Illustrations by John Duncan
Frederick A Stokes Co., New York [1917]
An example here of the rewriting of Cailleach tales to include Brigit (Bride) as a part of a fabricated maiden/mother/crone mythos not found before the 1900s. according to Insa Thierling, author of Mistresses of the Land: Supernatural Females Associated with Land and Landscape in Scottish Gaelic Tradition. See previous post.
copied from:
The Internet Sacred Text Archive
Sacred Texts Legends & Sagas Celtic Index Previous Next
CHAPTER II
The Coming of Angus and Bride
All the long winter Beira kept captive a beautiful young princess named Bride. She was jealous of Bride's beauty, and gave her ragged clothing to wear, and put her to work among the servants in the kitchen of her mountain castle, where the girl had to perform the meanest tasks. Beira scolded her continually, finding fault with everything she did, and Bride's life was made very wretched.
One day Beira gave the princess a brown fleece and said: "You must wash this fleece in the running stream until it is pure white."
Bride took the fleece and went outside the castle, and began to wash it in a pool below a waterfall. All day long she laboured at the work, but to no purpose. She found it impossible to wash the brown colour out of the wool.
When evening came on, Beira scolded the girl, and said: "You are a useless hussy. The fleece is as brown as when I gave it to you."
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