Walking the Path of the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland. Summer Solstice

Warriors of the Western Isles - Part 1

Scathatch - doll by Jude Lally

On the Path of the Ancestral Mothers, for summer solstice we head to the Hebrides, off the West Coast of Scotland for stories of female warriors and amazons.

For summer solstice we will cover:

1. Female warriors of the Western Isles (parts 1 and 2). From the female warriors of the Queen of Moidart, the mythical big women of the Isle of Eigg, Scathatch from the Isle of Skye, and the Amazon from the remote isle of St Kilda.

2. Guided Story - meeting Scathatch

3. Raising Your Shield - an art project

Cailleach Doll by the shores of Loch nam Ban Mora (Loch of the Big Women)

There is a little island off the west coast of Scotland which for me is rooted in an ancient female power, its name is Eilean Nam Ban Mora, translates from the Gaelic as the Island of the Big Women. There are several legends of big women both on and around the island - from the original Big Women said to be a mythological race of giant women. The neighboring isle of Skye is home to the story of Scathach, the Shadowy One, there is the legend of the female warriors of the Pictish Queen of Moidart and then on the furthest most westerly point of Scotland is the Amazon from Hirta, the isle of St Kilda. The stories of the original Big Women and the female warriors seem to have become so fused together it's impossible to untangle them and say which stories belong to whom.

Pictish Queen by Leonie Gibbs - Tarbat Old Church, Portmahomack, Easter Ross

The story of the female warriors takes place in the 7th century CE when a Christian monk called Donnan arrived on the island on a mission to convert Pagans to the new faith of Christianity. The religious annuls recorded that the establishment of a monastery on Eigg was not welcomed by the ruler of the island, the Pictish Queen of Moidart. Columban chroniclers had recorded that this Queen kept pagan practices such as observing Beltane rather than Easter and worshipping serpents (Dressler (1989).

‘Legend tells that from her dun in Glenuig, the Queen of Moidart ordered the monks to be killed: ‘I am keeping herdsman to herd my milking cattle on the face of the Corravein, not to be herded themselves by a monk’. When the newly converted islanders refused to obey her orders, she flew into a red-hot rage and sent her own warrior women over to Eigg. They came upon Donnan and his monks as they were singing mass in their oratory on 17th April 617, but the saint beseeched them to wait until they had finished their prayers. As they left the church, Donnan and his monks were beheaded one after the other, their bodies piled up and burnt' (Dressler, 1989).

The story did not end there and it is said that unearthly voices and mystical lights appeared over the slain bodies, bewitching the warrior women who found themselves compelled to follow. The lights led them up towards the Loch hovering over the little island in the the Loch and the warrior women were said to have entered the water with their eyes fixed on the lights, each of them drowning below the surface (Dressler, 1989).