Patricia Monaghan - The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog: The Landscape of Celtic Myth and Spirit

Red-Haired Girl from the Bog presents a strong taste of a tour around Ireland, complete with personal musings and rich in the history of the area. [It is] a blessing for armchair travelers who drool over those tours.... Ive found the book to be quite delightful.

New Connexion

The next time Im in Ireland, I hope Patricia Monaghan is there. Her keen spiritual perceptions both serious and playful wake up the land, the ancient myths, and the secret places in our hearts.

Tom Cowan,
author of Fire in the Head and Yearning for the Wind

If you are interested in Ireland and its legends, you will love this evocative book. Highly recommended.

The Cauldron

Tramping through mud and mist, Patricia Monaghan shows us that the Goddesses of Ireland cannot be understood apart from their connection to the land. I suspect this is true of all the Goddesses.

Carol P. Christ,
author of Rebirth of the Goddess and She Who Changes

Reading Patricia Monaghans work about the Celtic myths of the divine or fairy woman in Irish tradition is sheer delight. Her work is relevant in that it traces back time, showing her great erudition in an original and sometimes puzzling research of authentic Divine Woman through all her images, and that along a strange and personal pilgrimage across mythological sites of Ireland.

Jean Markale, author of Women of the Celts and Merlin

Come, enter the voice and vision of the living Irish tradition, as expressed through the personal dindsenchas (place-bonding stories) of Irish-American Patricia Monaghan. Like the ancient goddesses and mothering powers of pre-Celtic and Celtic tradition, who nourish and nurture, you will find yourself enveloped and held by a deep and incessant light. There are many books on Irish history, and books about the Irish landscape, but none convey the living soulscape of our ancient mother, ire, like The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog.

Frank MacEowen, author of The Spiral of Memory and Belonging

Like the labyrinth, [this book] wanders along a single path that winds around and around, touching the world and everything in it, till it reaches the center.... And what else is it about? Its an encyclopedia both luminous and noumenous, an inspired verbal documentary.... This is a book about life and spirit, and its one of the best books youll ever read.

Barbara Ardinger, Ph.D.,
author of Finding New Goddesses and Quicksilver Moon

Copyright 2003 by Patricia Monaghan

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Every effort has been made to trace the ownership of all copyrighted material included in this volume. Any errors that may have occurred are inadvertent and will be corrected in subsequent editions, provided notification is sent to the publisher. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publishers who have generously granted permission to use quotations from the following copyrighted works:

From A Walled Garden in Moylough by Joan McBreen. Copyright 1995 by Joan McBreen. Reprinted by permission of Salmon Poetry, Cliffs of Mother, Co. Clare, Ireland. From Collected Poems by Michael Hartnett. Copyright 1987, 2002 by Michael Hartnett. Reprinted by permission of Gallery Press, Loughcrew, Co. Meath, Ireland. From Love of Ireland: Poems from the Irish by Brendan Kennelly. Copyright 1997, 1999 by Brendan Kennelly. Reprinted by permission of Mercier Press, Douglas Village, Cork, Ireland.

Front cover design by Mary Beth Salmon
Text design and typography by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Monaghan, Patricia.

The red-haired girl from the bog : the landscape of Celtic myth and spirit / Patricia Monaghan.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-57731-458-1 (paperback : alk. paper)

1. Monaghan, PatriciaJourneysIreland. 2. Mythology, CelticIreland.

3. Goddesses, CelticIreland. 4. Women, CelticIrelandFolklore.

5. IrelandDescription and travel. I. Title.

BL980.I7 .M66 2003

299'.162dc21

2002014317

First Paperback Printing, April 2004
ISBN 1-57731-458-1
Printed in Canada on acid-free, partially recycled paper
Distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

I remember the exact moment I knew I would go to Ireland. It was a cold Alaskan night, and I was talking with Sikvoan Weyahok. That was his birth name; in English he was called Howard Rock. Every Wednesday Howard held court at Tommys Elbow Room, where I unfailingly joined him. Almost forty years my senior, he was Eskimo; although that Algonkian word for raw fish eater is disdained by many now, it was Howards word for himself and for his people, the Tigaramiut of Point Hope. He had been an artist in Seattle until threats of nuclear testing near his coastal village brought him home to become a crusading newspaper editor. As one of the most politically significant thinkers of the state, he was treated with respect by Native and non-Native alike.

Howard had no children, but he sentimentally called me his granddaughter. Perhaps that was because, at our first meeting, I fell into treating him like I treated my own grandfather, offering him attention that was both undivided and untinged by flattery. Just as I had with my grandfather, I challenged Howard when he became pompous, plied him with questions when he grew withdrawn, teased him when he turned maudlin. We were close for a dozen years. When Howard died in his mid-sixties still so young, I now think I was on the cusp of my first trip to Ireland.