In folk etymology, January is known as Faoileach, wolf month. An entire month where the wolf is both figuratively and symbolically at the door. While food resources may well be running low, the wolf also experienced hunger which drove them from the wild places and closer to town.
The winds of the wolf month are described as being sharp, ravenous, and tearing, like the jaws of a desperate and hungry predator.
Dark storm clouds racing across the land, blasting icy winds and striking hail is the Cailleach riding a wolf. A long fluffy tail sweeping down brings a heavy rain shower, while a lighter layer of grey cloud is the old hag’s tattered skirts.
Sadly the wolf only approaches in spirit and rides with the Cailleach in shapeshifting clouds for man’s hunger to obliterate the species from Scotland was ferocious enough that the last wolf was said to be shot in 1680, in Killiecrankie, Perthshire. That was the official record while other tales say they kept on in wild places, up until the 18th century.
My Grandmother always said that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, another saying, this one of February, is that it comes in with the head of a serpent, and goes out with a peacock’s tail. But if February were to come in with a peacock’s tail and leave with the head of a serpent, or march to come in like a lamb and leave like a lion, then there would be a lot to worry about, especially if your existence depended on sheep, cattle, and fishing.
Naming the patterns of weather kept a track of recognized periods and what to expect. If spring is on your mind you might well forget that the beginning of March can bring snow, but when your birthday is in early march you remember that more often than not snow is due.
Spring is divided up into several parts. After the Faoillech (the stormy), next is The Whistle, also called the Plover, which is the first week of March, a week of whistling winds.
“I am the bare, swift, leggy plover,
I can kill both sheep and lambs’
Photo source: www.beachcombingmagazine.com/blogs/news/a-mermaid-s-purse
The period of weather known as the Gobag (Dog-fish) is the second week of March, which is a week of heavy rains.
‘Gobag, Gobag
Mother of the month of cold,
Thou didst kill the sheep and the lean lamb,
Though didst kill the grey goat in two watches, And the speckled stirk in one’.
In some of these weeks, there is a borrowing of days, three days from April might be inserted into March – experienced as a false sense of spring, which then is swallowed up by sweeping winds. These three borrowed days are then experienced in April, a few days of gusts of winds which then will disappear as spring progresses.
And so the wolf (the stormy), the dogfish, and the plover are referred to as servants of the Cailleach. As March progresses and cycles towards Spring Equinox, which was New Year in Scotland up until the 16th century, comes the days of the Cailleach.
This marks the last of the storms as the weather begins to wain, seen in stories of the Cailleach, the great crone of Gaelic belief. The storms are short, overtaken by sunshine breaking through. The lines of this verse suggest the Caillech trying to defeat this new budding energy and failing miserably.
Shootings here and sprouting there,
It eludes me everywhere;
Overhead and underfoot
Bud and blade blossom shoot.It escaped me below, it escaped me above,
It escaped me between my two hands,
It escaped me before, it escaped me behind,
It escaped me between my two eyes.
It escaped me down, it escaped me up,
It escaped me between my two ears,
It escaped me thither, it escaped me hither,
It escaped me between my two feet.
I threw my druidic evil wand,
Into the base of a withered hard whin bush,
Where shall not grow ‘fionn’ nor ‘fionnidh,She strikes here,
she strikes there,
She strikes between her legs,
but the grass grows too fast for her,
and in despair, she throws the hammer from her, and where it lighted no grass grows.
She threw it beneath the hard holly tree, Where the grass or hair has never grown.
Black
Reading these lines I can see them playing out on the hills out of my window – huge rain sheets bring lashing rains, which are very brief and then the sun breaks through. Dark clouds move in again, obscuring the sun, only for sunbeams to shine down and light up the new green. Ben Lomond (local mountain on the east shore of Loch Lomond) disappears again in a veil of rain, and like a magic show suddenly appears again with a great rainbow. The next day arrives, like the day borrowed from April when you can leave your winter coat at home.
This pattern of weather is solidified in the fight of the Cailleach with spring, sometimes with St Brighid, Bride, making a special appearance, in embellished tales.
These patterns of weather never quite adhered to calendar dates, and this is why they were given stories to recognize this tumultuous period. As long as each story played out you could keep track of the rough pattern and know that soon it would be soon time to plant seeds, tend to sheep and lambs, and head out in fishing boats and begin to feed themselves from the land’s bounty.
But what happens when March borrows entire weeks from April or even June? Then June borrows two weeks from March and new crops are flooded, giving us the wettest summer or record. What other stories will we need for rising seas that eat up both the shore and the land, never to give it back?
We have created the sea monster and summer’s dragon, unfortunately, these stories have become part of the year’s repertoire.
- An excerpt from ‘Path of the Ancestral Mothers’ currently being written by Jude Lally
Resources:
Black, Ronald (Ed). 2019. John Gregorson Campbell’s Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands. Birlinn Origin, Edinburgh.
Swine, Otta, F. 1964. The Inner Hebrides and Their Legends. Collins, London, and Glasgow.
(Meet Mago Contributor) Jude Lally