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The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog: The Landscape of Celtic Myth and Spirit

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Beloved women's spirituality author Patricia Monaghan does it yet again with _The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog_, once more demonstrating to me why she's one of my favorite religious authors. Her focus here is Ireland, and its goddesses, whose myths are intimately connected with the landscape. After all, the country itself *is* named after a goddess...Monaghan traveled to Ireland for the first time in her early adulthood, in search of her Irish roots. She was so moved by the experience that she has returned many times. And in this book, she takes us on a "tour" of what she has experienced in her journeys. We travel vicariously to the rock said to be the Cailleach, the field where Macha ran, Medb's burial mound, and the shrine of Brigid at Kildare, where the sacred fire has recently been lit again.

But lest you think this is just fluff, Monaghan does not ignore the bad stuff either. Woven together with her beautiful spiritual experiences and warm friendships are the dark threads of the Troubles, the potato famine, and the English invasion, which forever haunt Ireland. And also, there are the personal tragedies. Some of Monaghan's friends have died over the years, ahd she pays them tribute here. The result is a book by turns uplifting, melancholy, and sometimes riotously funny, but always emotionally moving. Read this book if you are interested in Ireland--a land which, like the Cailleach, has survived against the odds.

Some books have a life of their own and cannot be ignored. Long after you finished reading the last page, something about the book will return to you; an image or perhaps a phrase; possibly an entire sequence will be recalled in solitude. Words, like music, have a resonance that lasts long after the initial encounter. Such a book is Patricia Monaghan's The Red Haired Girl from the Bog.
As a travel memoir, it is splendid; as a history book it is marvelous. But on a deeper level it is a magnificent essay, at once lyrical and moving. This book has resonance and because of its quality I know I will return to it again. Celtic myths, fairy woman, mystical places that speak to visitors, fog-shrouded landscapes that are so much more than they appear, sunlit fields and the voices of poets calling from the past. Monaghan's journey is captivating, compelling, and like all good stories, just a shade frightening. Exploring the Celtic myths and legends, interspersed with narratives about her many trips to Ireland, I found myself unable to set the book aside. Her book has that rare quality of taking the reader along for the trip, an accomplishment that only the best writers can manage. This book is subtitled "The Landscape of Celtic Myth and Spirit" and I cannot think of a better, concise description of what you will find in its 295 magical pages. A toast then, to Patricia Monaghan, and may the Muse never leave her side.

Voluptuous, sensuous, at times filled with unparalleled humor and wit, Patricia Monaghan's writing saturates the reader with the spirit of wide-eyed discovery, good Celtic mischief, prayer flags at holy wells, and sacred teaching--not just of the ancient past, but just as much from the 'ancient future' of the Irish soul. There are many books on Irish history, and books about the Irish landscape, but none convey the living soulscape of our ancient mother, Eire, like The Red-Haired Girl From the Bog.--Frank MacEowen, author of The Mist-Filled Path

I approached this book with misgivings, given the title and the promotional hints. I do not know how much is savvy marketing--the more academic side of Monaghan's here put forth, as opposed to her being the author of "Wild Women," or the one subtitled "myth, marigolds, and mulches". Her eponymous web domain seems to have faded (when I wrote this in 2005, but now it's back) but looking for information about her as I was reading this, she is noted as a leading popularizer of the Goddess and the reconstructed rituals that rejoin (as in the root of "re-ligion") people to nature. This insistence likewise permeates this book.

It's carefully written. I usually "heard" her voice on the page, and as she notes in an aside, I assume that much of what she shares was freshly conveyed in a daily notebook on her travels and through her studies, and then expanded and mulled over much further before coming to print here. I admire Monaghan's determination to excavate using etymology. With a solid grounding in Irish as well as a rare combination of scientific training, her ecologically aware, if persistently soft-focused, depictions of the intermingling of the spiritual, the ecclesiastical, the historical, and the anecdotal make for quite an ambitious product belying the quick title-and-cover glance that casual prospects might give to this if in a New Age bookstore's "Celtic & Druidry" section. More power to her and her readers--they'll pick up more learning and not only lore than they may have bargained for. But you have to put up with, or become enchanted by, visions of she and her pals declaiming Yeats to the wind.

She eschews footnotes but acknowledges any idea or source not her own, and an annotated booklist and source locator appends the book. (Errata: Lughnasa appears also as Lehynasa on p. 273; Kevin Danaher's book was not printed by Cork's Mercier Press in 1922 but 1972--otherwise I found no glaring errors or typos, impressively.) Honestly, New Age is not the first shelf I turn to when seeking books of Irish interest, but you need to be as eclectic and alert as is Monaghan when searching for elusive traces backwards into the "symbiosis" that she posits exists between Christianity and paganism in Ireland, over more than 1500 years.

Other reviews have been more impressionistic, but let me give you a quick view of what in Irish is called "dindsenchas," as Frank MacEowen in his blurb calls "place-bonding stories," that tie toponymy to theology, ecology, and psychology in Monaghan's circuit sun-wise around the island. Beginning in the West, at Gort in Co Clare, she ties her Burren travels to the Hag, or "cailleach." Then she goes to Connemara for the "red-haired girl" and fairies--who are not Disneyfied delightful sprites. Up to Sligo, Mayo, Roscommon on the trail of Medb (Maeve) and the Morrigan, amidst Cruachan, Knocknarea, and holy wells. Then northerly for Emain Macha and Newgrange, with her own theories about a feminized Sun and the Irish ritual landscape thoughtfully told.

A chapter inevitably a bit apart relates her own struggle with the North, and her self-awareness of being seen as the Other. It's clumsier and more self-consciously told, but more direct and reality-based. She confronts her own resentments of those she perceives as eying her differently. It's a bold departure from the rest of the book, and she does not shy away from reality. She cannot offer any new insights, and she probably knows this, but her encounter with her darker side balances her cheerful nature throughout the rest of her travelogue.

I think her musings here about rapacious and/or romantic Viking ancestors accounting for her blue eyes went a bit overboard, and I don't doubt that Monaghan might agree and/or battle me into giving in to her determination to include her reveries--she's that kind of fair-minded investigator--but at least she does not back down from the strength or the fancy of her convictions. This is the model she admires and seeks to project into the Irish past as well as to gain sustenance from the faint but stubbornly grooved and cyclical tracks of its past power for our present. I did wonder at times why [feeling as I read a bit left out; compare neo-paganism, itself about 70% female practitioners] so few men compared to so many women sought to resurrect and rekindle its meanings and symbols, but the feminine-dominated powers, as she argues, gain the prominence even in the old tales and placenames more than males. (As in Ireland-Eriu, the latter meaning "fertile field," a rare point she does not explicitly define here for herself).

Monaghan tends to follow her instinct wherever it leads. She does not avoid the scholarly, but never lets it crush her soul. She has found a much more gentle and inspirational (in the root sense) sacralized landscape than I have encountered in Ireland. She has the advantage that many Irish Americans do not of direct connections and still-connected cousins due to more recent immigration in her family. This allows her more of a base from which to leap out across what she views ahead of her, intellectually, spiritually, and physically, This is a bold attempt to confront what always stoked my own thoughts: how far beneath today's Irish psyche and habits and mentality do you have to scratch before the pagan emerges?

Helped by her ability to navigate pop culture, dictionaries, her own widespread support network of family and friends, and her inbred wanderlust from her being raised in Alaska, she brings her pagan and her Christian sides together most evidently in the visit to the unprepossessing exterior of the re-lit pagan fire for Brigit in Kildare. This joins the two realms in which she and so many Irish, according to her study, wander. Then, down to the sacralized cow, Tara, and the central Uisneach hill for fire ceremonies and Bealtaine. The scholarship dragged a bit more than elsewhere, but coupled with a moving meditation on the death of her friend Barbara, this makes for an honest encounter again with mortality. She points out that it's not the inevitability of death we fear, but its timing.

Finally, she rounds out the tour in Kerry. She did not connect Mis with Austin Clarke's 1970 poem "The Healing of Mis," or cite Emmet Larkin's 1970s model of the devotional revolution of the later 19c that transformed Ireland into the 20c stereotype of a priest-ridden backwater by extirpating many remnants of its folk beliefs, but her thoughts on the pagan sexuality nearly extinguished by a post-Famine Church make for convincing speculation. Danu's "paps" and how its worshipers erected atop her nipples as stone cairns above a gentle-breasted hilled landscape make for a perspective that, as she asserts, only a woman as herself noticed after so many male-dominated studies never had--or at least demurred from recording! In the wrap-up chapter, she and a friend go in search of first-hand folkloric recovery of their own sacred place, Garravogue near the Cavan border. They circle back and extend the circle into a spiral, fittingly, as they revolve around Ireland's own places made holy.

Now, Monaghan has commonsense, more than some who have written about her book credit her with in my judgment as this Connacht-blooded Irish comments to/of another, her family from a point about equidistant from my two family origins only a few miles. By the way, her comments about the inevitable assurance from the locals of "only a mile more" and "sure you can't miss it" ring true for any stranger in search of rural landmarks, ruins, or simply the right road. She remarks on the county-town-parish-townland (she calls the last "farm") narrowing that Irish engage each other with when first nosing about the other's bonafides correctly, as I am of her now. This type of sensible observation, I hazard, makes her more observant and less beguiled by what she ponders in the more ethereal and filtered views she frames--and to be fair she mentions the rain and mud too when they often appear. I learned a lot from her, found that she often stayed one step ahead of me on her associations with the literary and historical and mythic resonances from what she traversed to keep me nimble, and that she wrote sensitively (if a bit too purple-prosed in parts, although these were helpfully often italicized) about her own heartfelt recoveries with the tangible traces of ideas and events long thought intangible.

Skeptics, rationalists, and unbelievers would hate this book, but I prefer, as she does, to think that few actually deny all hope of some presence outlasting our own. This book, challenging in many parts and not all that wince-making in others (these sections are relatively few to her credit), will teach any seeker a lot about facts as well as fable. Monaghan digs into the former to find the latter, and vice-versa.

P.S. A book only published in Ireland, the similarly unfortunately titled "Emerald Spirit," (Cork: Mercier Press, 2003) by another American, David P Stang, makes a wonderful counterpart. John Moriarty's mythopoeic and densely argued work may be too recondite for many, but also may please readers of Monaghan; Clare seanachie Eddie Lenihan's penetrating look into faerie lore and fact, "Meeting with the Other Side," (reviewed by me as are some of Moriarty's books) also is highly recommended if you want more about the play and peril between our realm and that elusive presence still said to swirl about the Irish countryside. Mapped well recently also by Cary Meehan in her "Traveller's Guide to Sacred Ireland" (also reviewed by me).

Ms Monaghan is not only an author, but also a poet and utilizes that skill within this book. While I wished to turn page to find what she might describe next; I, also, wished each page unending. Almost as if I felt I might loose the descriptions I'd just read if I moved forward.

Rarely does a book touch me so.

Could be I'm Irish? That helped I'm sure to entice me with stories and details, but the messages within the book were priceless to me.

Her vivid story telling of Ireland, Celtic myths, Catholic practices and a rather mindful blending of the Pagan/Catholic or Protestant viewpoints in Ireland were incredible. How delightful to read about various customs and practices being combined so utterly!

The descriptions of rituals..even small and discreet and of sacred caves, etc would give anyone a valuable viewpoint on Celtic folk lore.Diverse in delivery, Ms Monaghan can describe something as small as a puddle with such essence and clarity that you feel you've stepped in one right along beside her!

She even manages to tackle the subject of fairies in such a way that is imaginative, steeped in lore, fantastic while also being modern, comprehensive and understandable. For the first time - ever - I read about fairies and didn't raise an eyebrow thinking the author must be sipping mugwort tincture.

It's a down-to-earth-style bejeweled with imagery and poetry to enrich the spirit and feed the soul. Her friends and new folks she meets in her travels are witty and fun, enticing and intelligent.

So if Celtic lore in Ireland, a blending of Pagan/Catholic/Protestant ideals and unforgettable mental pictures are to your liking...read
The Red-Haired Girl From The Bog.

Allow yourself the pure luxury of settling deep within the imagery and wisdom of this book. The lessons therein are subtle but exquisite indeed!

Enjoy...

This is a book for fans of Ireland, the Goddess, Pagans, Christians, and mythology. I highly recommend it.

A US author of Irish descent, Patricia tells of visits to Ireland over the years. She writes about searching for locations from Irish myth, such as entering faeryland and visiting the source of the Shannon looking for the salmon of wisdom. She also describes visiting different sacred sites at auspicious times, such as: lighting the Beltaine fires at Uisneach, the Mountains of the Cailleach and the Paps of Anu on different Lughnasadhs, Morrigan's cave on Samhain, Newgrange for winter solstice, and County Kildare for Imbolc.

She explores Irish culture and politics, always coming back the the land and the people. Her description of re-lighting the Sacred Flame of Brigit at Kildare gives me chills every time I read it. Patricia says this book came out of requests from friends for travel recommendations in Ireland. It has certainly made me want to take the trip even more.

The Red-Haired Girl From The Bog: The Landscape Of Celtic Myth And Spirit by Celtic history expert Patricia Monaghan is a spiritual voyage through the countryside of Ireland, exploring the intermeshing aspects of folklore, goddess worship, Celtic ceremony, and Christian faith. A thoughtful and deeply reverent viewpoint of a land steeped in tradition and lore, The Red-Haired Girl From The Bog is especially recommended for Celtic Mythology and Irish History reference collections and reading lists.

I will not go into a description of this book since so many others have done such superb and detailed reviews here. But I just wanted to say that this book was good enough to make me purchase the book AFTER I had just read it on my Kindle! I wanted to have a hard copy to leave in my cottage in the West of Ireland so that I may refer back to it and use it as a source for some adventures of my own.

For a long time I have been interested in Celtic Christianity and Spirituality and this is one of the best books I've read on the subject. A combination of historic information and personal anecdotes told with accessible language, this academic does not write like a academic - but as a person unafraid to bare her soul a bit. Highly recommended.

What fun! I loved this book. Patricia -- the author, I feel like I know her after reading this -- meanders along in a way that at first seems a bit confusing. Confusing, until you realize she is doing it purposefully. Her book meanders in the way that the land, the streams, the rivers of Ireland meander. They take their time and go their own way. And so it is with Patricia. She doesn't want you to speed through things or to find the quickest way from point "A" to point "B." She really helped to make Ireland come alive for me (I am yet another Irish gal born in exile) in terms of its myths, its history, its geography, etc. She was very honest all the way, sometimes embarrassingly so. Which of us (if you're reading this book, you KNOW you have!) have not questioned aloud that other world of faerie? But how many have gotten an answer? Patricia has in unexpected ways, and perhaps you will recognize your own "answers" too after reading this book.

If nothing else, it was a pleasure to read Patricia's quest for her ancestry. I felt like I was walking along with her and her friends, drinking tea and pints along with them in the pubs!

A woman finding her past and discovering what some would have you believe was part of the past, Irelands large active Druid Pagan culture which many refuse to believe exists.

Humour (Irish Mile) and charming insight combined and shown through the growth and awakening of the author.