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Over the last two weeks I have been reading a book called Ley Lines and Earth Energies by David Cowan, and various pieces I had stored on my lap top against the time I would have the time to read them. Special thanks to Stuart McHardy who sent me some stuff that I don't believe has been published yet.
The book is all about earth energies, ley lines and the like in an area just north of here. Amongst other things the book talk about the "Tigh nam Bodach". This is also known as the "Tigh na Cailliche". This is an ancient monument to the pre Christian era. Its a small stone structure (no longer sporting a thatched roof) in which some stones reside. They are named for the Bodach ( old man) and the Cailliche ( old woman) and their children. Every autumn a shepherd puts them in their house, and every spring he brings them back out so that they can watch over the glen. This practice has been going on since ancient times.
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While Cowan names this site for the masculine, it is in the femanine I am interested in. The word Cailleach (scots gaelic) has come to mean: hag, crone, old woman. Now the Scots word for the same thing is Carlin and that has evolved to mean 'witch'. In the pre Christian times legend named the Cailleach Bhuer as the creator Goddess. Early legends tell of her as a giantess creating this place or that place from boulders dropped from her apron. She was often an old woman. Very often she was the destroyer the winter goddess her skin blue black, like a corpse. In later ones she is the witch of Ben Cruichan, as recorded on tea-towels and postcards sold in the visitor shop for The Hollow Mountain. But this is the very same legend records her as The Cailleach Bhuer creating Loch Awe. |  |
 | I have read screeds of stuff on the Cailleach ( whatever the regional variation on the spelling of her name) because she interests me. Almost all of it looking at the ancient goddess figure she was to the devil worshipping witch that she is known as today. This transmogrification of image is of course a deliberate policy on the part of the early Christian church.
In talks given by both McHardy S., and McArthur H., I have heard it said that one of the ways that ancient legends survive is in the names of places. From various sources this weekend I have read lists of places like the Tigh na Cailliche which remember her as she was in ancient times. The main one which I had missed previously being the mountain which causes the whirling cauldron at the Corrybhrechan is called "An Cailleach". There is a Beinn na Caillich in Knoydart and another in Skye. And then there is Allt-na-Cailleach on the mountain named Lochnagar. |
The personal stuff... how it turned out
| This is our third week here on Aberfoyle and in the middle of April in our wee caravan, we woke up to snow on the ground )-: To be honest it was a bit of an effort to go out today the weather was just so dreich. Never the less we headed to Loch Katrine ( wonder who that's named after) which is best known for being the Loch which supplies Glasgow with its water.
Last time I was here was when I was my last year at primary school, I still remember the boat ride, but what I remember most is the wee burns (streams) which tumble and chase down the rocks into the water. Unfortunately the Sir Walter Scott will not be running till the 2nd of May. It was too windy to hire a bike so David and I settled for a walk. |  |
 | We hadn't been walking for very long when I spotted a pool at the bottom of a particularly vigourous burn and the money at the bottom of it. This practice of offering votives to a goddess at a holy well is known today as throwing a coin in a wishing well. A well is holy when it is crossed by a negatively charged ( female) ley line. Bells were ringing in my head, I checked out the sign, it declared this burn to be the "Allt Na Cailliche", (the witches burn) Now if you had read the above and know me you will know that this is what I call high excitement. ( Yes, sad I know but that's me) |
That was me, off I went up the water fall. No regard for anyone or anything. I just had to go experience it. The next unusual thing I noticed was the trees. At one point there was a clearing to the water. Not because there weren't any trees, there were masses of them. But some of the branches bent backward for no apparent reason. I have taken a couple of photographs to try and show you what I mean but the loss of perspective means the viewer will not see it as I did. When branches do that it means there is a blind spring underneath where the branch should have grown.
| The side of the burn was steep and extremely slippy underfoot with muckle great stanes everywhere. I didn't have my dowsing rods and even had I had them I could not have dowsed here. Dowsing was what I desperately wanted to do. The definition of a sacred site is two ley lines crossing and a blind spring. I was one lay line short. Oh well another time. |
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 | I took some more pictures and paid my respects and then I clambered down back to the path. I had left David standing there and when I came back he was still waiting, and why not, I had only been gone a couple of minutes. I know it was only a couple of minutes. I had been gone half an hour! |
As Stuart McHardy talks a great deal about the tops of mountains and how they relate to the Caillaech or to Bride (her spring/youthful counterpart) I took a photo of Beinn Venue immediately across from the burn. As I did so David read more on the notice to me. The burn is called for the witches because two areas across the loch from it were used for devil worship in years gone by. Unfortunately the said only that it was the property of Loch Katrine and I don't know who to complain too.
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