Stories from the Bog: On the Underworld, the Underconsciousness, and the Undertaking

It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation. Religions, philosophies, arts, the forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth.

…. and she lives in Connemarra, the province of memory; you know, the province where the old language, ancient customs, and timeless narratives remain most alive. They say that she rules over the mountain range that stretches from the Dingle penin sula up along the coast to Moher where, on a clear day, you might catch glimpses of her silhouette on Hag's Head (Ceann na Cailleach), the most southerly of the cliffs of Moher. And if you travel in the region around Gort, you'll find the greatest concentration of sites named after her, the most legends about her, and the landscape most clearly carved in the stark features of her image (Monaghan, 2003). She lives in many different forms and guises: as Bronach in the lonely, windswept hills of the Burren;