Saint Patrick was married - his wife's name was Sheelah and St. Sheelah's Day was celebrated on March 18th

The revelation in today's Irish Times that Saint Patrick had a wife whose name was Sheelah is tremendously exciting for a number of reasons. Shane Lehane, a folklorist from University College Cork (UCC) has discovered pre-Famine references to a widespread belief that Saint Patrick had a wife and that St. Sheelah's Day was celebrated the day after St. Patrick's Day, on March 18th.

Lehane is quoted in the Irish Times as saying "Pre-Famine, if you go back to the newspapers in Ireland they talk not just about Patrick's Day but also Sheelah's Day. I came across numerous references that Sheelah was thought to be Patrick's wife. The fact that we have Patrick and Sheelah should be no surprise. Because that duality, that union of male and female together, is one of the strongest images that we have in our mythology."

A Sheela-na-Gig, female deity with exposed/exaggerated genitalia, carved into a standing stone at Hill of Tara.

Although the devastating effects of the Great Famine on Irish culture can never be truly quantified, we have a significant example here of a folk belief that seems to have died out in Ireland with the famine. References to Sheelah's Day were found in the Freeman's Journal of 1785, 1811 and 1841, but the feast day has been "largely forgotten about in Ireland" according to Lehane.

Some time ago, I wrote about the story of the "twining branches" (Deirdre and the Children of Uisneach) and how memories of this creation myth were brought by Irish emigrants to Nova Scotia. The story of Sheelah seems to follow a similar fate. Before the Famine, which happened in the late 1840s, the celebration of St. Patrick's Day continued into March 18th for his wife's special day, St. Sheelah's Day (and of course in typical Irish fashion copious amounts of alcohol were consumed.) However, after the Famine the tradition seems to have died out here, but Irish migrants who ended up in such places as Newfoundland, Canada and Australia brought the tradition with them.

Lehane says perhaps the most enduring legacy of Sheelah is the so-called “Sheelah’s Brush.” This is the name given by Newfoundlanders and Atlantic Canadians to a winter snowstorm that falls after St Patrick’s Day.

Sometimes referred to as “Sheelah’s Broom” - or if the snowstorm is mild with only a bare covering of snow, “Sheila’s Blush” - it is still referred to respectfully by meteorologists and fisherman in that part of the world.

Undoubtedly some media commentators will pick up on the obvious relevance of Patrick's wife to the whole discourse about Catholic celibacy - and the perceived connection between that peculiar diktat of the traditional church here and the many sex and paedophile scandals that have decimated the Catholic faith here in Ireland.

A somewhat obscure and tenuous but perhaps very important connection is made by Lehane between Saint Sheelah and the "hugely interesting archaeological manifestation that also bears her name" - the Sheelah-na-Gig.

"Sheela-na-Gig is a basic medieval carving of a woman exposing her genitalia. These images are often considered to be quite grotesque. They are quite shocking when you see them first.  Now we look at them very much as examples of old women showing young women how to give birth. They are vernacular folk deities associated with pregnancy and birth." (Source)

And Lehane believes that the tradition of Sheelah could and should be revived and embraced in Ireland.

""Sheelah represented, for women in particular, a go-to person because she represented the female. The Sheela-na-Gig is a really important part of medieval folk tradition. She is an important folk deity. The figure of Sheelah was perhaps much bigger than suggested by the scant mentions we find in the old newspaper accounts. She would have been massively important. She represents a folk personification, allied to, what can be termed, the female cosmic agency, and being such, would have played a major role in people’s everyday lives. It is a pity that the day has died out. But maybe we will revive it."

A revival and reactivation of Sheelah

My own view is that the revival of the tradition of a female deity equal in status to Patrick might very well be important to the spiritual well-being of a country which has been very heavily influenced by patriarchal religious zeal for centuries, an influence that is seen by some as a contributory factor in many of Ireland's ills. The symbolic importance of Patrick (who was, ironically, a Romano-British immigrant to these shores) cannot be understated in the milieu of a nation defined for so long by its trenchant support for the male-dominated Roman church.

A statue of Saint Patrick looks out across Gabhra Valley from Hill of Tara.

Now we have the chance to reconcile the tradition of an almost-forgotten woman into the complex folk fabric of a fractured cultural history - a history that, it must be borne in mind, was vibrantly aware of the necessity for accessibility to the feminine deity in most of its past eras. The patriarchal influence of Rome did not decimate the ancient divine feminine - rather it forced upon us some sort of collective obeisance to the supremacy of the omniscient and jealous male god of the old testament, forcing the old indigenous female deities such as the Cailleach and Sheelah into the shadows.

The female wasn't altogether banished, but rather was revealed in a guise that was somewhat familiar, with reflections of the ancient goddesses of old but very much dressed in the raiment of a woman whose power was contingent upon the emanations of the Catholic patriarchy. Thus, Brigid the prehistoric goddess survived as the saint who became known to us as Muire na nGael, the Mary of the Irish, and indeed the Catholic Church had allowed Mary to become a co-redemptrix with Jesus. The presence of this ancient goddess, albeit in diluted form, in the church of Rome was probably one of the factors that had helped the church to become established in the first place.

Further to the possible revival of the tradition of Sheelah here is the possibility that incorporating her into our national celebrations could become a hugely significant act. We have here the very vivid and exciting possibility of activating or reactivating a feminine energy that is, as CG Jung might have suggested, of supreme importance for the ultimate rehabilitation of the modern human soul through the reconciliation of the masculine and feminine elements in life.

Can one yet countenance the notion of a Saint Patrick's Day AND a Saint Sheelah's Day? A national holiday for Ireland, spanning two days, recognising the male and the female, and allowing both to hold equal court in the hearts and minds of Irish people and their descendants and friends all around the world?

One of the ironies of the story about the disappearance of Sheelah from popular folk memory is that she hasn't vanished at all. The Sheelah tradition simply moved abroad with the forced migrations resulting from mass starvation. Many of those who stayed behind perished. Sheelah's story might have perished with the Famine also (even if Patrick's story only became more ubiquitous) except for the fact that her flame was kept burning abroad, in distant lands, by those who left these shores. The supreme irony is that Patrick - who was married - brought the tradition of Jesus to these shores, from a distant land, and that even though that tradition espoused celibacy for its all-male clergy,  Patrick himself had a wife.

It could only happen in Ireland.

Dowth and the story of hunger - ancient monument built during a famine and almost destroyed during one too

I was at Dowth on the Summer Solstice, which was on Monday last. It was nice to be at Dowth on the longest day of the year, and quite fitting because of an ancient myth about the site. I was with a small group, talking about the mythology of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and the sun was beating down from its height at the very apex of its circuit through the zodiac. We could not see it, but at that moment the sun was being carried across the sky by the great constellation Orion.

Dowth at midnight tonight. Even with cloud cover, it's still bright enough to see. I added some kerb light!

There is a myth about how and why Dowth was constructed, contained in the Metrical Dindshenchas, the oldest versions of which are found in the 12th century Lebor na Nuachongbala (known as the Book of Leinster). As I sat there in the sunshine at Dowth, I wondered about the sudden darkness that is described in the Dindshenchas story about Dubthach/Dowth, the darkness that broke a powerful spell.

The king at the time, according to the story, was Bressal Bódibad (the second part of his name means "lacking in cattle", for reasons that will become obvious). He wished to build a "solid hill", in the likeness of the tower of Nimrod, "so that from it he might pass to heaven". It is said that "the men of all Erin came to make for him that hill" and that they came to do it all in one day.

The endless day of the Dowth myth might be Summer Solstice.

The king's sister cast a spell on the sun, so that "there should be no night but bright day till the work reached completion". Those of you familiar with my work will know that I think this is a reference to the Summer Solstice, when the daylight is pretty much continuous, and when the sun's rising and setting positions appear to halt on the horizon, i.e. the sun stands still. At this latitude, even in the middle of the night we get a constant twilight, giving enough light to enable us to see in the dark. This is obvious in the main photo above, taken tonight at midnight. Even with 90% cloud cover, it was still bright enough to see what I was doing without extra light.

The king's sister is not named in the surviving Dindshenchas verse about Dowth. However, as the work progresses, the King commits incest with her, and the spell is broken. Night falls suddenly. The men abandon the construction project. "Since darkness has fallen upon our work, and night has come on and the day is gone, let each depart to his place".

What's interesting about this grand project, which seems an extraneous project orchestrated by an egotistical and megalomaniacal king, is that the legend says it was built during the time of a great famine:

"In his time a murrain came upon the kine of Erin, until there was left in it but seven cows and a bull."

At the height of this famine, the king gathered all the men of Erin to this place to build him a tower so that he could reach heaven. Is this a description of slave labour? If there is any real substance to the myth as a record of actual historical events, it must be pointed out that surely the worst time to ask human beings to indulge in heavy physical work is when they are famished. However, that's what the story says. They built it during a murrain, with only eight cattle left on the whole island of Ireland to sustain its population. This aspect of the story is, we gather, allegorical. But it is interesting in light of a strange coincidence between myth and reality that has always been obvious to me but which I only came to realise the true significance of this past Summer Solstice a few days ago.

That coincidence is this - Dowth was said to have been built during a famine, and it was almost destroyed during one too.

Moving from myth into factual, recorded history, we skip forward in time to the 1840s AD. In the years 1847-48, R.H. Firth, at the behest of the Committee of Antiquities of the Royal Irish Academy, carried out a disastrous excavation of the Dowth monument which caused it considerable damage. A commentary in the Drogheda Conservative newspaper in 1856 describes it thus:

"...we find that beautiful tumulus literally torn to pieces".

The crater in Dowth left by the 1840s excavations.

Large amounts of cairn material were removed, and tossed over the sides, in an ill-fated attempt to find some treasure, or central chamber containing perhaps trinkets that might make men rich. But as I always say, the true treasure of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth are not any material goods that might be found within them. Their true treasures are much, much deeper.

An even greater tragedy about the Firth excavation is the fact that this rich man's treasure hunt occurred during the Great Famine, when the failure of the potato crop due to blight caused death and starvation for hundreds of thousands.

"It is interesting to note that, in the middle of the Great Famine, during which a million Irish people died and another million emigrated, the esteemed gentlemen of the privileged class had nothing better to occupy their thoughts than an ill-conceived and unsuccessful 'treasure hunt' at Dowth, for which a special subscription had to be raised, while the population was suffering one of the worst calamities in Irish history". (Newgrange - Monument to Immortality, p.103, by this author)

Fascinatingly, there is perhaps a hint in the Dindshenchas myth about its future fate at the hands of Firth and his colleagues. Is this an example of the prescience of myth?

"From that day forth the hill remains
without addition to its height;
it shall not grow greater from this time onward
till the Doom of destruction and judgement".

A Brigid's Cross left at Dowth on the Summer Solstice.

Notwithstanding the obvious Christian intrusion into this verse, with its mention of judgement, the story suggests that no more would be added to Dowth's height. Could this be taken to suggest, perhaps, that something would in fact be taken from its height? Today, there is a large crater in the cairn (see photo above), and its height is much diminished as a result of this reckless "excavation" of the 19th century, if we could dare to call it an excavation. In essence, the myth's prophetical aspect has been substantiated through real events.

And the synchronism of events, mythical and real, leads us to consider the Dindshenchas verse as not mere poetry for amusement, but as a mytho-prescient work with far-reaching vision through the long and sometimes tortuous history of this island. It is not alone in that regard, and I am especially drawn to the Lebor Gabala - the "Book of Invasions" and how that presaged a series of real invasions, as if forecasting a dire series of raids before they ever happened. But that's for another day.

Tonight at Dowth, on St. John's Eve, I took some photos of the mound against the light of the midsummer sky. It doesn't last long, but I love the midnight twilight in the Boyne Valley.