Wild Irish Roses: Tales of Brigits, Kathleens, and Warrior Queens - Softcover

Robbins, Trina

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573249521 ISBN 13: 9781573249522

Verlag: Conari Press, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

Forget the myth of the sweet Irish Colleen. Real Irish women were no creampuff debs. From the ancient warrior queens Marrigan, Macha, and Badbh to the labormovement maven Mother Jones, Irish women have backbones of steel. Wild Irish Roses is a fascinating look at wild Irish women throughout history/ serious information imparted in Trina Robbins' trademark style, with verve and humor.

The women in Wild Irish Roses are not always nice girls or even good girls, but they are women who know how to get things done, whether on the battlefield or in the bedroom. These are women who preserved and handed down the old stories. They are women who fought in revolutions with either gun or pen, wrote books, starred in books others wrote, and stormed heaven itself.

Author Trina Robbins is an impeccable researcher whose knack for telling stories and embellishing them with engaging illustrations and photos, brings each of these Wild Irish Roses to life, including:

• Maeve and six other warrior queens
• Grania and Deirdre, who ran away from kings for the love of younger men
• Five women who turned themselves into birds to get the job done right
• Saint Brigit and the saintly Kathleen O'Shea
• Cultural revivalist Maude Gonne and friends
• IrishAmerican beauty roses, including Scarlett O'Hara
• And warriors in their own right, such as Mother Jones and company

Wild Irish Roses is a celebration of tough, independent, beautiful Irish women from myth to modernity. It's a book that is sure to entertain, inform, and inspire readers of every background to find the Irish rose in themselvesto discover what they want and have the courage to go out and get it.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Trina Robbins has been called Bad by the best of them. More polite people simply refer to her as "outspoken." The author of several books, including From Girls to Grrlz, Tomorrow's Heirlooms, and The Great Women Superheroes, she has been a pagan since 1977. She admittedly can't live without cats, and she considers herself the oldest grrrl in San Francisco.

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Wild Irish Roses

Tales of Brigits, Kathleens, and Warrior Queens

By Trina Robbins

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 2004 Trina Robbins
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-952-2

Contents

Introduction
PART ONE: BEFORE PATRICK
Warrior Goddesses, Warrior Queens
They Knew What They Wanted
Bird Women
PART TWO: AFTER PATRICK
Saintly Roses and Two Sinners
Two Pirate Queens and a Drama Queen
PART THREE: KATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN
Literary Roses
Muses of the Irish Renaissance
Still Warriors after All These Years
And a Single American Beauty Rose
Further Reading
Index
About the Author

CHAPTER 1

WARRIOR GODDESSES, WARRIOR QUEENS

The Morrigan, Macha, and Badb

According to Irish mythology, the Tuatha De Danaan, a glamorous, godlike race,lived in Ireland before the Celts arrived. After the Celts landed their ships onIrish soil, there was a battle between the Tuatha De Danaan and the Celts, andthe Celts won. The Tuatha De Danaan retreated to the island of Tir Nan Og, wherethey remained forever young, but they also moved into sidhes, those fairy hillsthat dot the Irish landscape, and the Irish people named them the Sidhe, aftertheir hills. They continued to interact with the new, mortal inhabitants ofIreland for hundreds of years, even after the church demoted them to the statusof fairies.

Like the Irish themselves, the Sidhe loved to fight and loved to love. Amongtheir minions were three warrior-goddess sisters, Macha, Badb, and the Morrigan.The bloodthirsty three would take on the shape of ravens and fly above thescenes of battle, shrieking battle cries and egging their people on to victory.

Badb was the banshee, wailing over the dying. She was also the ominous Washer atthe Ford, who predicted death. Sometimes a warrior who was doomed to fall inbattle would see Badb as a beautiful young woman, weeping while she washed outbloody clothing in a river or stream. Then he would realize with horror that thebloody clothing was his.

All three sisters could morph into ravens, ancient crones, or comely youngwomen. It was in the latter guise that they usually emerged from their hills tohave a fling with whatever strapping young human stud caught their eye.

As did so many human women in those days, the Morrigan found herself attractedto the hero, Cuchulain, who preferred war to love and rebuffed her. Of course,it's bad luck to spurn a goddess, as Cuchulain learned. The angry goddess cameagainst him in battle, and when the dust settled, both of them were the worsefor wear.

Eventually the two became friends. Before Cuchulain's last battle, the Morriganeven tried to keep him from getting himself killed by breaking the shaft of hischariot. Cuchulain, too proud to pay attention, and also a little dim, ignoredthe warning and went to his death. And when he died, the Morrigan, in the shapeof a crow, flew down and perched on his shoulder.

Being a natural troublemaker, maybe because she loved fighting so much, theMorrigan was also a cattle rustler. The ancient Irish held cattle to be soimportant that they counted their wealth in cows, and were forever stealing eachothers' herds. Once the Morrigan stole a cow belonging to a mortal woman namedOdras, and tried to take it into her fairy hill. When Odras tried to get her cowback, the goddess turned the unfortunate woman into a pool of water.

The Morrigan outdid herself when she stole a magical cow of the Sidhe to matewith the great brown bull of Cooley. With this act, she put into motion theevents that caused the great war between Ulster and Connaught known as theCattle Raid of Cooley.

After mating the two animals, the Morrigan returned the cow to its fairy hill,and in due time the cow gave birth to a magical, talking calf. Shortly afterthat, the Sidhe went to war against the king and queen of Connaught, Ailill andMaeve. In the heat of battle, the fairy calf met and fought with Ailill's prizebull, the white bull of Connaught. Young upstart that he was, the calf lost thebattle with the bull, and cried out, "If my father, the great brown bull ofCooley, was here, he'd beat you from Connaught to Ulster!" For the two bulls hadbeen enemies before they were even born; they were reincarnations of two men ofthe Sidhe who had been sworn enemies in life.

When Maeve heard those words from the mouth of the remarkable calf, sheexclaimed, "By the Goddess, I will neither eat, nor drink, nor will I sleep,until I see the great white bull fight the great brown bull!" Whereupon shetried to get the brown bull from its owner, and when he wouldn't give it up, shewent to war with him and with all the people of Ulster.

All of this was the fault of the Morrigan, who, being a goddess, could foreseethe future and knew darn well that she would cause a war.

For the Morrigan, love and war went together like a horse and carriage. OneSamhain eve, before a great battle, the Dagda, king of the Tuatha De Danaan,strolled by the banks of the river Unius and ran into the Morrigan, who wasbathing in the river. Naked and magnificent, with the nine locks of her hairunloosed, she stood with her right leg on one side of the river and her left legon the other side (they were giants in those days).

The sight of her inflamed the Dagda, and as for the Morrigan, she never neededto be asked twice. The two of them went at it, then and there, on the grassybanks of the river, beneath the starry sky of Ireland. The Dagda must have beenreally good in bed, because the Morrigan was so delighted by his performancethat she promised him victory in the next day's battle—and she had the power todo that.

Sure enough, the Tuatha De Danaan won the war. Then the Morrigan committed agruesome act that reminds us just how long ago these tales were first told, andhow savage were the people who told them. She scooped up two handsful of bloodfrom the enemy dead and gave it to her tribe to drink!

No matter how much she lusted after some guy, the Morrigan was never nice. Hersister Macha, on the other hand, who was so nasty that the heads of warriors cutoff in battle were called "Macha's acorn crop," made the mistake of sacrificingher fierce nature when she fell in love with the mortal, Crunden. Crunden was apoor but handsome widower, who lived in a lonely cottage in the Ulster hills. Inher attempt to become the kind of woman he might go for, Macha gentled herselfinto a mortal woman. In the form of a beautiful woman, she marched through theastonished man's door one day, and commenced to make up the fire. She then sweptthe dust bunnies off the messy floor (Crunden, no house-keeper, had let his homego to seed), milked the cow, and whipped up some tasty oat cakes, all withoutsaying a word. He must have thought he had died and gone to heaven, because thatnight she climbed into his bed, too. He awoke the next morning to discover she'dalready chopped the wood, rounded up the cattle, shod his horse, and preparedhim a steaming bowl of porridge.

They lived together happily after that. Crunden was too delighted with his goodluck to ask questions, and anyway, Macha didn't supply any answers, because shenever said a word. She must have eventually started to talk,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Conari Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1573249521
• ISBN 13: 9781573249522
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 215
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland