The Old Woman of the Storms — Cailleach

Ben Nevis, Lochaber, Scotland

The Cailleach Bheur — the Blue Hag of Winter — rules the Scottish hills from November to May. She is the maker of winter storms, the petrifier of rivers, and the guardian of wolves and wild deer.

The Cailleach — Cailleach Bheur, the Blue Hag, the Winter Hag — is one of the oldest presences in Scottish mythology, appearing in Gaelic sources of extraordinary antiquity and in landscape features across the length of Scotland. She is described as immensely old — her age measured in geological time rather than human generations. She renews herself each year on Bealltainn by drinking from a certain spring before sunrise. In years when she fails to drink before dawn, she ages rapidly and dies — and spring comes early. In years when she drinks successfully, winter holds on longer. She is the maker of weather: she washes her plaid in the Corryvreckan whirlpool and hangs it on Ben Nevis to dry, and this is why the mountain is always white with snow — her plaid is permanently in the process of drying. The storms she makes are neither malicious nor negligent; she makes them because she is winter, and winter is her purpose. Her relationship to the land is territorial: she drives the cattle into the sheltered glens in autumn, freezes the hill lochs to hard ice, sets the rivers in stone. In spring, the Bride — the summer goddess — takes over, and the Cailleach retreats to her cave to sleep. Ben Nevis is her most consistent territorial marker. The first hard frost of autumn in the Highlands is still called in Gaelic 'the breath of the Cailleach.' She is not worshipped; she is simply acknowledged.