I’d like to share with you a little of the magick I found in Scotland and Ireland, and show you how I absorbed it into Zoey Redbird’s world.
Ireland
THE BULLS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS
My zodiac sign is Taurus; I am truly a bull. So it’s not surprising that more than three decades ago when I first discovered that the Scots and Irish had a mythos that centered around two great bulls eternally locked in combat, the stories stuck in my mind.
I’d been thinking about getting a tattoo for years. I mean, obviously I’m interested in them, as they play a major part in the House of Night. But it was in the middle of my second research trip to the Highlands for the House of Night when I came to my first tattoo—literally.
Seoras had been leading me through the Highlands, but when he noticed how interested I was in the old stories of the bulls, he said that I really needed to speak with one of his Irish Clan brothers. Trusting Seoras’ intuition completely, I went with him from Glasgow to a little town about an hour and a half outside Dublin, Carraig Mhachaire Rois, where I met Alan Mac au Halpine, a tattoo artist who was more Shaman than modern ink guy (though Alan would not describe himself that way—authentic Shamans rarely do). I talked with him at length about the connection I felt with my earth sign, and he began to speak of the Irish mythology of the bulls. As he told the ancient stories I could finally see my own tattoo: the figure of a bull, the form of a goddess held within the beast.
I asked Alan if he would design the tattoo for me, and all the while he sketched, and then during the three hours he tattooed me, Alan’s lilting voice spun stories of bulls and times gone by. It is from Alan’s stories that I found a path to create a belief system in the House of Night world that predated Nyx—that was earthy and wild and uncivilized—that represented Light and Darkness in their purest forms.
Perhaps it was the ritualistic, tribal act of the tattoo itself that helped to shape the primeval aspect of the religion I expanded within the House of Night world. Alan did honor me by making the first mark of my tattoo in the ancient way—with a sharpened stick he’d hand-carved, which he dipped in ink and tapped into my flesh. Maybe it was the combination of the pain of the tattoo mixed with the beauty of Alan’s artwork, wrapped in the stories he told. Or maybe the sibh (pronounced shee—fairy folk) were drawn to me, a modern shenachie absorbing their ancient homeland stories, and they gathered around the little tattoo shop in the heart of the Irish village so that some of their tales could find their way into the world today, and their magick could touch us all.
Let’s see what you think after I share with you a small sample of some of the stories Alan told me that day. Close your eyes, just for a moment. Breathe in deeply. Exhale slowly. Let your imagination take you to verdant Ireland and listen to Alan’s lilting voice . . .
The bulls were the incarnation of two powerful druids; each was a keeper of the spirits of each half of Ireland. They started out as friends, but got into an argument over whose powers were stronger. They fought as different incarnations for hundreds and hundreds of years: first as great eagles, then as great sea monsters, then two great stags, then two warriors, then two phantoms, then two great dragons. Then, exhausted, they became two maggots.
One of the maggots got into the water of Cronn at Cuailinn, where a cow drank it up and gave birth to the Dun Cuailinn, which means the Brown Bull of Cuailinn. This Bull of Cuailinn was dark, dire, haughty with young health. He was horrific, overwhelming, ferocious, full of craft, with furious, fiery flanks. Brave, brutal, thick-breasted, curly-browed, with a true bull’s brow, snorting, mighty in muzzle and eye. He had a royal wrath, and a beast’s rage—a bandit’s stab, a lion’s fury, and a bellow that only the thunder could match. Thirty grown boys could take their place from his rump to his nape. He was a hero and beloved, was the great Brown Bull of Cuailinn.
The other maggot got into the wellspring garden in Connaught and was drunk by another cow. She gave birth to Finn Bennach, the White Bull of the Ai Plain. This bull had a white head, and white hooves, and a red body the color of blood, as if bathed in blood, or dyed in the red bog under his breast and on his back and his heavy mane. With a ponderous tail, and a stallion’s breast, and a cow’s apple eye, and a salmon snout, and a hind’s haunch, he romps in rut. Born to bear victory, bellowing in greatness, his charge is a tempest.
And these two mighty, virile creatures, each representing the spirits of their nation, are still embodying the two druids. Some say until these two druids stop fighting we will never have peace.
So what do you think? Did the sibh touch you, too? Can you see the link between the House of Night’s bulls of Light and Darkness, and the Brown Bull of Cuailinn and the White Bull of Ai Plain?
SEOL NE GIGH[1]—THE SEAT OF THE SPIRIT STONE
The idea to create a huge sacrificial stone with intricate knot work carved all over the sides, down which Stark’s blood runs, came from another story Alan told me that day. (Yes, three hours is a long time to get tattooed! Lots of talking and ale-drinking goes on!) This is what Alan told me that inspired the creation of the giant rock that rises from the middle of my fictional House of Night castle on the Isle of Skye:
Local legend held that the king who brought the art of gold smelting to Ireland began to worship the blood-hungry god Crom Cruach. Most of this worship centered around sacrifices that took place on what was called either the Plain of Adoration, or the Plain of Decimation, found today in County Cavan, outside the town of Ballyconnell. Crom Cruach’s stone wasn’t just ornately carved, but was covered in silver. It was said that “the Druids let the blood draw onto the stone, and read the auguries from the flow of blood in the carved channels.” Because of the violence of Crom’s worshippers, other tribes shunned the area, and didn’t marry into them
There are several versions of what happened to the stone that was at the center of these rituals. One version, Alan told me, is that the stone now dwells in the bowels of the Vatican. Others say it used to be buried, but when in the 1840s locals began leaving flowers and offerings of milk and eggs on the ground above the stone, the Christian church had what they believed to be the stone dug up and smashed. According to this second version, remnants of the stone still “are to be seen in County Cavan to this day.”
Then Alan told me a more personal chapter in the story, and it was because of this telling that I was sure that it should be this particular stone, resurrected through my fictionalization, that must serve as the conduit for Stark’s painful, near-death quest to the Otherworld.
Some close friends and I went to find the ancient circle of Crom on a miserable November day, a few years ago. We found the town. It was Sunday, and we didn’t see a single soul. We eventually found the old and abandoned stone circle, but a few hundred yards away from it I began to feel giddy and separated myself from the rest of the group. On reaching the circle, I began to feel light-headed and sat down on one of the stones. The inside of my head began to feel squashed, and I became overcome with the need for flight. When I tried to stand up my legs went wobbly, so I sat again. Then I began to feel screaming inside my head rather than hear it, so I tried to centre my thoughts by striking a conversation with the others. But the screaming was now mixed with images that I could not make sense of, so I stood up to walk away, and suddenly began to dry retch. That was enough for me; I will never return. This is the truth as I know it, and as I was told it, and as I pass it to you.
So it was Alan’s soul-felt description that caused me to create a stone that became the Seat of the Spirit of Skye, the perfect conduit through which our Warrior, Stark, held at the brink of death, did what no other living vampyre Warrior had ever before accomplished, and entered the Otherworld!
Do you believe in the sibh now?
Scotland
Seoras and I only spent a couple of days in Ireland during that trip, because my mind kept circling back to the Highlands and the stories that were calling to me there. I have to admit that my research in Scotland, on the
Isle of Skye in particular, was the most satisfying, enjoyable, and productive research trip I’ve ever taken. Not only did I have a strong, intelligent, knowledgeable Clan Chieftain as my personal guide and research assistant, but through Seoras I met another wonderful historian and Clan member, Alan Torrance,[2] as well as his wife, Denise, who “saved” me from all that Clan Wallace testosterone. She also told her own wonderful stories of the fey, some of which inspired the scenes in Awakened where Zoey glimpses the old magick on Skye as it becomes tangible in the forms of elemental fairies. (Honestly, I sometimes think Denise is a little fey herself—she’s blonde and beautiful and her cooking is definitely magick!)
Happily, Alan and Denise joined Seoras and me on Skye, and we set out across the island, sloughing through the cold, never-ending rain for several days. And you know what? It was absolutely not as miserable as that just sounded. Not only did we make some fabulous discoveries, like finding the ruins of Sgiach’s Castle, discovering ancient groves that seemed part of the Otherworld come to earth, and happening upon the best dang chip shop in the universe, but we also cemented friendships. We returned in the evenings to sit in a warm B&B and tell stories over fabulous food. This Alan, too, shared stories with me that found their way into the House of Night mythos.
FUNERAL TRADITIONS
Sometimes the smallest details that come to light during research can trigger something that just seems to somehow perfectly fit your needs. That’s what happened when Alan told me the story about why there were these strange grooved notches in one of the ruined walls we’d found as we tromped around the Isle of Skye.
The four of us had stopped to rest at an old stone wall that ended up not being far from Sgiach’s Castle. I noticed the notches because I was sitting on the wall and I ran my hand over them, thinking aloud that this wall was definitely “broken.” Alan smiled and made me study the break in the stones more carefully, and I saw that they were intentional. Then he told me why they were there.
There was a law brought in at the beginning of the seventeenth century (under King James VI) banning funeral traditions and all they entailed, which often involved transporting bodies over long distances across Scotland, via a stretcher carried by the deceased’s closest friends and family. Each took a turn holding part of the stretcher until he or she had to rest, and then they rotated out and another Clan member stepped up and took their place. Obviously the trip would have been difficult because of the rough terrain, especially in the Highlands, so the tribes and Clans developed a system where folk would take the body a certain distance, mostly through their tribal homelands, to an allocated place beside an ancient wall, or dyke, where they could stop and rest. At the time I was finding out about this I was working with Stewart James, a dyker who had worked all over Scotland on these ancient walls. I was sharing with him the information I had been discovering about the funeral parties that used to crisscross the land, and how they had partied for days, even weeks. How sometimes old rivalries would arise on the journey or, better than that, sometimes folk would meet and marriages would be created, appeasing Clan disputes. We laughed and lamented that these busy thoroughfares that we found ourselves working on in modern Scotland held such a rich and mostly untold history. It was then Stewart showed me the Through Bands. These are big blocks of stone built through the wall to hold the deceased’s litter poles at transfer or even resting points in the journey.
The celebration of this tradition by the tribes of ancient Scotland honored the dead in a way that united the Clans, and it was this that most probably intimidated the power-hungry Kings of Scotland and Britain and led to the laws that forbid the practice.
I was intrigued by the funeral tradition and knew I was going to have to use part of it in the House of Night—and I did! It’s a tiny detail, but when Zoey is carried into Sgiach’s Castle on a stretcher, she is borne there in this ancient way. To me, this telling added a touch of reverence and authenticity to the scene that set the whole tempo of the rest of the book.
SGIACH, THE GREAT TAKER OF HEADS
The funeral story was wonderful and it sparked my creativity, but what I needed most was a setting for a House of Night on Skye. Seoras had originally spoken to me of an ancient warrior queen who lived on Skye and who trained the sons and daughters of kings. Alan picked up this tale, describing a woman who lived some time before the sixth century, and this is how I met Sgiach, the Great Taker of Heads.
It was right after Alan first mentioned her that Seoras turned a corner in the small road we were traveling down on Skye. There was a lovely little grove to our left. To our right my eyes were drawn to some highland cows grazing in a boggy field very close to a craggy, rocky coastline. Something caught at my vision and I asked Seoras to stop. We both looked and realized at about the same time that what we were seeing were the ruins of an imposing edifice situated at the top of a sheer cliff overlooking the ocean. We knew it had to be Sgiach’s Castle. Later that night back at the B&B we found out we’d been correct, but only after the four of us had spent the day clambering all over the amazing ruin.
Come on! Imagine it with me! It was raining and cold, as I already said, but you need to add wind. Lots of wind, which got crazier and even more blustery after we’d waded through the field and climbed up to the grass and rock mound that was what remained of the great Taker of Heads’ Castle.
Alan’s art at the beginning of this essay has eerily reconstructed what it could have looked like. That bridgelike entrance he brings alive in the sketch—well, today it has almost no floor. To get to the rest of the castle ruin you have to cross it by scaling the edge on your tiptoes, clutching the crumbly wall and trying not to look down at the more than twenty-foot drop that opens behind and below you.
Well, of course I had to get across it. It was research! Alan went first. Seoras went last, handing Denise and then me off from his strong grip to Alan’s before he followed us. Alan was wearing a kilt, and there were what seemed like gale-force gusts whipping up from the huge hole where the floor should have been. Do you have a mental picture yet? Let’s just say I can report with authority what Scottish men wear under their kilts. In Oklahoma we call it “a whole lot of nuthin’,” which is yet another little research tidbit I added to Burned.
So after Denise and I stopped giggling like preteens, we all explored the ruins of Sgiach’s mighty fortress. The sky was like slate. The wind made my eyes tear. It was even hard to stand sometimes because of the force of it, and it was freezing! I began to wonder why the hell anyone would live up here, and then Seoras bumped my shoulder and said, “Look about ye, wumman.” It was almost as though Sgiach reached down through the centuries and opened my eyes. From the ruins of her castle I could literally see the vast expanse of the North Atlantic. No one could have snuck up on this queen. Longboats? Viking invasions? Ha! She’d have had her archers in line to kick butt before the enemy could even get close enough to be pummeled on the rocks below. And that’s when the character of the Sgiach started to form in my imagination. From walking in her steps I understood the military tactician she must have been, and the wise, protective queen began to emerge.
Though the water at the bottom of the sheer drop was easily more than a hundred feet below us, I swear I could taste the salt in the air, and while I listened to Alan’s story it was like Sgiach herself whispered words to me through the Cruithne . . .
I suppose the ultimate honour the people bestowed upon Sgiach was that they named this magnificent island after her. (Or maybe she took her name from it?) As you can see, the landscape of Skye is probably the most jagged in all of Scotland. Its peaks that stab through mists remind me of the qualification required of all students who wanted to learn from Sgiach’s school of martial arts. They had to walk barefoot over the two Cuillen mountain ranges before they were considered to be allowed entrance to DunScaichis, or Sgiach’s Castle, to become warriors.
My understanding is that the prospective warriors came from all over Europe. Even now in modern Scotland i
f you are from Skye you are known as a Skianniach. I was speaking with a native Skye woman and asked her about Sgiach and she told me when a young person is called a Sgiach it is often derogatory, a put-down, referring to a troublemaker, a rouge!
A conversation I had recently with another native Skye man who grew up in and around DunScaichis told me of his memories of climbing and camping around Sgiach’s Castle. He called it “an intimidating place,” and said “bad things have happened there.” This may have something to do with the rumor from which she got her name “The Head Taker”; she chopped off the heads of her enemies.
Irish monks who came over to Scotland in the sixth and seventh centuries documented details of how the natives were expected to start training to be warriors at the age of eleven and continued until the age of eighteen. This applied to both young men and women. The monks were obviously intimidated by this tradition, so they proposed a law banning women from taking part in the process to become a warrior, but even up and through many of our battle stories following that time, women played major roles on and off the field. Within the Clan the Warrior Women of Scotland are still respected and loved in modern society.
Alan Torrance’s stories, Seoras’ guidance, and the physical act of touching, smelling, knowing the magnificent setting that was once home to this mighty queen enabled me to bring her alive again through my fictional world. I hope, somewhere, somehow, that makes her smile.
CLAN MACUALLIS AND THE GUARDIAN MYTHOS
By concluding my essay with Seoras Wallace’s interview, I’ve saved the best for last. I readily admit that I borrowed heavily from Seoras and the history of his Clan in creating the Guardian Mythology and my fictional Clan MacUallis (which is a loose Gaelic translation of Wallace). Seoras told me fascinating stories that had been passed down through his family for centuries, and (with his permission) I absorbed the folk history of Clan Wallace into the House of Night.
Nyx in the House of Night Page 19
