty goddess, brought here in the Bronze Age by the same Indo-European people, from whom the Gaelic peoples of Scotland & Ireland are descended from.