Introducing Old Crane Woman

ã Catherine Hyde

Until I moved back to Connemara in 2017, I lived for three years in a tiny old riverside cottage in the hills of Donegal, in the far north-west of Ireland. We had moved there from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, where I had immersed myself in a land which was steeped in the mythology of the Cailleach: the wild and powerful old woman of Gaelic mythology who created and shaped the land. Just as they are in Ireland, mountains and other places all around Scotland are named after her; she is immanent in the land itself. There are many, many stories about the Cailleach which, in that part of Scotland, also relate to her sister (or in some stories, her alter ego) Bride, who presides over the light half of the year just as the Cailleach rules over the dark. Directly in front of our island home was a long, low mountain which had the shape of a reclining woman; as I learned more and more about the Cailleach’s mythology and her association with high and rocky places, I began to imagine that she was present in the mountain, and to make up my own stories about how that came to be. The Cailleach-mountain dominated our village and the headland, and as I walked the land each day, through all the difficult times we had there, I spoke to her as if she was an old friend. Although much of Ireland is also steeped in the mythology of the Cailleach, in the part of Donegal where we lived I could find no local stories about her, and no specific landmarks named after her. I felt curiously lonely and utterly cast adrift. Where was the Cailleach in this place? Where might I find her? How could I possibly belong to a place where there was no Cailleach, whose stories had claimed me so powerfully and dominated my imagination for the better part of four years? On the hill behind our cottage there was a wood, and in the wood there was a heronry. Every day, we’d see herons flying along the small river which tumbled across stepping stones at the bottom of our garden; it wasn’t that far to the sea. And sometimes in the early morning, as I walked with the dogs along the lane which led up to the high bog, I’d see a heron standing on a stone in the middle of the fast-flowing river, the still point in the turbulent birth of every new day. When you live in close proximity to such beautiful, iconic creatures – and especially if, like me, you are immersed in myth and story – they not only capture your daytime imagination, but begin to infiltrate your dreams. In the Irish language, the word for the grey heron is corr; it also happens to be the word for crane. This is because, just around the time that the Eurasian crane became extinct in Ireland, the similar-looking grey heron arrived to fill its ecological niche. Heron and crane, then, are interchangeable in Irish mythology, and in those old stories, crane is a powerful and a liminal bird. She haunts the thresholds where water, land and air intermingle; she guards the treasures of the Otherworld and is a guide to those who wish to travel there. Perhaps because she stands upright, tall and thin, she is associated with shape-shifting in the feminine form – and indeed, most likely for this reason, eating a heron’s flesh was once forbidden. The most famous story about a crane is the story of beautiful Aoife, who was turned into a crane by a jealous rival; she went then to live in the house of the god Manannán Mac Lir. When Aoife died, 200 years later, Manannán made a magical ‘crane bag’ from her skin. Now, surrounded as I seemed to be by herons, I read as much about them and their crane counterparts as I could find. They are associated, I discovered, with longevity; in some of the old stories they are connected, too, to hags and old women. Thinking about this as I walked along the lane, one winter morning at dawn, I stood and watched as a heron flew up from the riverbank, shrieking. There was something oddly hag-like about her call, and all of a sudden, a character popped into my head: Old Crane Woman came to me, part woman, part bird. By the time I arrived home, she had taken possession of me. Springing directly from this place I lived in, rising fully formed out of my river, I had found the Cailleach in another form. Throughout that December, I wrote a series of fragments about Old Crane Woman, and published them on my blog. ‘Grey Heron Nights’, I called them: a Celtic antidote to the mythical Greek ‘Halcyon Days’, which bridged the Winter Solstice. Old Crane Woman seemed to have her own voice, her own rhythm, incantatory, the rhythm of place – or the power of place, speaking. And so powerful was this archetypal old woman that I carried on writing about her at Winter Solstice for the next two years. Although I haven’t written ‘Grey Heron Nights’ for some years now, Old Crane Woman has never left me, and I’ve always planned to write more about her. The Chronicles of Old Crane Woman is a work-in-progress. Welcome to one of her best-known stories. from The Chronicles of Old Crane Woman

ometimes, if you happen to be walking along a track within reach of water at dusk or dawn, you might catch through the trees a glimpse of a tall, gangly figure wrapped in S a mid-grey cloak. You won’t see her face – she hides that too well – but as you watch her move, you’ll notice that her legs and her arms are unusually long, and seem to bend in odd directions. Hold your breath; you’ve been blessed with a sighting of Old Crane Woman. If she stays still long enough for you to get a good look at her, you’ll see that she carries a bag which looks as if it’s made out of some kind of hide. It’s actually made of crane-skin, and the skin it was made from was the skin of Aoife, who was turned into a bird by a jealous rival. Once it belonged to Manannán Mac Lir, that old salt-soaked god of the waters. The bag then came into the hands of the great warrior Fionn Mac Cumhaill, but when he passed into the Otherworld, Old Crane Woman crept into that deep cave in the heart of the mountain where the bodies of Fionn and the Fianna lie sleeping still, and she stole it away. She took back the power of the warrior; now, she is its guardian. And the crane bag is filled with her treasures: shed feathers, fragments of fleece plucked from barbed wire in the bog. The shattered shell of a robin’s egg, the last gorse blossom of autumn. Splinters of bog oak, a lichen-encrusted twig. Her treasure are the treasures of the land: no more, and no less. If you creep out down to the river in the light of a full moon, you’ll see her there for sure, Old Crane Woman. She’ll be standing on one leg, still as can be, and you’ll know her by her frayed grey and white dress and her long, thin arms with the sharp, sticking-out elbows. She’ll be staring into the river, for Old Crane Woman knows that inspiration comes always at the side of the water, there on the edge, in that troubling threshold place between one element and another. Don’t startle her: she’ll be gone in a flash. If you wait there, just as still as she is – if you wait for as long as it takes – maybe you’ll hear her whispering a story. Old Crane Woman, she knows all the stories; she is gathering them in, and sorting them. She knows all the men’s stories: the same old stories, told down all the long ages. She is tired of the men’s stories. She is tired of their stories about women. She has gathered them up and stored them safely away under a stone and she will not let them out again. No, she shrieks suddenly into the night sky, throwing back her head and shrieking it, shrieking it: No more stories like this. Her sisters need new stories now. And if you should question her, if you should doubt her, here is the tale she will tell you; here is the story she will scream out into the long dark. Here is the story Old Crane Woman will refuse. The Crane Wife

nce upon a time, in a land far away from this land in miles but not so far in culture, there lived a poor man. He was a lonely man as well as poor, for his wife had died in O childbirth many years before. But no-one remembered exactly when, and as the long years passed, it seemed to the people of his village that he’d always been alone. They’d see him sometimes, leaving his house at the very edge of the village, wandering off into the woods to hunt, or to fish in the river and the lake. He wore his loneliness like a hair shirt, and never joined in at festivals or other occasions, nor smiled at the children playing on the green. And yet there was no harm in him, they said. He kept himself to himself, that was all, and he left well enough alone. One night, in the still, snowy heart of winter and at the cold dark of the moon, he opened his front door to go and fetch some more wood to feed his meagre fire. But there on his doorstep he found an injured crane, with an arrow protruding from the soft flesh on its breast. Overcome with sadness and pity, for the crane was a beautiful bird, the man reached down and gently lifted it up; he took it inside and placed it by the hearth. He fetched more wood and built up the fire, and carefully, so very carefully, he removed the arrow from the crane’s breast. He gave it water and he gave it fish, and over the next few days he slowly nursed it back to health. And on the morning when the crane stood straight and walked to the door for the first time and uttered its harsh, wailing cry, he opened the door and set the crane free. The man mourned long and hard that day, for he had been without a companion for too long, and he had come to enjoy having the crane to care for. That night, his fire burned down low, and when he could no longer ignore the cold in the cabin (for he had eaten deep into his store of winter wood to build the fires which kept the crane warm) he opened the front door so that he could go and see what fuel might remain. And there on his doorstep, he found a beautiful woman raising her hand as if to knock at the door. Although her dark hair was streaked with a beautiful shade of slate grey, she was young, and she was dressed in a gown of grey and white which was made of the finest, most silken cloth. The man took her into his cabin, and made up the fire; and when the morning came he walked into the village and made arrangements for them to be married. They were happy enough in the cabin on the edge of the village, but they were poor, and it was hard to make ends meet. Although the forest gave them food enough for the table and fuel enough for the fire, and although his beautiful new wife smiled as she cooked and cleaned and cared for him, it seemed to the man that now he was married, he needed other things too. He wished for a horse so that he could sit his wife upon it and lead her into town and show her the fine shops and the fancy inns. He wished for some fine pots for the table, so that when the village elders came calling (for everyone came to the cabin now; they loved to sit and drink tea with his beautiful wife) he could serve them from cups that were not cracked and chipped. He wished for some clothes that were not ragged around the edges, and some soft velvet curtains for the windows and doors. He wished for a feather mattress, so that his wife might be warmer and more comfortable in their bed. He worried and worried, and he would not let be, until one day the woman told her husband that she was a spinner and a weaver, and that if he would like, she could make some beautiful cloth which he might sell at the market in the nearby town. The cloth would be as fine as silk: white and grey, like the fabric of the beautiful gown that she had worn when first she came to him. But there was one condition, she said: he must never watch her while she was working; he must never see her weaving the cloth. The cloth was made, and it was fine indeed, and soon sold, and for a while the man was happy, for it had sold for a fine price, and now he was able to afford some of the things he had longed for. But after a few weeks, he began thinking again about all the things they could have, and all of the ways in which he might please her, if only his wife would make a little more cloth. And he asked her, and so she made some more, but first she made him promise again that he would never watch her while she was weaving the cloth. And after a few weeks the man wanted still more, and then more, and as the months passed, the little cabin on the edge of the village began to change, and soon it was one of the finest houses to be found there. There was a jet-black horse in the paddock behind the house, and gleaming new pots for the polished table, and rich blue velvet curtains for the windows and doors. A soft new feather mattress rested upon the new brass bedstead, and the man had a new fishing rod, and smart new clothes that were not frayed and ragged at the edges. His wife wove and wove and the cloth came and came, and though she had grown pale of late, he believed her to be happy enough. How could she not be happy, now that their lives were so rich and fine? As time passed, still the man urged his wife to make more cloth. If only they had more, he said, they could move away from this poor village and into the town. They could have a fancy town house and all manner of fine books and furniture; they could have servants, so that she would not need to cook and clean any more; they could be people of substance, and walk the streets with pride. And when he spoke like this, his wife would look longingly out to the woods and think of the river and the lake where she spent what little free time she had – but he did not see, and so she would briefly close her eyes and go then into the tiny cubicle at the back of the cabin, and begin again to weave. The man was so pleased with his new life and so full of his great plans for the future that he did not notice how she grew paler and thinner, sadder and ever more tired. When she fainted once in the early morning as she slipped out of bed to get to her work, he asked her coyly if she thought she might be expecting a child. She shook her head, and tears came into her beautiful dark eyes, but she wiped them away and went into the cubicle to weave. It had taken a while, but eventually the man became curious. The cloth was so fine, and so beautiful, and it fetched such a high price at the market. He began to wonder how she did it, and finally to wonder what she made it from. He soon began to wonder whether they might not be able to recruit others to spin the cloth as well, and then they would be rich and happy indeed! And so early one morning he crept out of bed, stepped slowly down the stairs, and peeked through the gap in the curtain which screened the little cubicle from the rest of the cabin. There, at the loom, was a beautiful grey crane – the very image of the crane that he had once taken in, and healed. The crane was plucking feathers from its breast, and where it plucked the skin was open and bleeding and raw, and the crane wept large bright tears with every feather that it plucked – but still the crane plucked, and wove the beautiful feathers into the finest, most silken grey and white cloth in the world. The man could hardly believe what he was seeing. He took a sudden step to the side, and trod on the curtain, and down it tumbled and crashed to the ground. Startled, the crane turned, and saw him, and for a moment the air flickered and flamed, and he thought that the figure that he saw there in the cubicle was the slender figure of his beautiful wife. But it was only for a moment, and as he stepped back from the now-open doorway the crane flew out – out into the room and out through the open window and up into the skies. And as she vanished into the pink light of dawn, the man heard her harsh but fading call. No More! No More!

nd if you are standing there still, at the end of Old Crane Woman’s story, you’ll see her turn. Slowly, she’ll turn, but before she turns all the way around toward A you, before you can see her sharp, bony face full on, she’ll straighten her crooked elbows and lift her long skinny arms into the air and off she’ll take, and away she’ll fly. Diving into a sky that is full of the colours of the sea. And if you listen carefully – very, very carefully – you’ll hear her fading shriek as she flies on into the long, cold dark.

No more! No more!

But she’ll be back, Old Crane Woman; she’ll be back to tend to the stories. Old Crane Woman is never done with the stories. She is the oldest creature in the world, and still she’s not done with its stories. Old Crane Woman guards the borders of life and death. She’s the flower on the tree of darkness, the bright white fire at the heart of the Mystery. She’s the keeper of the Crane Dance. Look – can you see Old Crane Woman dancing? Yes, she’s with you, Old Crane Woman. In the full-moon glare, on the river bank; in the new-moon dark on the midnight shore. Listen for her call and you’ll hear her, Old Crane Woman. She’s there. Old Crane Woman is always there.