9 Chapter Nine: Druids/Fili/The Cailleach/Witches/Fairy Doctors

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The Fili

The fili (or filè) (Old Irish pronunciation: [/ˈfʲilʲi/]), plural filid, filidh (or filès), was a member of an elite class of poets in Ireland, believed to have the power of divination, and therefore able to foresee, foretell and predict important events. Indeed, the etymology of filí reveals a connection to the Proto-Celtic word *welīts, meaning “seer” or “one who sees.”

“In the twelfth century Macgnímhartha Finn, ‘boyhood deeds of Fionn,’ it is told in the preface to a ninth century poem attributed to the hero Fionn mac Cumhaill that Fionn composed the poem after learning the three things that confer privilege (nemed) on a fili, or poet, namely teinm láeda “the chewing of the pith,” imbas for-osnai “knowledge that illuminates,” and díchetal di chennaib “chanting from heads.” The first of these, teinm láeda, is thought to have referred originally to Fionn mac Cumhaill’s chewing of his thumb after he had burnt it as a result of touching the salmon of knowledge while cooking it” (McTurk).

“Irish folklore provides a demonstration of imbas forasnai exercised by a ‘woman poet of Connacht’ named Fedelm, who had been ‘learning verse and vision in Alba.’ The Poetess’ name is clearly a reference to her profession rather than an actual name. Aillil and Medb, the king and queen of Connacht, encountered Fedelm as they were invading Ulster. The men of Ulster suffered under a curse at the time which caused them to experience the “pangs” of childbirth for nine days whenever their kingdom was invaded or endangered. Medb anticipated an easy victory and asked Fedelm, “Have you the imbas forasnai, the Light of Foresight?” Fedelm replied that she indeed possessed that skill and proceeded to prophesy the defeat and destruction of Medb’s army at the hands of Cu Chulainn:

I see him moving to the fray:

take warning, watch him well,

Cúchulainn, Sualdam’s son!

Now I see him in pursuit.

Whole hosts he will destroy,

making dense massacre.

In thousands you will yield your heads.

I am Fedelm. I hide nothing.

Fedelm did not engage in any ritual to invoke this power of prophesy, though it must be noted that all of her answers to Medb’s questions were in verse; even when the answer was a single line, there is a certain rhythm in the words. Fedelm also asserted that she was only reporting the truth of her vision without obfuscation or omission. Another point of interest in this account was the fact that Medb repeatedly addressed Fedelm as “prophetess,” banfáith in Gaeilge, when Fedelm specifically identified herself as a ‘woman poet.’ Clearly the power of prophesy and divination were nearly synonymous with the role of the Poet” (Kramer 96-7).

 

We also see the Morrígan functioning as a fátha in the medieval Irish epic The Táin. She predicts the future, and also delivers her prediction in the form of poetry.

“The ninth-century bishop-king Cormac macCuilannain recorded that Saint Padraig banned the rites of imbas forasnai and teinm láeda due to their pagan nature” (Kramer 98).

According to Brehon Law, “the four forms for which honour price is given even to the victim’s descendants are those that have the capacity to last for a very long time: a nickname that clings, a full satire, the legendary glam dichenn or cursing poem, and a ‘perpetual disgrace in runes.’ That last suggests someone going to the trouble of engraving the insult in ogham on a standing stone–surely the earliest example of graffiti?  (Kerrigan 77, 78).

“The Annals of Ulster document that Cúán hua Lothcháinn, the chief Poet of Ireland, used a firt filed, or “poet’s spell,” to cause the bodies of his murderers to rot within an hour of his murder. Even English sources in the sixteenth century record the power of the Irish Poets to “rhyme to death” men and animals. The 218 Corpus Iuris Hibernici indicates that a Poet was justified in causing the death of a king who had offended the Poet by reciting satirical verse and piercing a clay effigy of the king with pins. In this case the power of the Poet could be considered symbolic magic, killing the king by killing his reputation. While piercing a clay effigy seems to indicate an element of sympathetic magic, the heavy weight placed upon reputation and honor by the Gaelic Irish seems to be of principle significance in the Poet’s ability to kill through satire. In either event, the Brehon Law system provided for a specific means by which a privileged and educated member of Irish society could legally kill an important member of Irish society via magic” (Kramer 95).

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Ryan Coogler’s Sinners begins with Annie, a woman who embodies aspects of the “Mother” and “Crone” simultaneously as the root worker/ healer and spiritual advisor, played by Wunmi Mosaku, stating: “There are legends of people with the gift of music so true that it pierces the veil between life and death. Conjuring spirits from the past and the future. In ancient Ireland they were called the Fili. In Choctaw land, they were called Firekeepers. And in West Africa, they were called Griots. This gift can bring healing, but it can also attract evil” (0:00:35- 0:01:16).  –Sinners

 

 

Frederick Douglass spent a month in Cork City in the late autumn of 1845, delivering powerful denunciations of slavery to crowds of thousands, while forging friendships that would last a lifetime.

Kindred Spirits commemorates the 1847 donation by the Native American Choctaw People to Irish famine relief during the Great Hunger, despite the Choctaw themselves living in hardship and poverty and having recently endured the Trail of Tears.

“We have a good description of [the cailleach] from the tale “Togail Bruidne Da Derga,” preserved in Lebor na hUidre, the oldest extant manuscript entirely in Irish, dating from the 12th century, though the tale is clearly pre-Christian. . . . Conaire Mór, the high kind of Ireland, was forced to break his geis (‘taboo’) by the arrival of an old woman to the door of a warrior fort at night and demanding to be let in.

 As long as a weaver’s beam was each of her two shins, and they were as dark as the back of a stag-beetle. A greyish, wooly mantle she wore. Her lower hair used to reach as far as her knee.  Her lips were on one side of her head. She came and put one of her shoulders against the door-post of the house, casting the evil eye on the kind and the youths who surrounded him in the hostel.

When Conaire asks her name she launches into a litany to show how multidimensional she is. Among the names she lists are

Samon, Sinand, Seisclend, Sodb, Caill . . . Níth, Némain, Nóennen, Badb, Blosc, Bloár, Huae, óe Aife la Sruth.

Badb (Modern Irish badbh) means ‘hooded crow,’ something she is often portrayed as. In another myth, ‘Togail Bruidne Dá Choca,’ she again appears as a crow, being described as a ‘red woman’ washing blood from a chariot at a crossing point of a river. . . . As Cormac and his men unyoke their chariots they notice

A red woman on the edge of the ford, washing her chariot and its cushions and its harness. When she lowered her hand, the bed of the river became red with gore and with blood.  But when she raised her hand over the river’s edge, not a drop therein but she lifted it high; so that they went dryfoot over the bed of the river.

When someone asked her what she was doing she stood on one foot again (adopting the pose of magical incantation, as she did in ‘Togail Bruidne Da Derga’), and with one eye closed she uttered the grim prophecy that she was washing the harness of a dead kind—that of Cormac himself.

It is strangely pleasing that this woman, who was demonized by the patriarchy, is still part of the language I speak today. That she now exists in physical form in an increasing number of communities throughout the country once a year, and that she can be visited for the rest of the time at a shore-line rock in West Cork [the Hag of Beara] on the contually shifting margin between land and ocean, is something to be treasured and savoured.” (Manchan)

Witches

Fairy-Women and Fairy-Doctors

“The overwhelming message of the fairy-legends is that the unexpected may be guarded against by careful observance of society’s rules. These stories are important components of child-rearing practice, establishing the boundaries of normal, acceptable behaviour, and spelling out the ways in which an individual who breaches them may forfeit his or her position. . . . Some remedies, prescribed by knowledgeable people known as ‘fairy-men,’ ‘fairy-women,’ or ‘fairy-doctors,’ simply show how to avoid compounding the problem. They use rest, measured and calibrated by ritual practice. Others involve herbal medicine” (The Trial of Bridget Cleary 30).

Tralee 1826: “Ann Roche, an old woman of very advanced age, was indicted for the murder of Michael Leahy, a young child, by drowning him in the Flesk. . . under the delusion of the grossest superstition. The child, though four years old, could neither stand, walk, nor speak—it was thought to be fairy-struck. . . . Upon cross-examination, the witness said it was not done to kill the child but to cure it—to put the fairy out of it. Verdict—not guilty” (37-8).

Ballyvadlea, 1895: “There was nothing exotic or unusual in the suggestion that Bridget Cleary, ill in bed with bronchitis. . . was a fairy changeling. Among the documented cases of changeling burning in Ireland in the 19th century, Bridget Cleary’s is the only one that involves an adult victim” (43). Some said fairies had taken her into their stronghold and she would emerge, riding on a white horse. Her badly burned body was found in a shallow grave. Her husband, father, aunt and four cousins were arrested and charged.

Deirdre Sullivan: Perfectly Preventable Deaths and its sequel Precious Catastrophe

Works Cited

Kerrigan, Jo. Brehon Laws: The Ancient Wisdom of Ireland. The O’Brien Press, 2020.

Kramer, William.  Filid, Fairies and Faith: The Effects of Gaelic Culture, Religious Conflict and the Dynamics of Dual Confessionalisation on the Suppression of Witchcraft Accusations and Witch-Hunts in Early Modern Ireland, 1533 – 1670

McTurk, Roy. “The Irish Reach: The Influence of Gaels and Gaelic Tradition on Old English Poetry.” Dublin Review of Books, no. 147, July 2022.