Walking the Coffin Road. A Grief Pilgrimage Invitation
An invitation to send us the names of those you'd like us to walk with
An offering at the Well of the Holy Women, Isle of the Big Women
On Saturday I board the West Highland Train to the port town of Mallaig, and then a ferry over to the isle of Eigg.
I’ll be meeting women who are joining me for this adventure of exploring and reclaiming grief through creativity, ritual, and walking one foot in front of the other the land of an island named the Isle of the Big Women.
A Grief Pilgrimage
One of the first visits we make is to the Well of the Holy Women, to ask for a blessing for our time on the island.
The well lies in the old township of Upper Grulin, a village which was cleared of all the inhabitants who were then forceable boarded onto a ship and taken across an ocean to Nova Scotia.
The vision is to walk the coffin road in silence, carrying our grief and the names of anyone folks wish us to carry for them.
Coffin roads generally follow the direction the dead would have been carried, east to west, for the deceased would have been buried in the west, towards ‎TÃr na nÓg (the Land of Eternal Youth, and Tir Tairngire (the Promised Land) - the next worlds lying just beyond the setting sun.
Eigg’s coffin road is different as it runs east to west - Grulin lies close to the shore with little land for a cemetery. So we will walk from the Well of the Holy Women to the Kildonnan church, just under 4 miles, to where we will be greeted by a Sheela na Gig.
‘You come out of the earth, you return to the earth, you come out of me and you return to me … You can ignore death as much as you want to, but death is going to come’
( Big Vagina Energy - via the Guardian newspaper article)
A Sheela na Gig is very much about life, death, and rebirth - and while our society one which is described by Francis Weller as being grief-phobic and death-denying grief is also something that can isolate people. We are expected to get over grief in record time and get back to normal.
We walk with the keening women who conducted long and detailed rituals, women who held such rituals in the islands for hundreds of years - for there are records of those who raised the dearth dirge for St Donnan - almost 2,000 years ago.
On our grief pilgrimage, while we walk in silence, we walk together. We walk with all those who have walked this path before. For those who walked this path and then were carried on this path on their last journey.
We walk with hearts and souls expanding as we meet birdsong and breeze, sheep and heather, fern and peat. We walk with tide and arching sun as it moves to set behind the peaks of Rum, and we walk to be wrapped in an enveloping silence.
We walk with our own grief and collective grief. We walk with those in pain and those with uncertain futures. We walk with those beloveds we would like to see again - even if only for cherished minutes. We walk with ancestors, we walk with the ancestors of ancestors. We walk with the keening women who conducted long and detailed rituals, women who held such rituals in the islands for hundreds of years - for there are records of those who raised the dearth dirge for St Donnan - almost 2,000 years ago.
An Invitation
We will also walk with the names of those you’d like to share with us, so please get in touch with the names of those you’d like me to carry on this pilgrimage (just reply to this newsletter). Perhaps beloveds long dead, those that are ill, or those coming towards the end of their lives. Feel free to add a sentence or two along with their names. Please ensure all names are emailed by Friday midnight.
We will speak their name at the Well of the Holy Women in the village of Grulin, and then carry them along the Coffin Road - with a finishing ritual to be decided.
Garbh Bealach, The Piper's Cairn
References:
I would be grateful if you would carry the name of my father who has passed, John Andrew Orr and the name of my mother, Margaret Orr whose journey draws close.
Thank you for being one of those willing to remember