(Essay) Scottish Amazons Rising by Jude Lally

I’m telling you nothing new when I say we live in dark times. Each day seems to unleash new unbelievable horrors. I feel overwhelmed and have to balance this madness by unplugging. Unplugging from the world of social media, from being online, from human interaction and reach down into my roots which connect me to an ancient lineage of women.

The Scottish Island of the Big Women

There is a little island off the west coast of Scotland who for me is rooted in an ancient female power, its name is the Island of the Big Women. There are several legends of big women both on and around the island – the main myth is that the original Big Women are a mythological race of giant women.

One island over on the Isle of Skye is the home to Scathach (which means the Shadowy One) – who trained the very best Celtic warriors. There is also the story of the female warriors of the Pictish Queen of Moidart. The stories of the original Big Women and the female warriors all have become to have become so fused together it’s impossible to untangle them and say which belongs to whom.

The Slaying of the Saint

The story of the female warriors sets place in the 7th century CE when a Christian monk called Donnan arrived on the island on a mission to convert Pagans into the new faith of Christianity but as Dressler (1989) explains 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. The Columban chroniclers weren’t amused at this Pagan ruler celebrating Beltane and said to be worshipping serpents rather than observing Easter.

‘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 Behind the Story

But the story did not end there and it is said that unearthly voices were heard chanting bewitching the warrior women who found themselves compelled to follow the lights as they were lead up towards the Loch. The lights rested above the little island in the middle of the Loch and the warrior women it is said entered the water with their eyes fixed on the lights each of them drowning below the surface.

As the saying goes history is written by the victors and in this story the monks got the last word. I can’t help but feel this wonderful story of the lights appearing and bewitching the female warriors to their death is perhaps a story borrowed from the Big Women themselves. Is this motif of the lights something the monks borrowed in a way to invert the story on its head as the did with so many Pagan tales?

Who Were the Big Women?

Big can also be a description of respect, of looking up to a person, an important person. Maybe these ‘Big Women’ were human women with special skills such as prophecy or healing and folks would travel to see their advice?. Maybe they were mythological beings much like the oldest crone of Scotland the Cailleach and lived in a primordial time?  As an artist, I am drawn to the story of the lights and the bewitching elements – in Celtic belief water held the sacredness of the Goddess. Was the Loch a sacred place to past generations? Did the lights actually belong to an older story of the Big Women, women who maybe like the Cailleach had to submerge themselves under the waters in order to connect to an ancient primordial source?

The loch is located high up in the middle of the island and it’s quite a climb to get there but when you do take that pilgrimage you feel your entering into another realm.

While some people take holidays to Spain and sun themselves on beaches, in May of 2016 I found myself walking uphill and somewhat out of breath as I answered an ancient calling. May is always a good time to visit anywhere in Scotland even although the beginning of the month may bring snow by the middle of the month the midges (small black flies) haven’t yet appeared in great numbers. The weather was hotter than I had expected (hot enough to rival the temperature of Spanish beaches) and I probably looked rather ridiculous using a t-shirt half wrapped around my head and attached to a stick I was carrying out in front of me in order to get some shade (I’d brought many layers in case it got cold but cursed quietly for not bringing a sun hat).

I wasn’t quite sure what this pilgrimage had in store but I followed the call. When I reached the loch the sun was shining straight ahead of me as the water surface glitters in thousands of bright lights dancing on the surface.

I just sat and soaked up the silence of the place when I suddenly felt I was being watched. I looked around but couldn’t see anyone and then I realized it wasn’t people from this world who are watching me its folks from the other world! I feel I’m being watched by women – maybe it’s the generations gone who honored the mythical Big Women or maybe it’s the Big Women themselves?

Then slowly is dawns on me what this pilgrimage requires of me and I’m a little taken back at the idea of submerging myself under the loch waters,  yet when the old ones beckon who am I to resist! And so gingerly I take off layers and while I’m surprised that the water is warm (it’s relatively shallow and has been warmed by the sun all day) the bottom of the Loch is covered in very small extremely sharp stones. I have visions of a brave me diving in under the surface of the water down into the depths of the middle of the loch but in actuality, I’m terrified of deep water with dark peaty depths and so I gingerly step out to waist height water, take a deep breath and fully submerge myself under the surface.

I often look back on that split minute in my head in slow motion as if there were otherworldly eyes on the shore watching me and in the water with me as I submerged myself. I felt radiant when I emerged – as if I really had swum into the middle of the loch dove down and reclaimed some ancient treasure. I had reclaimed something – I had reclaimed a sense of purpose and deepened my connection and relationship with these old ones for in dark political times like these we need to create new ways of working and being in this world that is rooted in an ancient spiritual bedrock to keep us anchored and fed.

So now anytime I see sunlight on water when it sparkles like big fat diamonds I am reminded of the stories of the Big Woman, of the loch and know that I myself am a Big Woman!

Meet Mago Contributor) Jude Lally.

Article resources:

Dressler, Camille. (1998). Eigg The Story of an Island. Polygon, Edinburgh, Scotland.