The Cailleach and the Wild Wisdom of Winter

In Celtic mythology, the Cailleach is a powerful and ancient figure known as the old woman of winter. Her name comes from a Gaelic word meaning “old woman” or “hag,”. She appears in many traditional stories from Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man and is said to control winter, shape the landscape, and command the elements. (MacKillop, 1998).

The Hag of Winter

The Cailleach is winter personified, a goddess and a giantess who breathes frost across the land. In Scottish lore, she strides over the Highlands with her plaid wrapped tightly around her shoulders. When she washes this plaid in the Corryvreckan whirlpool, storms rise and snow begins to fall. When she spreads it to dry, the world turns white beneath her touch (Newton, 2008).

Her reign begins at Samhain (October 31st), the traditional start of winter when the world slips into darkness and rest. She holds sway until Beltane (May 1st), when the warmth of spring returns and her power fades. The cold months belong to her. A time of stillness, introspection, and endurance (Monaghan, 2004).

The Cycle of Seasons

She exists in a rhythm of balance with a younger goddess of light and renewal, often Brìghde (or Brigid), who ushers in the spring (MacKillop, 1998).

At Imbolc, the festival of early February, the Cailleach awakens to gather firewood for the remainder of winter. If the weather that day is fair, she is out collecting more, and the cold will linger. If the day is stormy, she sleeps through it, and winter’s end draws near (Black, 2005).

When Beltane arrives, she loses her strength or turns to stone, allowing Brìghde’s gentle warmth to reclaim the land. Together they embody the eternal rhythm of existence: decay giving way to renewal, and the old yielding to the new (Monaghan, 2004).

Shaper of the Land

Beyond her rule over winter, the Cailleach is also a creator goddess, sculptor of the Celtic landscape. Many Scottish peaks and lochs are said to have formed at her hand. According to legend, she dropped stones from her apron to create mountains like Ben Nevis and Ben Cruachan, or struck the earth with her hammer to carve out valleys and rivers (Newton, 2008).

Her presence still lingers in the wilds of Scotland, where wind, water, and rock seem alive with her ancient spirit. To the Celts, she was never just a mythic figure but the very soul of the land—fierce, beautiful, and untamable (Black, 2005).

The Wise and the Wild

Though often feared, the Cailleach is not a villain. In some Irish traditions, especially those of the Cailleach Bhéara, she was once a beautiful woman who had lived through countless generations, her lovers and children long gone. She endures, ageless and sorrowful, eventually turning to stone as she gazes out to sea, waiting for her rebirth (Ó Cróinín, 1982).

Her nature is both terrifying and tender: a goddess of death and renewal, of endings that open the way for beginnings. She is the crone, the wise one, the final face of the Triple Goddess. The part of the cycle that reminds us all things must fade so that life may return (Monaghan, 2004).

The Cailleach Today

In modern times, the Cailleach has found new life in Neo-Pagan and Wiccan traditions, where she is honoured as the embodiment of wisdom, transformation, and natural power (MacKillop, 1998). She reminds us that darkness and decay are not enemies to be feared, but rather teachers to be understood. They are essential steps in turning the year and deepening the soul.

The Cailleach is the wild grandmother of Celtic myth, the whispering wind over the mountains, the frost that blankets the heather, the silence before dawn. She endures as a symbol of the land’s raw strength and the eternal cycles of nature: death and life, winter and spring, stillness and awakening.

The myths of the Cailleach teach that the natural world is neither cruel nor kind—it simply is. To know her is to accept the rhythms of change, to find wisdom in endings, and to recognise beauty in the cold.

Further Reading