On Making Up Myths (Or, Will the Real Cana Cludhmor Please Approach the Harp?)

There once was a poet of great skill and fame. Ireland, of course, was a country known for its poets. It’s filid.

And, Ireland was known for its banfhile, too.  The story I shall tell you is of Cana Cludhmor. Cana Cludhmor was a banfhile.

Cana Cludhmor was a woman, a poet, and a person of great skill and great renown.

Her story was folded into a couple dozen lines. Her story has left much room for interpretation. And yes, misinterpretation, too. If your passions tend toward the mythic, the Celtic, and the obscure, you might have heard that Cana Cludhmor was an Irish goddess of poetry and inspiration. You might have heard she’s the inventor of the harp.

In the great modern quest for goddesses and a deep desire to resuscitate ancient magic, someone not so very long ago spun such a tale by editing the very last line of what we find in a medieval book called Imtheacht na Tromdháimhe, or The Proceedings of the Great Bardic Institution. That modern twist on the story endures, making a woman a goddess and crediting her with the creation of Ireland’s most powerful symbol and most beautiful instrument. 

(I’m grateful to Morgan Daimler for tracing the origins of this revised Cana Cludhmor tale, which recasts the poet as “Canola,” and refers to her as inventor of the harp and Irish goddess of poetry and inspiration. I was able to find what seems to be the first mention of “Canola” - a 1916 book called called Celtic Mythology, that offered no traceable citations - but the choice to credit Cana Cludhmor with harp making and divinity seems a totally new invention.)

This is all a lot of “inside baseball,” falling into the research rabbit hole and getting into the nit-picky details that can make scholarship (and scholars!) so tedious, bear with me.

Honoring the sources of the stories and mythology we love matters. If we all pass our inventions off as “fact” we end up destroying (and colonizing) the precious, fragile traditions we purport to love.

I believe the “real” tale of Cana Cludhmor is actually even richer and more full of possibility. Even more because it’s true. Well, true in the sense that it has endured for eight hundred years, and likely long before the monks recorded it in the Book of Lismore in the fourteenth century. It’s up to you if you want to believe what the lads inscribed on vellum or you feel more comfortable with what you find on Wikipedia.

In my story, I will rob this mythic woman of none of her power, even as I strip her divine status and place the harp-maker’s tools in the hands of another. I promise. We’ll land at a different place. A place that feels a bit more human and a bit more like what we need right now.

The Poet Asked Me to Tell (and Heal) Her Story

The paragraphs above serve as the beginning of my telling of Cana Cludhmor’s story, which you can hear in Episode 13 of the Knotwork Storytelling Podcast, “How to Heal a Poet’s Heart, or The Invention of the Irish Harp.”

I discovered this story because I wanted to tell a story about the Irish harp but knew a tale of the Dagda, the Good God, with his deadly war harp was not the story for Maureen Buscareno and me to explore together. It’s an art, matching a story with a guest, and not all harp stories hit the same notes. (Sorry… the pun was inevitable!)

This great female poet, or banfhile, Cana Cludhmor is mentioned only briefly in a long, sprawling satire about the annoying habits of the bards who hang about, taking advantage of the king’s hospitality. This is a lot left to the imagination.

Below is an excerpt from the manuscript, which includes the dialog that frames this tiny scrap of story:

"I question thee, Casmael,” said Marvan, " whence originated the science of playing the harp; who was the first that composed poetry, or whether the harp or the timpan was the first made?"
"I don't know that, prime prophet," said Casmael.

"I know it," says Marvan, “And I will tell it thee. In former times there lived a married couple whose names were Macuel, son of Miduel, and Cana Cludhmor (or, “of great fame”) his wife. His wife, having entertained a hatred for him, fled before him through woods and wildernesses, and he was in pursuit of her. One day that the wife had gone to the strand of the sea of Camas, and while walking along the strand she discovered the skeleton of a whale on the strand, and having heard the sound of the wind acting on the sinews of the whale, she fell asleep by that sound. Her husband came up to her, and having understood that it was by the sound she had fallen asleep, he proceeded into an adjacent forest, where he made the frame of a harp, and he put chords in it of the tendons of the whale, and that is the first harp that ever was made.”

When you listen to the story, you’ll hear my inventions, including the curse, the bloodied hands, and the moment of healing. You’ll note how I inject motivation and emotion into the tale, as is the storyteller’s way.

This is an old story of mysterious origin–how did the monks receive this particular bit of narrative? why did they decide it worth their scribal time? But still, this isn’t a particularly mystical story, at all.

I’m all for the magical and the divine, but I think we do a disservice to the goddesses, as well as the culture, the history, and the mortal human condition, when we force women out of this world and into the otherworld to serve our desire for life on the other side of the veil.

The Work of Remythologizing is Delicate, and Important

"In order to remythologize their heroines' stories, the authors must retain basic aspects of the tales and characters and infuse them with fresh energies that comment on the age in which they were written."

Oh, from the mouths of baby academics!

That line is from my 2003 essay, Dethroning the Goddess, Crowning the Woman: Eva Gore-Booth and Augusta Lady Gregory's Mythic Heroines, which was published in New Voices in Irish Criticism 4, published by Four Courts Press in Dublin.

While I wouldn't construct a sentence like that now (and would ask my writing coaching clients to dial back the scholarly rhetoric and speak to the heart), I am proud of my young grad student self.

And I would love her to know that I am actively doing the work of "remythologizing" those beloved stories almost half a lifetime later,

Parenting Amidst the Ruins of Childhood’s Mythologies

“Mom, I know magic isn’t real.”

My just-turned-eight year old made this grave declaration at the bus stop the other day. As the cars ripped through the filthy slush on our back country road with a sound that tore the morning in two, I felt something rip in the fabric of this childhood we’d co-created with our girl.

I wasn’t ready. Lately, we’ve been going through a lot of emotional ups and downs with this daughter I have always called my “little mystic.” It’s impossible to know how much can be blamed on the disruptions and fears stirred up by two years of Covid and how much of this was always destined to be part of her path, but this child, the quintessential old soul, has access to the depths of the depths. And some of those depths are dark. 

We’re getting her the help she needs to regulate her own emotional terrain, but as we huddled together on a frigid February morning, I wondered where my help was to deal with “I know all magic is just made up.”

Living, Writing, and Parenting According to the Rules of Magic

Now, as you likely know, I am a woman who has built much of her creative life and work on this word, “magic.” I call myself a word witch because I know my superpowers lie in the weaving of language. I believe that we cast a spell when we craft well-made sentences. I believe stories are formulas for miraculous transformation.

I have never flown on a broomstick, watched sparks fly from my wand, or seen anyone turned into a toad. I don’t think burning just the right number of candles will attract a lover or help you get revenge. I know that tarot cards have nothing to do with predicting the future but have everything to do with reframing the current narrative.

And yet, I do believe in magic.

And in this moment of revelation, I wasn’t sure how I would relate to a child who didn’t want to speak the language of unicorns, dragons, and fairies.

The Stories We Make Up. The Stories We Make Real.

By bedtime that night, she knew that Daddy assembled the toys and Mom filled the wooden shoes with candy from Sinterklaas (and kept up with all of the global holiday traditions she learned about at school and wanted to make part of our tradition). She knew we tossed Rudolph’s carrots into the yard and put Santa’s cookies back in the tin because we were too full of sugary carbs by midnight on Christmas Eve to enjoy them.

The next morning, she was saying “I’m so sorry I realized magic wasn’t real.”

There was real sorrow there, but also a sense of pride, I think. We celebrated her curiosity and her wisdom. We told her that we were proud of her for being brave enough to ask questions. We showed her that we wouldn’t lie to her.

Her biggest fear, as we picked our way up the icy driveway for another school day, was that she might start telling other kids. ( I had asked her to promise not to share this revelation as it’s important that everyone come to their own realization about how magic works in the world). The believers in her second grade class are safe. I trust and admire her thoughtfulness, even as I wish I did have a functional magic wand to instantly restore her peace of mind.

I think we arrived at a good place. We discussed that, though she lost something in losing her belief in leprechauns who leave gold on March 17 and a sleigh that circumnavigates the earth in one night, she had gained something that was even more… magical.

Now she knows what the grown ups know:

Magic isn’t about watching wishes materialize in an instant. Magic isn’t about mythical beings creeping into your house in the middle of the night and leaving gifts in exchange for gingerbread. 

Magic is about the love that families have for their children. 

Magic is about the great collective stories that get made real.

On the Other Side of a Belief in Magic Is… More Magic

I still believe in what Dion Fortune says, “magic is the ability to change consciousness at will.” Someday, maybe my daughter will, too.

Despite the heartache that comes from realizing this chapter of mothering is closed and knowing we all must enter the stage when Easter baskets become ceremonial offerings of parental chocolate rather than the gifts of an egg laying bunny, I am breathing into the magic that is found in this change.

We get to talk about all the forms of magic that are in the world, from science to love, from the beauty of a sunset to the way a cardinal swoops by your window when you need it most. We’ll learn together how to court wonder in a non-magical universe and make room for those mysteries that still can’t quite be explained. 

And, we have a daughter who has learned that her mother and father will tell her the truth, even when the stories seem prettier. She gets to understand how devotion creates delight, and how well-loved she truly is.

So yeah, she may know magic isn’t “real.” But she also gets to find out that the real world can be magical in ways she never imagined before.

---

What about your stories of magic, heartbreak, and realization?
Have you been giving yourself the time and space to consider them and put them on the page?

I think of our online writing community, he Sovereign Writers’ Knot, as a creative cauldron. Over our thirteen weeks together, you’re giving yourself a chance to explore, imagine, draft, and craft some of the stories you’ve longed to tell.

A Time to Tell Your Story: Look the Ghosts of Past, Present, and Future in the Eye

When I was a senior in high school, I put on a bonnet and heavy black Victorian gown and took the stage as Ebenezer Scrooge.

It was 1996. Our school auditorium was under construction, so the drama club took over the empty Woolworth’s store, assembled a stage, and put on a show. Looking back, it was all a little ragtag (in later productions at the new theater our wizard of a director had the ghosts of A Christmas Carol flying through the air!), but I don’t think it occurred to us to feel deprived. Instead, we were caught up in the wildness of putting on two shows a night for most of December and the privilege of taking up residence at the Cape Cod Mall.

It was certainly a wild time for me. I remember vividly when my mother tracked me down near the food court between performances, waving a big thick envelope and unable to contain her jubilation: I’d gotten into Boston College on early decision. At points, it was hard to be in the moment and embody one of Christmas’s most iconic characters when I was so busy imagining myself walking across my dream campus on an autumn afternoon.

And then, on closing night, a former drama club guy, now a sophomore in college, came to the show. We were dating by mid-January and I spent the next couple of years losing myself in crazy love.

Here we are in the present.

I’m telling you a story from my past and inviting you to wonder with me about a collection of moments that created the future.

At Boston College, I’d pursue my dreams of Irish literature, spend my junior year in Galway, and eventually win a BC fellowship that would enable me to get my MA at University College Dublin. Though I would set aside those passions and allow them to become a mere hobby for the first act of adulthood, you might say that writing and publishing The Sovereignty Knot was the beginning of my second act. Now, I am reviving and deepening those dreams with the KnotWork Podcast and planning my future accordingly.

As for the love story, I wouldn’t end up marrying that first real boyfriend (though that was the plan for a while), but I still hope my girls have “a practice relationship” with someone who shares their interests and passions the way I did. I lost a great degree of my wild princess sovereignty for the sake of romance, but then, sovereignty is something that you have, and lose, and find again, at least a dozen times over in life. I don’t think I could change a line of that story and be who I am now.  

Every personal story has these elements of past-present-future time magic

The personal history stories we tell are crafted based on the preoccupations and passions of the present. And, when those stories make it out of the daydream or the journal and into conversation or onto the public page, there’s a chance to shape the future in a new way. 

As you read these words, learning a little about me and my origin story, it may shift the way we relate to one another next time we meet, online or in person. 

Even more importantly, it may shift the way you relate to the stories of your own past. Maybe you’ll retrieve a memory of your almost-an-adult self. Maybe you have a Christmas play memory of your own. Maybe you’re having a flashback to your teenage days at the mall!

What we learn about story, healing, and the way we weave time from Scrooge’s Christmas Eve journey

Enough about me. This is actually a story about your story and about one of literature’s most beloved curmudgeons. (Damn, was it liberating to be seventeen and to have permission to look and sound as unbeautiful as possible!)

With this past-present-future “this is your life” morality story, Dickens invites us to explore our own lives through that fogged glass of the holidays.  The nostalgia, the grief, the denial, the fear, the joy, and the regeneration. Throughout our lives, and throughout every December, these emotions permeate the air, looping back to the past, entwining through the present, and swirling on into the future.

Peering, Gently, Into the Past

You know the basic plot of A Christmas Carol, right? The old miser Scrooge is visited by the ghost of their business partner, Jacob Marley, and is told to expect visits from three spirits over the course of Christmas Eve.

(We used the feminine pronouns on “girl nights” and the masculine on “boy nights” as the two casts of our high school play were basically divided according to gender. I love that the use of neutral pronouns and our evolving understanding of gender makes this casting choice make even more sense than it did in the 90s. And seeing as years of theater history have shown us that Ebenezer is not defined by masculinity, I am adopting “they/them” throughout this piece to refer to the character.)

Though we didn’t all work for “Old Fezziwig, bless his heart,” we can all look back to past holidays (and any moment from adolescence) and either get caught up in the good old days or utterly overcome with regret for past mistakes and sorrow over past hurts. Either option can make looking back feel fraught, as we tend to be wracked with longing for what we believe was lost or we spiral into blame or self-recrimination.

When you go back to past events because you want to share the story with others, you must look at the glittering and the shadowed, the perceived perfection and the sources of trauma. This honest look at the past is a vital part of Story Healing, and it’s what I help folks do in my Healing for Heroines sessions. 

Ultimately, we review our own history not just to replay the old tapes, but to make sense of those old stories in order to create meaning moving forward. We seek out what’s true then and look for how that truth can help construct a grounded, empowered present and future.

Acknowledging the Present

Next, of course, Ebenezer meets the Ghost of Christmas Present and watches the tiny feast at the Cratchit house. Seeing the world as it is, Ebenezer has a chance to reckon with both the delusions and the hypocrisy that lurk within. 

Few of us are as misanthropic as Scrooge, but we all feel the burn when Ebenezer, shocked to learn Tiny Tim will not live another year, must endure the pain of their own past words, “If he is likely to die, then let him die, and decrease the surplus population!”

We know how it hurts to have our own limited, ignorant opinions reflected back to us. It’s what keeps us from looking unflinchingly into the past. To live and tell a story of transformation, we need to be honest about the darkness of what was so the light of what is can shine bright and true.

When we can anchor into what is really happening around us, refusing to let the narratives be warped by our own fears, or twisted by conspiracy theories and what Clarissa Pinkola Estés calls “the overculture,” then we can move beyond delusion and hypocrisy into awakening and recognition.

Peering Into the Future

For Scrooge, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come was the most terrifying because there was nowhere to go but down after a life so limited and devoid of compassion.

Telling a cautionary tale, Mr. Dickens surely assumed his readers would be called to pause and evaluate their own lack of charity and compassion. Repentance counted for something then. Surely self-examination and a dedication to constructive change haven’t totally gone out of style in the 21st century.

Even for Ebenezer, who gets to look beyond the veil of time, the future is all unknown and unwritten. All we can really do is set the groundwork for growth and connection by looking to the past with clear eyes and dedicating ourselves to seeing and speaking to the present with a radical dose of fierce, loving clarity. 

Weaving Time, Healing Stories

Clinging to what you wish were true or what you think ought to be true and then trying to force that story into the world simply doesn’t work. Not if you’re really interested in bringing more beauty, healing, and truth into your own life and into the collective. You risk feeling and sounding as cruel and hollow as Scrooge—woefully, willfully ignorant of the reality of suffering (and the simple joy) that permeates the everyday. 

And so, you’re invited to compassionately begin to weave time, calling on the strength and wisdom that are available to us from our past, present, and future selves.

When we seek out a story, when we sit with a story, and when, perhaps we tell and share a story…

We stand consciously in the present to reach back to the past.
We weave together what was with what is.

If we share this story on the page, we touch someone in an unknown future moment.

We knot time together (not in a tangle, but in a sacred pattern).
We weave our stories. We strengthen ourselves, build relationships, and create a legacy.

We weave time and heal our stories to do our part to make this world more beautiful, more honest, more whole.

Want to Put this Past-Present-Future Work into Action?

Join me for the half-day end of year retreat I'm offering on December 29, A Sovereign Way. We’ll anchor ourselves in the present, look back on the year that was, and use these insights to imagine a new year full of presence, beauty, and healing.

Hear, Heal, and Craft the Stories that Connect Us

In the KnotWork Podcast, we’ll share stories from ancient mythology and folklore, particularly from the Celtic world, and explore why they still have resonance for us today. The show debuts on 2.2.22, but you can get a preview of what’s to come.

Are you feeling the tug of your own past stories? A Healing for Heroines session can help you access your past experiences and give you a fresh perspective. Whether you want to craft a story or are on the path of self-discovery, when you see yourself as heroine of your own story, you can transform the next chapter of life.

Excited to begin writing your own stories? The Sovereign Writers’ Knot will welcome new writers for our next 13-week session on March 2, 2022! Registration will open soon, but you can get learn more and get on the interest list so you’re the first to know when applications are open.

What Story Is Mine to Tell Right Now?

Whenever I find myself spinning in circles and I have the urge to write,  I ask myself:

What story is mine to tell right now?

This is the essential question, whether my mind happens to be looping with anxiety or leaping with inspiration. 

(Have you noticed how they both tend to buzz at the same frequency? The nerves of worry and the nerviness of creativity are easily confused. When I ask this question, there’s a better chance of moving toward healing and productive cross pollination. That’s when the words finally start to flow.)

So Much To Say, So Hard to Find the Words

From my experience, “what story is mine to tell right now?” is the only place to begin when you feel the pressure to put words on the page and feel wordless at the very same time.

Here’s something we tend to forget when we’re overwhelmed and there is so much to say, either because the brain is swirling too fast with worry or soaring with new ideas: we writers can only set down one word at a time. 

“One word at a time” is the blessed miracle and the maddening flaw of language. 

We are forced to condense the immense and the ineffable into clusters of letters, limiting it all down to discrete, interconnected units of ideas. With time and focus, we spool a narrative. We can throw ourselves wide open to the expanse of sentences, stanzas, and stories. 

Here’s what might happen when you dare to ask, “what story is mine to tell right now?”

When I ask myself this question, I am almost always surprised. 

Sometimes, I need my journal and quiet hour. I must fill the page with rhetorical questions, nonsense sentences, and magnificent, revelatory errors of all kinds.

(When I wrote into this prompt yesterday, I definitely scrawled “when I know when I must right…” Cringe! But look what was revealed in that misspelling! Oh, my obsession with being correct, even on the uncensored pages of my own little green book)

Sometimes, the words take me to fairy glens and eighteenth century drawing rooms.

(Ok, so the novel got stalled in the transition between the endless 18-month summer and the uncertain fall, but there’s a book brewing, and it’s the story I was born to tell. When I give myself the freedom to describe a sacred well made of starlight and sphagnum moss or invent a whispered conversation between the countess and the peddler down the lane, I trust that I am making magic. You transform the very fabric of the world when you conjure and describe you own visions, stitch by stitch and word by word.)

Sometimes, the words come out seeking their place in the marketplace, issuing invitations to come play. 

(I’ll be the first to say that the “real writer” in me rolls her eyes at this naked display of capitalism, but then I remember that we live in a both/and universe. As the Irish poet Rita Ann Higgins says, “poetry doesn’t pay,” but the mortgage still comes due. And so, I ask my words, as they emerge one letter at time, to call in the writers, the healers, the dreamers, and the sovereignty seekers who will hear my song and use these ideas to add to their own. So, next time you see my images on Instagram, do read the captions, too. They’re lovingly crafted by a writer trusting the story that wants to be told.)

Sometimes the story is a text to a friend. Sometimes it’s an email to my grandpa. Sometimes it’s a note I stick in the lunch box in case second grade feels hard today. 

And sometimes the story that is mine to tell must be silently pounded into the pavement or held by the trunk of a beloved tree. Sometimes the story that is yours to tell is not yet speech ripe and will not come no matter how fine the pen, how quiet the room, how inspirational the view.

Trust the story. Trust the moment. Trust yourself.

The words will come in their own time, as they always do: one at a time, in a jumble or a flow. They will carry you onward to the story you must tell.

“What story is mine to tell right now?” is just one of many questions I pose to the dreamers, healers, and seekers who long to build a writing practice and birth their stories into the world.

In the Sovereign Writers’ Knot, the newest incarnation of my online writing community, you can find the the space, time, and company that will help you bring your words into the world.

We are welcoming new members through September 29. Learn more and apply now.

A Healer with a Pocketful of Wild Violets

It was a pretty rough one at the Goudy house. I had major dental surgery on Friday and my husband realized he had Lyme the night before. 

Suddenly, there were a million prescription bottles on the counter and someone was always asking “did you remember to take your antibiotics?” 

We were the walking wounded, though neither of us should have been walking anywhere. My husband is notoriously terrible at taking it easy, while I am rather skilled at shutting out the world and taking to my bed when I’m sick or need to recover from something as massive as a 2.5 hour tooth extraction. 

Nonetheless, we got through and we’re somewhat less pathetic now that it's Monday morning. (Though it’s still tough for me to talk for more than a few minutes. It's like my face is recovering from an ultramarathon I didn't train for.)

Fortunately, we had a healer on call

Seeing her parents weren’t themselves, our seven year-old took it upon herself to start making remedies. 

A neighbor, a consummate garden witch, had told our daughter that the little purple flowers that grew wild in the spring grass were edible.  

So Mairead scoured the yard (a marvelous collection of wild plants and useful weeds we mow and call a lawn) and filled her pockets with wild violets. Turns out, they’re very high in vitamin C, but she didn’t know that when she started to forage.

My husband and I each got a glass full of water and a healthy handful of the sweet purple flowers. She came in at regular intervals to be sure we’d drunk our healing elixirs and she was always ready with refills.

(After I texted my friend and verified that the plants were both non-poisonous and actually beneficial, I actually started to take a few tentative sips rather than surreptitiously pouring the love-drink down the bathroom sink!)

When I wasn’t utterly obsessed with my own aching jaw I could see the healer blossoming in this girl.

She has grown up in the house of an energy healer, after all, and she knows we’ll treat a sickness with both an herbal tincture and a drug from the pharmacy, when necessary.

The light in her eyes made me realize it was more than nurture, however. She has the nature of a healer and is offering skills and insight that she has gained over lifetimes, not in a mere seven years.

And she’s dedicated. Before she got ready for school today she made sure to set up my day’s tonic. I’ve got to make sure that my husband and I appear to have taken our full doses before she gets home!

Why am I telling you this story?

In part, it’s because I couldn’t possibly focus on anything else as my body tries to recover from the trauma and my mind tries to integrate the insanity that is having a dentist spend a morning in your mouth.

As I am finally coming back to myself and feel able to sit up and type, it was either tell the story of the moment or say nothing at all.

Plus, it’s part of my job to model how all the little real life moments - the painful experiences and the sweet love - can be and want to be part of your stories.

As a healer - or as a creative entrepreneur or transformation professional whose work makes like a little more beautiful, bearable, or bold - you’re here to meet people in the midst of their struggles. 

As a writer, you’re here to tell authentic stories, either from your own life or from our gorgeous, terrible world. You guide people toward you and your life-renewing work based on the stories you tell.

You're a healer with a pocketful of stories.
You're a storyteller with a pocketful of tales.

A rough weekend at our house gave our girl a chance to offer her empathetic magic. And on Monday morning, that floral concoction gave me just what I needed: the bit of beauty and hope that makes a story worth telling.

Next Monday at 7 PM ET we’ll be visiting the Story Source. In this free workshop I will be offering a series of exercises to help you find your own source of inspiration so you can tell more of the stories that have meaning for you and your audience.

Join us for the free workshop.

What are you doing with your Monday evenings this May? This free workshop is a preview of the storytelling course called Sovereign Story, Sovereign Brand I am teaching next month.