The Irish Words for Weaving that Help Us Weave the World Together

There’s a phrase in the Irish language that I have come to love. In fact, it’s a concept that I’ve always loved and lived, but couldn’t fully describe until recently: fite fuaite.

(Fite fuaite, I say? Pronounce it something like “fi-CHA foo-i-CHA.” Better yet, listen to my guest Kate Chadbourne say and describe the phrase in episode one of KnotWork Storytelling, Conspiring With Brigit.)

As author and Irish language broadcaster Manchán Magan describes it, in a piece about weaving wool and weaving words, fite fuaite means firmly interwoven, inextricably mixed up.

As human beings, we are inherently creative creatures who are here to weave ideas and visions together. As creatives who share our work with others, we are part of a great weaving that perpetually draws the world together. The point of this life is to create and connect, to weave new energies with the eternal cycles of nature.

Oh the boldness of such a statement in times like these, but it’s still something I believe. Regardless of the great unraveling that we see–environmentally, socially, and psychologically–there IS hope that art and love and conscious recreation can sew us together. 

Woven together. Again. For the first time.

The Why of the Weaving. The Why of Stories, Mythology, and Folklore.

This week, we released episode 10 of KnotWork Storytelling. 

Two months into sharing these stories and guests, weaving these themes on the public stage, and watching my creation wrap its way around a small sliver of the world, I am freshly aware of why I am investing myself in stories from centuries past. And why I will keep inviting guests and listeners to continue on this journey with me.

Whenever we turn our gaze to folklore and mythology, I think it’s essential to ask “are we just looking backwards to avoid the pain of the present and future?”

If this KnotWork Storytelling project becomes focused on stories “merely” for the sake of escapism or romanticism, I’ll be tearing the vital roots from the mythology.

If I stick too closely to the original texts in order to stay true to my academic roots, the life force will drain out of these tales.

If I twist these tales to suit modern (and American) sensibilities, I will have wandered into cultural appropriation and the perpetuation of colonialism. 

The goal is to balance all these elements – the original material, the personal passions, the spiritual resonance, the cultural tides, and more. The goal is to weave all these together and stay in integrity.

It’s no easy feat in this age, when misinformation and misattribution are rife and attention spans are limited. It’s doubly hard as an American born person who can only rely on memory, images, and others’ stories and poems to stay connected to the land that sourced these tales.

And still, I hope to manage the trifecta: entertain, inform, and (the element that excites me most) inspire.

How the Stories from the Past Inspire Us Today and Tomorrow

“Inspire” is probably the toughest element of that entertain/educate/inspire formula that I learned in my content marketing days. It is too easy to make “inspiration” into something too flimsy, too lofty, or too ill-defined.

Ultimately, however, I think inspiration is the most compelling, necessary work a creative person can do.

I turn to the Irish language again, this time to Old Irish, and the word imbas, inspiration. (Modern Irish’s word for “inspiration” is inspioráid, which, as Manchán Magan describes in his book, is functional rather than poetical, and works on the page rather than everyday life.)

There’s another Irish phrase I want to offer you: imbas forosnai, It speaks of “inspiration that illuminates.” 

I think we need to be inspired to face the great challenge and source of heartache that is woven through our modern lives: a sense of alienation from self, spirit, land, the ancestors, and cultural memory. I think that (re)discovering stories from centuries ago can give us access to those missing pieces and can illuminate the way forward.

So many of the troubles of today can be traced back to a sense of disconnection. To continue this weaving metaphor and the concept of fite fuaite, we might say that our individual and collective suffering can be traced back to tears in the fabric of self and society.

We all suffer when we cannot see that we’re inextricably woven with one another, with the ancestors and indigenous people who came before us, and with the ecosystem of the planet.

Weaving Us Back Together, Story by Story and Stitch by Stitch

The latest episode of the KnotWork Storytelling Podcast is called The Girl Who Defied Expectations.

This story, written by me, Marisa Goudy, is inspired by a piece simply named “A Story,” found in the Irish Schools’ Folklore Collection from the 1930s. It was collected by a student named Annie McLaughlin, as told by her father John Joe McLaughlin for St. Mary’s National School in Buncrana in County Donegal.

The original tale, found at Duchas.ie, offers a retelling of a traditional story of three women who have been disfigured by endless work, carding, spinning, and weaving wool. It’s the story of a “useless girl who lived happily ever after.” 

In this version, I imagine the scene in which the father, John Joe, tells the story to his daughter Annie. (There really was a woollen mill in Donegal in the 1930s where they wove carpets for Buckingham Palace!) In this retelling, details have been added to the original fairytale, which is an adaptation of a Brothers Grimm story.

My guest for this episode is Nicole Burgess, a coach, psychotherapist, and podcaster who also happens to be a phenomenal weaver and fiber artist. In our conversation that follows the story, we talk about the weight of expectations, the pressure to be “useful,” and the enduring power of handcrafting. 

A Saint Patrick Story You Probably Haven’t Heard

When you have a storytelling podcast about Celtic mythology and Irish folklore and March comes around, it’s inevitable: the Saint Patrick’s Day episode.

Seeing as Patrick is as much a folk hero as he is a patron saint of Ireland, let’s establish the basics first:

• Patrick’s birth name was Maewyn Succat and he was born in Wales circa 386 CE.

• Patrick  was abducted and brought to Ireland as a teenager and was enslaved for six years before he escaped home across the Irish Sea.

• Against his family’s wishes, Patrick eventually returned to Ireland on an evangelical mission, but he was not the first person to bring Christianity to the Irish. That credit goes to a fellow named Palladius (and “Happy St. Palladius’s Day!” just doesn’t work on a Guinness ad).

• Rather than remembering him for driving out snakes and using shamrocks as teaching tools (both associated with the “made up” kind of myths), you might think of him as antislavery crusader or at least as the author of an early Christian slave narrative

• Per America Magazine (a Catholic publication), “Saint” Patrick was never canonized and isn’t actually a saint (see reference to “folk hero” above!)
  
  

Knowing all this, I admit I have never had an easy relationship with the man. The legend of the man looms taller than the truths, and I always resented the stories that equated Patrick and his proselytizing as inherently “good” and the ways of the pre-Christian Irish to be inherently primitive and bad.

(Though clearly the practice of slavery was inherently bad, and, in light of that part of the story, I do regret being quite so flip about “Saint P.” The role of slavery in Irish history and society is something I’m still working with and explore in greater depth in Mongfind’s stoy in episode 2 of KnotWork Storytelling, The Forgotten Story of Ireland’s Forgotten Goddess-Queen-Witch.)

Saint Patrick Always Seemed Like a Difficult Person to Have Round to Tea

Here’s how I described Saint Peter in my book, The Sovereignty Knot, in a chapter called “On Running Over a Snake”:

You know the one about Saint Patrick driving the serpents out of Ireland, of course. Nice yarn, that one. Thing is, there hadn’t been any snakes on the island since at least the last ice age. Herpetology and geology aside, in the metaphorical realm where this stuff really matters, St. P. was credited with striking the first blow against paganism, bringing the new Christian faith that would all but eliminate the old beliefs that were native to that land. He was there to raise his crozier against Mother Ireland and her people’s serpentine faith that looped round and round with the endless cycles of the seasons. He was there to change history and create the Ireland we know today. He was also there to lay the foundations of a particular kind of patriarchal dominance that would hold the country in thrall for well over 1,500 years.

Saint Patrick and his missionary friends came to Ireland and changed the story that people had been living for millennia. They weren’t the first guys, nor were they the last, to destroy a sacred feminine image and use it for their own purposes. 

That book came out in 2020, and while I hold just as tight to my feisty feminism, I seem to have a softened a bit when it comes to Saint Patrick. In fact, I wrote a story for KnotWork Storytelling that more than gives him the benefit of the doubt:

Bishop Patrick of Armagh wasn’t quite called a saint yet, but he surely acted as if he’d already won the title. Though no one would ever call him the life of the party, he was a kind enough man who tended the soul of his people according to the new codes that came down from Rome.

Listen to The Christians and the Pagans: The Unlikely Friendship of Oisín and St Patrick

In episode 8 of KnotWork Storytelling, you’ll hear the tale of a pagan hero named Oisín who left his companions, the warriors of Fianna, and followed a fairy woman named Niamh to her home in Tír Na nÓg, the land of eternal youth.

After three hundred years, Oisín returned to Ireland and found that a man named Saint Patrick had arrived and brought along a faith called Christianity that changed everything.

The story of the relationship between Oisín and Patrick is inspired by Lady Augusta Gregory’s story from her 1904 book, Gods and Fighting Men. Lady Gregory, the famous folklorist of the Celtic Revival drew her inspiration from the tales found in Acallam na Senórach/Tales of the Elders of Ireland, which is a compilation of four different medieval Irish texts.

This story is written by me, Marisa Goudy, and performed by my guest Kevin Michael Murphy. In this retelling, I dare to soften the ending offered by Lady Gregory, focusing instead on the friendship that might have existed despite Oisín and Patrick’s religious differences. Rather than the usual bitter lament about the end of the magical Celtic world, which was part of the yearning inherent in the late 19th/early 20th century movement often called the Celtic Twilight, I invite listeners to consider all the ways that ancient Ireland is still very much alive.

Image: St. Patrick and King Laoghaire from Boston College’s Great Irish Hall, Gasson 100

The Goddess Macha and the Men Who Suffer the Pains of Childbirth

There once was a Celtic goddess, a fairy woman, a woman of the Sidhe named Macha. 

Her story sets the stage for the greatest epic in Irish mythology, the Táin Bó Cúailnge. This story is often remembered for its curse, but really, it's the story of a birth.

Here’s the most basic version of the story (you can hear it in depth over on the KnotWork Storytelling podcast): 

Macha left her place in the Otherworld and decided to take a human lover for a year. She became the woman of the house and made only one request: “tell no one about me.” Unfortunately, Cruinn couldn’t keep his good fortune a secret and when he went to the harvest festival at Samhain, he bragged that his new wife could outrace the king’s fastest horses. 

Spoiler alert: Macha won. She won even though she was nine months pregnant and gave birth the moment she crossed the finish line.

Enraged at being treated so cruelly, Macha lays an infamous curse upon all the men of Ulster: In the moments of greatest need, the fighting men of Ulster shall be struck down with the pangs of childbirth for nine days and nights.

Macha exits the story immediately afterwards and her fate is unclear. She left her imprint upon the land, however. The place where the race was run and the babes were born was called Emain Macha, meaning the Twins of Macha. This is the place of modern Armagh in Northern Ireland’s County Down.

Yes, Men Can Suffer the Pains of Childbirth, Too

As I said, in Episode 6 of the KnotWork Podcast, The Birth of a Heroine, I tell you my own extended version of Macha’s tale. And then I discuss the story with my friend Barb Buckner Suarez, a brilliant childbirth educator and the host of the Birth Happens podcast.

Barb is way more impressed by the power of the birthing person than she is by the astounding athlete who could outrun a herd of swiftest horses. Call it an occupational hazard or call it the simple, miraculous truth: the fact that birth happens is always the most awesome thing of all.

It’s no wonder that, through our modern feminist lens, we see Macha’s greatest triumph in the delivery of healthy twins. Over the centuries, however, Macha was remembered for a very different reason: that curse.

Depending on whether you were of the nine generations of Ulstermen who were incapacitated by the curse or whether you were a member of the opposing army, you would like have seen Macha in a different light. But, even the warriors from Munster or Connacht who might have benefitted from the Ulstermen’s weakness and won some battles as their opponents lay writhing in pain, probably weren’t cheering Macha’s legacy.

Think about the nature of the curse and millennia of human nature… The warriors were not paralyzed or struck blind. They didn’t get the shits or bleed from their ears. No, the men were cursed with pains that would only have belonged to women. Surely that double hit of emasculation and unimaginable pain would have made those guys wish Macha had just threatened to take all their fingernails. 

How a Two Thousand Year Old Myth Supports the LGBTQ Community Today

It only seems fitting, that a story with a unique, gender bending twist would give space for Barb and me to talk about gender, inclusivity, and the recognition that birthing is not strictly women’s work. 

I love the way Barb describes her journey toward more inclusive language and why “pregnant person” is a good choice. We talk about how we can continue to embrace the fullness that is held in “mother” and “father,” even as we affirm the experiences of trans folk and other members of the LGBTQ who are giving birth and need to be held by language, too.  

The story of Macha and the Curse of the Ulstermen was written down in the Metrical Dindshenchas (“The Lore of Place Names”) sometime between the 11th and 15th centuries and probably recounts stories first told in the first century BCE. Though we didn’t have a chance to really get into this during the episode, it’s remarkable that this particular tale, which is about a woman giving birth, would give us an opportunity to look at birth as an experience shared by all people, regardless of gender.

Yes, there are deep elements of misogyny in this story (the fact that a pregnant woman is forced to race, the fact that suffering women’s pains are the worst curse at all) but it’s these very terrible and strange elements that allowed it to endure. And now, in our hands, the story can become something new and powerful. What once seemed preposterous - men, suffering the pains of birth?!? - is now part of lived experience as our understanding of gender expands and trans folk are able to explore the fullest expression of being.

Once again, this is why we come back to mythology and folklore. We’re not seeking some “simpler time” or an imaginary realm. We’re looking for all the tools we can to understand this current moment and do better as we step into the future.

Wait, But the Episode (“Birth of a Heroine”) Has a Totally Gendered Title, Doesn’t It?

Guess what,  heroines aren’t necessarily women and heroes aren’t necessarily male. 

In The Heroine's Journey: For Writers, Readers, and Fans of Pop Culture, Gail Carriger dives deep into what distinguishes the journeys of the heroine and the hero in a way that’s based on the construction of narrative, not just biology and acculturation. She makes great points about how heroines and heroes are determined by their actions and situations, not by their gender.

Carriger outlines the Heroine’s Journey in a way that will be familiar to those who have spent time with Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler. Her list of  “Heroine’s Journey Basic Beats” begins with “The Descent”: 

• Familial network is broken

• Pleas are ignored, resulting in an abdication of power

• Withdrawal is involuntary

Keep an ear out for these elements in Macha’s story and you’ll notice what a remarkable example of the heroine’s journey this story is!

Power and Reality in the Midst of Fantasy: A Conversation with Novelist Kelly Braffet

But really, what would they teach in the college seminar about your life’s work? 

This was one of the “not exactly serious, but maybe” questions we pondered when novelist Kelly Braffet and I sat down for the latest episode of KnotWork Storytelling. 

Kelly is a fabulously talented writer and a damn good baker. Everyone who has picked up a copy of her latest book The Broken Tower, its prequel The Unwilling, or her previous novels knows the former statement is true. As a recipient of one of her holiday cookie packages, my family and I can attest to the latter.

The conversation you hear in “Power and Reality in the Midst of Fantasy” is a chat between friends. It’s also a conversation between two writers who love stories, the power of story in capital S sort of way, and tend to think deeply (overthink?) just about everything.

A Pandemic Novel that Never Mentions Viruses or Masks

When you  pick up The Broken Tower, I think you immediately realize it’s a pandemic novel, even though no one in this story world would understand virology or the sense of insecurity that comes with empty grocery store shelves. (They’d know that many diseases are deadly and some healers can help, though their powers tend to come at a price. And those who never worried about food supply never shopped for it and those who have worried about where their next meal is coming from couldn’t imagine the abundance of even the “emptiest” modern supermarket.)

So many of the hardest feelings we all came to know too well are part of these character’s everyday conversations:

”Why is everything horrible?” Ida said, and Korsa was shocked to see that her eyes were filled with tears. “The orphan house was horrible. The streets are horrible. This entire place is horrible, except for us. What's the point of living? So we can experience more horribleness?”

“The point is, Korsa said gently, “ to try to make it less horrible.”

Kelly’s response when I read this deeply difficult but immensely true passage was: “Oh, that is so pandemic.”

And yet, somehow, this book in which horrible things happen to people (none of whom are totally good or totally bad) is comforting somehow. Fiction has a way of doing that, of course.  

Tune into our conversation and read The Broken Tower

• Themes of “power” (not just the magical sort), and how this is central to all of Kelly’s work

• The dual meaning of “Work,” which describes the magic in this world and the factories that make the book “a capitalist dystopia”

• The question of whose stories get told and feeling haunted by all the people whose stories were never told

• The conscious inclusion of differently abled people as well as well as folks across gender identities and sexualities 

• The question “who am I writing for” and how the author’s choices can hurt certain readers, particularly those with marginalized identities. 

• Why Kelly chose to create a mythic world that does not replicate our own

More About Kelly Braffet

Kelly Braffet is the author of the Border Lands novels, including The Broken Tower and The Unwilling, as well as the novels Save Yourself, Josie and Jack and Last Seen Leaving. Her writing has been published in The Fairy Tale Review, Post Road, and several anthologies. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University and currently lives in upstate New York with her husband, the author Owen King.

The Selkie, the Seal Woman of Irish Legend, and You

Do you know the story of the selkie, the seal who transforms into a woman and lives on shore for a time?

She doesn’t choose this terrestrial life. In fact, she’s tricked into it in a cruel way. She is offered a kind of love and safety and is convinced to stay. The selkie decides she can compromise her freedom and marry a fisherman, at least for a little while.

And then, she gets swallowed up by this landlocked life. She is consumed by the expectations and responsibilities. She finds herself at the heart of a family, caught in the nets of a husband and children who depend on her for their comfort, routine, and perhaps their sense of identity, too. 

But, in the midst of this family, she’s barely able to survive. The selkie is a husk of her former self, and she has no more to give. If she stays in this world as it is, she’ll die. If she leaves, the world says that those who depend on her will suffer something even worse.  

Have you ever spied the selkie within you, your skin parched, your heart aching for your sisters and the sea? 

Has your soul cried, “Yes, that’s me!” as you’ve considered the story of a wild creature who lost herself to the structures and shoulds of family and a “civilized life”?

The Mythology of the Shape-Shifters

Across cultures, we find stories of shape-shifters.

There are the werewolves, the children who become swans, the old witches who become hares… It’s the story of the Irish selkie, the seal woman, that wraps round my heart and feels the most real for me. 

The selkie, and the fairy woman she becomes for a time, has appeared in well-known modern stories, including the gorgeous Irish films The Secret of Roan Inish and The Song of the Sea. You’ve likely heard the selkie story in one form or another, even if you don’t know the word, perhaps as a mermaid tale. You know the inversion of the story from Disney’s The Little Mermaid, which flips the script so the heroine longs to be shacked up on land and suffers a sense of alienation and dislocation in her own ocean.

In Episode 4 of KnotWork Storytelling, Jen Murphy comes to tell the tale of her own neighborhood selkies. Jen lives in Skerries in County Dublin and watches the Irish Sea from her home. Their harbor is home to colonies of seals, and inspires her version of this timeless story.

The selkie felt stifled and trapped in that fisherman’s cottage, but she also felt a bone-deep loneliness. As you’ll hear in the conversation that follows Jen’s story, I uncovered an old memory in the midst of our dialog, and long forgotten tears returned to the surface. 

As mythologist and author Sharon Blackie says when she tells her own version of the Selkie story, “these shapeshifing stories tap into a longing we often don’t even know we have and we feel that very deeply as sorrow.”

When we give ourselves full permission to feel the pull of the currents of the selkie story, we recover necessary parts of ourselves. You may know this cry deep in your heart. Or, it may be hard to reckon with the voice within that whispers, “This. This life. It’s a blessing. But sometimes… it’s a trap.”

Find a place where you can either snuggle in or root into the wildest part of nature where you can feel at home and tune into The Skerries Selkie.

I’m so excited to hear about what comes through for you when you seek out the selkie within you. Tell me more on Instagram or on in our Facebook community.