Discovering The Sidhe - Healing With Water
Along with natural springs becoming Holy Wells, I have always loved stories about the origins of lakes and rivers.
The Book Of Invasions, Leabhar Gabhala Érenn (one of several spellings), is an early ‘history stories’ book has references to what seems to translate out as ‘lake bursts’.
One example is burying the dead body of a local hero, and suddenly up spouts a new water spring that becomes a lough, loch, or lake. One example of this that springs to my mind is the burial of a man called Cé, described as a ‘visionary druid’ and from his burial place up sprung a spring that became Lough Key by Boyle.
Of course, that lough is much older than any human described as a ‘druid’ ever lived. Also, I cannot resist noticing the closeness of the Cé to the Oriental Qi, describing the flow of life. On a visit to Crete at a museum there was chat of a Minoan symbol prompt we may spell Ke, but pronounced almost ‘kay’ or maybe ‘keaay’. I have not found any other variation or validation on that word yet.
The Dindshenchas, a story poetry book scribed around 14th and 15th century, includes ‘origins of rivers’ stories, but it does does seem to have patriarchal slant, probably to engage approval of the church at that time.
One of those stories is the story of Boann. She went to a potent mystical well known as Well of Segais or Nechtan’s Well, a well mounted in the fairy well of Nechtan. To test the power of the well, it is told that Boann walked anti-clockwise around the well three times, in mischief. Then three huge water waves leapt from the well and when it all fell back down on her did so with enough force to rip away her thigh, one of her hands and one of her eyes.
What on earth did these old scribes consume before writing up their stories with those kind of descriptions? I suppose they may have been the ancestors of the modern tabloid paparazzi today.
Continuing the Boann tale, the fallen water then forced what was left of Boann seawards towards the estuary of the Boyne River where her spirit finally left her body and rejoined the Sidhe of the river just like Sinann did on the Shannon.
Both Sidhe spirits of Boann and Sinann are told of flowing upstream with the Salmon every Spring to fertilize Ireland.
A common thread of these native stories here in Ireland, and elsewhere too, is that they seem to tell of the centre of the Earth being the source of the world’s rivers.
While we lived near Keash, in Co. Sligo, below Ceis Corran, Hill Of Keash, I heard storytellers there speak of that hill being the original source of four rivers. These being Grainne to the East, Brideog in the West, Shannon to the South and Unshin to the North.
Grainne I am not sure of as as that was an old name of what is now the Shannon-Erne waterway, and between Carrick On Shannon and Crom, Fermanagh. Between the Grainne and waterway namings it was known as the Woodford River.
Shannon is thought by some to once have been the Boyle River that starts from Lough Key, not very far away from Keash.
Brideog is still starting not far away at Lough Gara
Unshin from nearby Lough Arrow that’s very notable as it is said to be the only river in Ireland that flows totally North.
Perhaps the main link up to these rivers are stories of the old of human settlements of this island being in this Keash area due to water access. As the population grew tribes ended up in friction related to who had the most right to the water access.
More profound than the Hill Of Keash, though, may be the Hill Of Uisneach, now within what is called Westmeath. This hill is told of once being the source of 12 ‘chief’ rivers. So here is a quick brief version of a story from Uisneach.
During a council assembly held there on the hill of Uisneach by Diarmait, Son of Cerball, a great hail storm fell upon that gathering. As that hail melted it caused forceful flooding. The pressure from that flood carved out twelve winding channels and filled them with water that flowed all over Ireland to provide water to nourish and fertilize forever.
That story was actually Christianised and scribes attributed that story as being a miracle performed by Saint Ciaran to end a long drought in Ireland.
One more water site that fascinates me is another one in Co. Sligo. It is Lough de Ge, seen on OS maps as Logh Degee. Described in mythology as being a bottomless lake from which a manifestation of the Cailleach, called Garavogue (an Gharbhog), appears sometimes.
Gharbhog is said to have built the various many megalithic cairns built on most hilltops of Co. Sligo, and lower down into the valleys too. Some storytellers say it is not Queen Maeve within the Knocknarea cairn, but a sleeping Gharbhog.
My huge fascination for the Lough de Ge lake is that its folklore describes it as a kind of ‘Sheela na Gig’ formed in nature. I have been told that there was an age of chieftains in the area, probably Ice Age, who believed that they were born from this Lough, or at least from a womb of water from this lough. So they ordered their burials to be on the hills around this lough, so that when the water leaves their bodies after death it returns back to where it cam from, the bottomless Lough de Ge, back to the Gharbhog’s womb.
Despite miracles of springs bursting to the surface from the dark ‘otherworld’ and sourcing the formation of loughs, lochs, lakes, and rivers, I will hone in on the wonders of these natural springs, Many merely source the humblest of water resources as they trickle towards larger sources of flowing water.
Many of these Natural Spring Wells became what we know as Holy Wells where people congregate, or have congregated at, in the past, with reverence, thanksgiving, and even worship.
Wellside devotion has encouraged ‘spiritual’ continuity more than any other religious or spirituality practice activity.
We only know these water springs as ‘Holy Wells’ today due to their christianisation.
Though most people may not realise it, the reverence at ‘Holy Wells’ starts with nature’s collection of fallen rainwater. There is a sequence of rain falling on the hills, and mountains that flows into the underground, into the ‘otherworld’, through ‘swallowholes’. The water than flows underground and is eventually pressured to surface back into the light.
These are the places that humans have captured to initially be their sacred and essential water sources, and later to become their holy and healing wells.
Most of these springs and wells seem to have become personified in some way though associating goddesses and gods with them. This was a practice of humans for hundreds to 1000s of years before saints names were branded onto the wells.
Add to that, the life and healing coming from these spring waters is and was associated with deities. These deities have also often become personified as individual Sidhe and fairy characters. Local people still continued with connection to the established ‘deities’ after Christians had branded their saints to them.
At some point, gatherings at these springs and wells included rituals of placing offerings, such as berries, grains, seeds, eggs, bread portions, and eventually small woven sculptures and crosses.
The closest trees to these springs and wells also became revered and these offerings placed around them or hung on them. These trees we seem to know today as being ‘fairy trees’, ‘sidhe trees’, ‘wishing trees’, ‘rag trees’, and ‘clutie trees’. The offerings we leave at these trees also being known as ‘cluties’.
All of these offerings through the ages being an expression of personalised intent to say ‘thanks’, pour gratitude, and request wishes and healing.
It is still believed that return from these offerings are healing, protections, and blessings embracing us.
During the past century or so, most people have placed cloth fragments made with cotton, linen, hessian, and flax onto these trees. Sadly what people have hung from these well trees during the past 20 years or so has become distracted from this tradition, and probably hung by people not aware of the traditions.
Our actual knowledge of ancient practices of gatherings at springs, natural wells, and the trees by them is very patchy. We tend to make up rituals and ceremony through knitting together fragments of what we know. Much of this has happened since the mid 19th century. I feel this is still better for continuity of ritual than performing no graceful ritual at all.
I strongly believe and experience that because we trust natural spring and holy well spaces we can pick up visions from amazing memories within such spaces. Memories that are well beyond our own personal memories. These visions can be very clear too.
I look forward to expanding this through a separate Bealtaine time article to connect water springs and wells to the traditions of that Spring to Summer celebrations time.
I will finish this chapter article and this whole Sidhe series with words from correspondence between poet and writer, W. B. Yeats and Mrs Dorothea Hunter during 1898. Dorothea was a fellow member of the Order Of The Golden Dawn with Yeats.
“I have had a number of visions on the way home, greatly extending the symbolism we got tonight. The souls of ordinary people remain after death in the waters. And these waters become and organised world.
If you gather up the flames that come from the waters of the well when the berries fall upon it, and make them into a flaming heart, and explore the waters with this as a lamp, you will will discover they are the waters of emotion and passion, in which all but purified souls are entangled.
These souls have the same relationship to our plan. While we are of fixed material form, the divine world of fluid fire has to be the heroic world of fixed intellectual form.”
I simply interpret that being, no matter how carefully we put our plans together, the water always knows best … and can wreck our plans for ensuring better results.
And that concludes my ‘Discovering The Sidhe’ series this year. My next series, starting next week, is ‘Us And Trees’. Looking forward to you following that.
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"...they may have been the ancestors of the modern tabloid paparazzi today." LOL I must agree with you on that, John!
It sounds like you are saying that any tree would do for the cluthies. Is that true? I thought it was only hawthornes.
I love that people make up rituals for the wells with whatever information they can gather. I believe it strengthens the power of those places.Hoping to see a well with you soon!