Loch Lomond's Coffin Road

On a cold and frosty morning, the fates seemed to have aligned themselves, the trains were running, I replaced the laces on my walking boots and my four companions (two dogs and two humans) were all up for an adventure.

We planned to walk the five-mile route of the Stoneymollen Road, which runs from Balloch, at the southern end of Loch Lomond over to Cardross, on the banks of the River Clyde.

The Stoneymollen is a coffin road on which the dead would have taken their last earth-bound journey over to clachan of Kirkton and St Mahews Church, near Cardross.

Have rucksack - will travel (from a summer ramble)

It was the first proper walk of the new year and we all felt a bit out of shape - and so we reminded each other that we weren’t carrying a coffin - although an aging Chihuahua required carried in a rucksack.

A cold start to the day

Coming down the hill towards Cardross and the light of the sun on the River Clyde

Towards the Setting Sun

It was a cold day with frost still lying in the shadows, and so I was glad to be travelling towards the low winter sun, grateful for its light and weak warmth.

We were following the road in the direction the dead would have been carried, east to west, for the deceased would have been buried in the west, towards ‎Tír na nÓg (the Land of Eternal Youth, and Tir Tairngire (the Promised Land) those next worlds lying just beyond the setting sun.

Superstition

There were many traditions adhering to a person's last journey. They were carried with their feet in the direction of travel, so their spirit couldn’t return home.

Many streams cross the path - stopping spirits from following

Spirits were thought to travel across the landscape in straight lines so coffin roads took meandering routes, lessening the likelihood that the procession would be followed. Many streams cross over the Stoneymollen route, as spirts cannot pass running water.

Peace to thy soul, and a stone to thy cairn

Many coffin routes traversed rough ground and travelled long distances, and the coffin was never to touch the ground.

While some Highland routes took days to travel those able bodied men would have been paid well in food and drink, the emphasis being on the drink. This procession would need a lot of men, so those doing the carrying could be relieved.

Some coffin routes have stone markers so the coffin could be laid to allow folks to rest.

When the body, on the day of the funeral, is carried a considerable distance, a cairn of stones is always raised on the spots where the coffin has rested, and this cairn is from time to time renewed by friends and relatives. Hence the Gaelic saying or prayer with reference to the departed, ‘Peace to thy soul, and a stone to thy cairn!’ thus expressing the wish that the remembrance of the dead may be cherished by the living. - Ian Bradley quoting Norman MacLeod.

Garbh Bealach, Piper's Cairn, Isle of Eigg

The above photo is of the Piper’s Cairn on the Isle of Eigg, which sits on an unusual Coffin Road in that it runs East to West. It was the route that the beloved dead from the Township of Grulin, whose successors would be forcibly removed in the Highland clearances, traveled the few miles West to Kildonan churchyard.

The Piper’s Cairn marks the place where the bearers of the coffin of Donald MacQuarrie, the great piper of Eigg, rested on the way to Kildonnnan churchyard. It was a route he would have journeyed, accompanying the dead while playing the pipes for the deceased’s last journey.

Back on the Stoneymollen, I thought of those people following a coffin as they walked this road. They weren’t separate from the land, not even in death, and their belief in what happened to their souls after death.

‘The point to death as being something natural and part of the rhythm and cycle of life. The bodies of the dead return to the earth after their last journey over the hills and across lochs and seas. Their souls perhaps escape down the streams that are almost invariably found beside graveyards to merge in the great ocean of divine love and find rest in the islands of the blessed far out in the west beyond the setting sun’.

- A reflection on how Hebrideans and Highlanders viewed death as being something natural and part of the rhythm and cycle of life (Ian Bradley).

The Second Sight

In the Highlands and Islands the gift (or curse as some may say) of the second-sight ran in families. These individuals often saw past or future events, and a chance passing with someone might bring a vision of their death.

Yet the second-sight wasn’t required to view events which had happened on coffin road routes for many people throughout the country have reported seeing past visions of what took place on that soil, such as bloody battles.

Here is a story from Wales on strange lights appearing on coffin roads:

‘The Welsh call them canwyllau cyrff – corpse candles. They burn in a straight line. And they lead to graveyards.
Corpse candles are bright yellow and blue orbs. They glow along funeral procession routes – the roads by which dead bodies were carried to churchyard. It’s thought the lights are the souls of the recently departed.
If no-one had died recently, a cluster of corpse candles hanging in the air, meant that a person in a house near the lights or the person witnessing the candles, would die. The candles lit a direct route to the burial ground – travelling over mountain, stream and marsh to reach the grave. Illuminating the path the body would soon take.
The canwyllau cyrff were often accompanied by the cyhyraeth – a wailing or sobbing, or even the shuffling of passing feet.
These ghostly lights were often seen by water. The Victorian writer James Motley wrote about his experience of the corpse candles…
On the river near Llandeilo, a coracle capsized. The three men inside drowned. It was reported locally that just a few days before, passengers on the Carmarthen-Llandeilo coach had seen three corpse candles hanging over the water at the exact spot where the men drowned.
There is an origin for the corpse candle myth. Apparently, one of St David’s dying prayers was to ask God to send a sign to his followers in Pembrokeshire, to let them know that their spirits were watched over in death. From that day on, the Holy Spirit lit the path of spirits of the dead in Wales.

- Friends of Friendless Churches - Click for source

Omens of Lights

The Corpse Candles remind me of descriptions of lights in the Highlands, called death-lights which travelled the funeral road - there’s even reports of people encountering the lights up close and both seeing shadowy figures held within the light.

We had discussed perhaps rewalking this road at dusk, under long lingering summer twilights, but on reading of all the spirit activity I’m not quite so sure!

St Mahews Church (built in 1467 and restored in 1955)

Some of the information for this post was taken from Ian Bradley’s ‘The Coffin Roads’, published by Birlinn. Click on the image to view on Amazon

• The drawing in the main image comes from a Glasgow Herald article - click here for source

Walking the Path of the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland

Next up on my paid series ‘Walking the Path of the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland’ the upcoming posts for Imbolc are:

• Exploring Who is Brighid - Triple Goddess, Saint and Mary of the Gael

• Imbolc Traditions

• Brighid & the Hebrides. A guided meditation and a journey to a Hebridean beach

The Day the Cailleach Caught Fire. A Bealltainn Tale

The old crone noted that the last two weeks have been unseasonably warm, and she was looking forward to days of snoozing with her fairy cattle up in the high corries. Then suddenly she sneezed, then she sneezed again. As she wiped her nose with her sleeve she looked around, and just south of Loch Lomond was a long grey-brown plume of smoke. She had to shake her head, refocus her eyes and have another long sniff. Fire, she confirmed muttering to herself, before she realized FIRE! Snow on the mountains and fire on the moor, what to do, what to do! 

Snow on the mountains and fire on the moor, what to do, what to do! 
 
She began running in her undulating gait, and on arriving at the fire she quickly began picking up moths, and a very disturbed curlew and oystercatcher, both sitting on nests. She carefully placed both birds in her pockets, relocating moths and butterflies moths in her hair, picking up an adder (snake), she quickly curled him around her neck.  
Jumping around, stomping out flames with her bare feet, unwittingly she was in fact fanning the flames and before she knew what was happening, her cloak was on fire!
 
To anyone watching she looked like she was dancing a jig, her surprisingly quick footwork putting out the remaining flames. She sat down, winded after all that activity, and wiped her blackened soles. She placed the bird nests far from the scorched earth and brought the mamas back to their eggs. One by one she took the butterflies and moths from her hair, save one that had decided it had taken up residence.

She stood up slowly, tisked a few times through pursed lips, and then did a curious thing. She was feeling rather sweaty from all that work and heat, and a little singed, a little dusted in soot, and her feet felt rather warm – and so she walked the few miles to Loch Lomond and sat down on the banks where she massaged her feet and washed the hem of her cloak.
 
She stepped into the loch waters, gasping a little at the coldness of the water. Slowly she inched her way in up past her legs to her belly, even the old crone was chattering her teeth moving uncontrollably. As she strode out further the water up to her throat and ears she remembered the deep calm, the pressure of the water, and the darkness – all so comforting. A few steps more and she was on the bottom of the loch. 
 
This is not a ritual that humans get to see, for she’s entering into another realm. Humans have forgotten that the ancient world is all around us, it’s the mountain behind the mountain, the rain cloud behind the raincloud. All these normal little things under our noses are the way in, but the majority of humans don't see what's under their noses and much prefer the big lights and the glamour and are so easily distracted they don't see the treasure in the small things.

 
She walked into the loch, who knew she could breathe underwater, he said. She was standing there at the very bottom of the loch – from outside the loch, she seemed huge even gigantic, and yet somehow when in the loch she seemed smaller. Her eyes were closed and her hair moved about her waving in the water. She looked very serene he commented. And she was serene, for all the worries of the fire and the birds had been washed away. Bealltainn sits across from Samhuinn on the wheel, where she ushered in winter by washing her tattered old cloak in the waters of the Whirlpool of Corryvrecken.

This washing is a sacred ritual, a ritual of rebirth, and so Bealltainn mirrors her Samhuinn ritual and so the year renews itself.  As the northern hemisphere comes into summer the south descends into the dark months of winter. 
 

MIDWIFING THE SOUL

Scottish Retreat, 15th - 22nd July, Isle of Eigg. 

In a time of so much uncertainty in the world, you are invited on a deep journey of exploration through story, art, and ritual. Midwifing the Soul is about focusing on matters of the soul, making space for grief, and dancing between the worlds to speak to the ancestors. 

This is a journey of connecting to the soil and soul of the land, of keening at the edge of the ocean and making art that explores your story and your role in this world.

So if you've felt a deep longing, come join me on this Ancestral Mothers of Scotland retreat on the Isle of the Big Women (Eigg) in the Isles of Brighid (the Hebrides).

* 10% discount available for the last few places

The Story of A Doll

As we cycle into the dark of the year a ritual on my path is to bury a doll. She is a small clay figurine, curled up in a foetal position.

This is a ritual normally carried out at Autumn Equinox, in preparation for the coming dark of the year. But this year things are a little out of kilter and she was buried later, in the threshold in which Samhain and Winter Solstice overlap.

I can view the hill I buried her on from my house, it’s not towering tall nor holds a circle of standing stones, but to me it is sacred ground.

It’s about a 5 mile walk, at a rough estimate. I pause for a moment as I step from the tarmac road and onto the land, a threshold marking two very different worlds. I hadn’t walked far until I came across a Barn Owl pellet, a mass of regurgitated bones all shaped together with fur and other indigestible parts. I stoped for a second or two using a stick to pull the pellet apart, a momentary reading of the bones of little creatures, sacrificed by great talons.

In previous years the doll was buried in a large black ceremonial cauldron, made by the hands of a friend. In 2019 that changed, as I felt the call to bury her in the earth.

She would travel with me in a small circular tin, and in the photos above I’m on the Isle of the Big Women looking over to Skye. She was buried in the dark peaty soil, further down the hill from a sacred site. As we moved in 2020 and lockdown I felt her connection from under the soil as each of the seasons passed. I held on with a thread, planning to perminantly move back home when I could.

Now I am back on home soil, walking my favorite hill. I have placed dried Rowan berries into the little clay doll for this cycle of the deep, and added a few fresh holly berries from a familiar Holly. Holly trees often acted as markers in the landscape, so effective is their ever green against the browns and golds of winter foliage that I can see her from about 5 miles away, from my window!

The Guardian Holly Tree

There have already been some hard frosts since she was lain in this little opening between two stones. This is at the foot of a dry stane dyke (a traditionally built stone wall) with the roots of my beloved Holly tree below her.

I will visit her again around Imbolc and between now and Spring Equinox there will be rain, sleet and snow. I will return at Spring Equinox to retrieve her, a ritual of divination. But for now she lies on the hill with shortening days, curled up in a foetal position, a fitting posture for awaiting the rebirth of the sun. She won’t see those new rays of light but the little berries pressed into her hair hold sacred intentions which I hope will be blessed by the new light.

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The Old Antlered One - A Winter Solstice Gathering

Sunday 18th Dec, 7.30 - 9.30 UK GMT / 2.30 - 4.30 East Coast US

Stories from the Path of the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland:

• The Old Antlered One - the tale of a great skeletal antlered figure who brought the land into being 

• She Who Runs with the Herd - The origin story of the Sisterhood of the Antlers and the women of the clan who followed the herds into the lands which became known as Scotland. 

• Trance dance - Download the template and create a mask to wear for a between the worlds journey

• Antlered Oracle Doll - Make an oracle doll with antler or stick - with paper scrolls 

Keening with the Cailleach

Keening With the Cailleach

Sunday 27th November, 7.30-9.30 UK GMT/ 2.30 - 4.30 US Eastern

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SACRED STORIES

KEENING

CAILLEACH AS MIDWIFE

CAILLEACH ORACLE DOLL

I invite you to bring all the different threads of sorrow - your personal sorrow, sorrow you feel on a global level - the sorrows for our bird and animal kin, sorrows of injustices too many to count, sorrow’s for all unfolding from climate devastation, and those deep-rooted sorrows we can’t even name.

This is also a ritual of renewal like clothes that are washed as Clarissa Pinkola Estes highlights, to wash is to purify, a baptism - to renew, a reviving re-discovering what we hold true, what we hold sacred. This is a sacred ritual.

The Cailleach at the Corryvrecken Whirlpool - Digital art by Jude Lally

Through the story of the Cailleach’s Cauldron, you're invited to enter the swirling waters of her whirlpool, to let those sorrows go as the waters churn around you. It’s not an easy ride but a worthwhile one. This cauldron has a way of pulling things apart, of pulling you apart and in a ritual of renewal to put things back together again. It’s her great ritual of renewal to

Tigh na Bodach, Shrine of the Cailleach, Glen Cailleach, Perthshire, Scotland

The second story we will explore is Tigh Na Bodach, the Shrine of the Cailleach that has sat in Glen Cailleach for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years - who knows? You're invited to take your place by the women who tend to the stones, who have spent their summer up in the high glens grazing the cattle.

This ritual is packing away the stones until Bealtaine. They will remain in the little shrine over the winter months and in this ritual, the women give thanks and pass the stones around before placing them in the shrine. It is a ritual of gratitude and also an opportunity to place things into the shrine - problems you haven’t worked out and answer for projects that maybe should be wrapped up in layers of cloth and placed at the back of the shrine.

Cailleach Oracle Doll

As this time of the year is like a battle of artificial lights pitted against an ancient darkness, a fertile and restful darkness I also you to gather some natural materials - a shell or a bone, a feather, yarn or a small branch. As we listen to music you’ll assemble a simple oracle doll - a way of tending to the Cailleach over the dark months. A reminder of what you tucked into the back of the shrine and what you whispered to the stones - a doll to be reassembled come Spring Equinox.

Arriving in Scotland and a Gathering of Big Women

Ardmore Point, on the River Clyde

Arriving isn't an instant thing, it happens in stages. While a plane or a train might deliver you to your destination, arriving is a process that takes its own time.

After a three-day journey by car, plane, and train, I have been arriving a little more each day. While the journey was stressful all our documents were in order and the French and UK passport control were happy with our dogs' health certificates. All the connections went well although Bailey had a bit of a meltdown on the last leg, I can't blame her as the train was delayed by 2 hours. Mama is the perfect travelling dog and slept for most of the journey.

Our journey took us from Atlanta to Paris, Air France is one of the few airlines that are currently flying dogs without having to book through a separate agency.
Once arriving in Paris we hired a car and drove north, under big skies and farmed landscapes with huge towering wind turbines - such a stark juxtaposition against old French farmhouses.
On arriving in the coastal town of Calais we headed to the beach to dig our toes in the sand as the wind whipped up mini whirlwinds.

For many years I lived in Brighton, on the South Coast of England and so enjoyed the view from the other side of the channel. Yet out towards the horizon, you could see the white caps of wild waves in the English Channel and my heart lurched to think of those who are fleeing desperate political conditions and give over their life savings to make the perilous journey on small inflatable open boats.
While the UK is more than able to accept refugees modern the current government policy is now to send people arriving illegally to Rwanda.

Arriving

My arrival happens by invitation, by the swoop of a swift's wing, in the pattern of moss under the bridge, with three swans taking off and into flight.
Falling into a pattern helps, taking one step after the other into the morning and evening.
The rain showers coming in from the west drop their rain in the realm of the Goddess Clutha. With each drop I become part of the water cycle myself, each cell reattuning to this longitude.

Dumbarton sits at the place where the River Leven meets the mighty River Clyde. The Leven flows out of Loch Lomond and races in tight meanders down towards the Clyde. Here, where both rivers meet sits the towering form of Dumbarton Rock, the plug of an ancient volcano.

Most mornings I head to the park, walk along the shore and collect swan feathers and sea glass.

Walking along the Leven with Carman Hill in the distance

I've still to visit Carman Hill, my favourite hill. This is the place where I first met the Cailleach, I am waiting till I have fully arrived before I go meet the Old Crone.

Slowly we are cycling towards summer solstice, we have glorious twilight here where the nights are still light until 10pm. Twilight is that place of magic, the place where stories are born and I'll be sharing stories of the Big Women, from the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland in a Keening Circle next weekend - I hope you can join me!

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Keening With the Big Women
Sunday 12th June. UK 7 pm, US Eastern 2 pm 

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On the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland Wheel of the Year, the Summer Solstice honors the Big Women, inspired by stories of warriors and amazons from the Western Isles and around the UK. 

• In this gathering, you'll hear a story of Scathatch, the warrior from the Isle of Skye

• Plus the story of my own initiation by the Big Women.

• You'll also be invited to consider your own Big Women qualities

Keening Circle 
This Keening Circle invites you to bring all emotions you are holding - from rage to despair, grief to overwhelm. 
You'll be invited to share how you are feeling in a small group before we bring our emotions into the great cauldron we'll hold at the center of our gathering. 

There is one full scholarship place available

Birthday Giveaway!

Yup, that's me. Many photos of me. For most of my life, I have sidestepped birthdays with excuses like not wanting to be the center of attention. But on turning 50, a couple of years ago my attitude changed. Since then I've definitely got into celebrating my 'self'.
It took me a while, but I've finally embraced celebrating the fact that we were born into this world.

This birthday is one that is very much on the edge of a threshold. One which marks a deep dive into the liminal phase of menopause, the place of change and transformation.

Moving Home
It's also a threshold of leaving Asheville, a place that I've lived for 12 and a half years, and moving back home to Scotland. I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has joined me on this journey, the folks who have taken workshops and wild retreats, attended classes, bought dolls and art, and those who have offered encouraging words.

Life is now becoming unending to-do lists and working out how to take 2 dogs from here to Scotland - it's going to be a long journey. But in light of those who are being displaced through war, I recognize mine is a privileged journey.

Check out the Giveaway offerings as well as $5 off in my Etsy shop.

First Birthday Giveaway is an online course voucher, valid for one year allows you to sign up for any online courses you'd like to take for free

‘Ancestor’ Art

Painted on canvas board (ie thin), this piece measures 10 x 8, and is all ready for framing.

Simply sign up for my newsletter and you’ll be automatically entered in the draw.

If you already on the mailing list leave a comment on FB or email me (via contact here on the website)

The draw will take place on Wednesday 23rd March and I’ll share details of the winners via my Facebook groups and my newsletter

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$5 Off anything in my Etsy shop - until Wednesday 23rd March

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Last Workshop

A Keening Circle. March

Sunday 27th March, 1-4 pm Eastern Time, US

• Exploring the history of keening

• The role of the Bean Chaointe, the Keening Woman

• Examples of traditional keening and modern uses

• A keening ritual, with music to guide you to help express your grief