Cover art by Rembrandt van Rijn
Text and Authorship
The poem is one of the most celebrated surviving pieces of Old Irish literature, likely composed in the 9th century, though the manuscript tradition is later. The rubric attributes it to the Caillech Bérri herself — the Old Woman (or Hag) of Beare — a legendary supernatural figure associated with the Beara Peninsula in County Cork/Kerry. She is a sovereignty goddess figure of immense antiquity, said to have lived through multiple generations of husbands and to have witnessed the rise and fall of countless kings.
The word caillech literally means “veiled one,” and by extension came to mean an old woman or nun — the poem plays deliberately on this ambiguity, as the speaker has been “consecrated to old age” (íarna senad don chríni), possibly meaning she has taken the veil in a Christian sense, or simply that age itself has claimed her.
Structure and Genre
The poem belongs to the genre of elegiac monologue, in which a single speaker meditates on loss, time, and mortality. It is composed in a loose stanzaic form, largely in quatrains, with end-rhyme and internal rhyme characteristic of Old Irish syllabic verse. The language is notoriously difficult and some stanzas are acknowledged to be corrupt or uncertain in the manuscript tradition.
The tide metaphor (tuile/aithbe — flood/ebb) is the poem’s central and most powerful structural device, introduced early and returned to repeatedly until it governs the entire close of the poem. It functions simultaneously as:
- A metaphor for youth and age
- A metaphor for wealth and poverty
- A metaphor for grace and spiritual desolation
- A cosmological image of the natural rhythm of time
Key Figures and Places
Buí — an epithet of the Caillech, possibly meaning “yellow” (the colour of age and withering). Some scholars see it as a place-name or personal name of great antiquity.
Feimen — a plain in Tipperary, famous for its golden/yellow colour in autumn. The Caillech’s comparison of herself to Feimen is bittersweet: the plain remains golden while she has withered. The Stone of the Kings (Lia na Ríg) in Feimen was an ancient inauguration stone.
Rónán’s Fort (Caithir Rónáin) in Bregun — another ancient monument invoked to contrast the permanence of stone with the decay of flesh.
Ard Ruide — a promontory associated with the northern Ulster coast. The three floods (of warriors, horses, and hounds) evoke the heroic world now vanished.
Ath Alma — a ford, location uncertain; associated here with the silence and cold of abandoned places.
Beltaine — the great early summer festival (1 May), associated with joy, fertility, and the beginning of the warm season. The contrast between the girls rejoicing at Beltaine and the speaker’s grief is pointed and deliberate.
Drumain — possibly a ridge or place-name; the image of God spreading a green cloak over it is a striking nature image intertwined with theology.
Theological Dimension
The poem is deeply Christian in its final movement. The speaker’s desolation is not purely secular — she mourns her distance from the feasting and warmth of youth partly in terms of spiritual aridity, contrasting the bright candles of the feasting hall with the darkness of the oratory (derthaige).
The lines about her eyes being sold are obscure and possibly metaphorical — some scholars read them as referring to literal blindness in old age, others as a figure for the surrender of worldly sight in exchange for spiritual inheritance.
The closing movement explicitly invokes Jesus son of Mary as redeemer, and the ebb tide is reframed not as pure despair but as a necessary movement within a divine pattern — the island of the sea receives its flood again after the ebb, but the speaker does not expect this renewal for herself in this life, placing her hope implicitly in resurrection or divine grace.
The Flood/Ebb Motif
The Old Irish pair tuile (flood, flowing in) and aithbe (ebb, flowing out) carry enormous weight in this poem. The final stanzas essentially become a meditation on this single image:
- Youth, power, beauty, love, feasting = tuile
- Age, poverty, isolation, physical decay = aithbe
- The natural sea = renewed by each flood after ebb
- The human life = ebb without return (in this world)
This is one of the earliest and finest uses of natural imagery as theological metaphor in any European vernacular literature.
Scholarly Context
The poem has attracted enormous scholarly attention. Notable editions and studies include those by Kuno Meyer (who produced an early edition and translation), Donncha Ó hAodha, and P.L. Henry, among others. The text presents significant difficulties, and several stanzas (noted in the text as “uncertain and perhaps corrupt”) remain contested. The poem’s relationship to the mythological figure of the Caillech — who appears across Irish and Scottish Gaelic tradition as a goddess of winter, sovereignty, and cyclical time — continues to be debated.
Translation
Caillech Bérri — Lament of the Old Woman of Beare The Old Woman of Beare sang this after she was consecrated to old age:
Ebb tide has come to me as to the sea; old age has made me yellow; though I may grieve over it, happily comes its flood to me.
I am the Old Woman of Beare, Buí; I used to wear a shift ever-new; today I am so worn, so thin, I could not wear even a cast-off shift.
It is riches you love, not people; in the time when we lived it was people that we loved.
Beloved were the people over whose plains we rode; well did we feast with them, little did they boast of it after.
Today they make fine courtings, and yet not greatly do they bestow; though little they give, greatly they boast of it.
Swift chariots and horses that carried off the prize — there was, for a time, a flood of them: a blessing on the King who sent them!
My body seeks bitterly toward the dwelling well known to it; when it shall seem fitting to the Son of God may He come to claim His deposit.
See these thin bones now that my hands are visible — dear was the craft they used to practise; they would be around splendid kings.
Now that my hands are visible, these thin bones, they are not worth raising up over lovely boys.
The girls are joyful when they reach Beltaine; grief is more fitting for me — I am miserable, I am an old woman.
I make no sweet talk; no wethers are killed for my wedding; my hair is scanty and grey; no sorry veil over it is a loss.
I have no grudge at wearing a white veil on my head; many bright-coloured veils were on my head as I drank good ale.
I envy nothing old save only Feimen plain: I, who wore out garments of every hue — Feimen’s summit is still golden.
The Stone of the Kings in Feimen, Rónán’s Fort in Bregun, long since storms have reached their faces; they are not aged and withered.
The great sea speaks loudly; winter has begun to rise: a good man, a serf’s son — I do not expect him to visit me today.
I know what they do, rowing and rowing again; the reeds of Ath Alma — cold is the dwelling in which they sleep.
It is my lot that I cannot sail the sea of youth! The passing of many years has wrecked my looks since my first desires were spent.
It is my lot today, whatever day it may be — let someone take my cloak, even in the sun: age is coming over me; I recognise it myself.
The summer of youth in which we were I have spent along with its harvest; winter age which overwhelms everyone has begun to encroach on me.
I spent my youth first; I am glad that I enjoyed it; though my leap over the wall is small now, the cloak will not be new again.
Beautiful is the green cloak my King has spread over Drumain. Noble is the Man who gave it vigour — He set wool upon it after its bare weaving.
Alas! How great is my sorrow; every acorn is fated to decay. After feasting by bright candles to be in the darkness of an oratory!
I had my time with kings drinking mead and wine; today I drink whey-water among shrivelled old women.
Let that be my ale — a cup of whey; let whatever has tormented me be God’s will; praying to you, O living God, grant me patience against anger.
I see on my cloak the riddling of age; my reason has begun to deceive me; grey is the hair growing through my skin; such is the rotting of an old tree.
My right eye has been taken from me to be sold for a land ever dear to me; and the left eye was taken too, to make that purchase all the more sure.
Three floods flow to the fort of Ard Ruide: a flood of warriors, a flood of horses, a flood of the greyhounds of Lugaid’s sons.
The flood tide wave and the swift ebb tide: what the flood tide brings you the ebb tide carries from your hand.
The flood tide wave and the other, the ebb: they have all come to me so that I know them well.
The flood tide wave — silence has not come to my cellar! Though great was my household in darkness, a hand has been laid upon them all.
Would that the Son of Mary had been a guest in my cellar! Though I have not always been generous with food I never said “no” to any person.
Pitiful is every creature (humanity more wretched than all things) who does not see its own ebb tide as clearly as it saw its flood.
My flood — well is my trust in what I am owed. Jesus, Son of Mary, has redeemed me, so that though I am sorrowful, the ebb will come.
Happy is the island of the great sea: flood comes to it after its ebb; as for me, I do not expect flood tide to come after ebb.
There is scarcely a little place today for which I would be recognised; what was once at flood tide is all now at ebb.
Collaborative online journal on folk belief.
Leave a Reply