Snowdrops, Storms & Strife — The Story of Winter

The Snowdrop | Galanthus nivalis | Fair Maid of February

Imbolc Blessings, friends 🌱

Today, February 1st, marks Imbolc, or St. Brigid’s Day, the traditional Gaelic festival marking the arrival of Spring. After a long and stormy winter, I for one am glad to have reached this day.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

The short, bleak days are finally becoming longer, and the long, dark nights are becoming shorter. The trees are already in bud, and soon the birds will be singing their dawn chorus. 

But the transition is neither quick nor smooth. We don’t wake up one day and find it is suddenly spring (unless you strictly adhere to the Gregorian calendar and the meteorological definition of Spring, or you live in Sweden — it’s true — when Spring actually starts varies from country to country!)

Rather, the handover from winter to spring is slow and often tempestuous. Full of strife. But if you watch out for the signs of spring awakening, you will find them in abundance. 

One such sign is the humble, head-hanging snowdrop. So small, so mighty.

I saw my first snowdrops of the year back on January 20th. And when I say “saw” — I mean noticed. It was the first time I had noticed them while out on my almost daily ‘stupid mental health walks’, and so it’s entirely possible they had sprung up a few days or even weeks earlier. After all, according to Gardenia.com, the earliest snowdrop varieties can bloom in October. But let’s just agree that most make an appearance in January or February. And yes, according to many legends and tales around the world, they are commonly thought of as the herald of spring. 

But why so?

Surely spring is not here already — since I saw those first wee snowdrops, I think we’ve had about sixteen storms (and at least 3 power cuts). Maybe you already know that these are the a’chailleach — the winter storms. More on that later, though. 

Though not native to the UK, snowdrops are ubiquitous now thanks to the Italian monks who apparently brought them to our shores many centuries ago. They spread rapidly throughout the British Isles — indeed they are common in kirkyards, since the Victorians who liked to plant them on the graves of their loved ones. Snowdrops thus became associated with death, which is why it is considered unlucky to bring them into your home.

But rather than think of them as a harbinger of death, it is much more inspiring to think of them as a harbinger of spring. While meteorological spring doesn’t start for another month, neatly and conveniently starting on the 1st March, nature has other plans for when spring should kick off. 

Nature will not fit into a box. 

The signs of nature are all around us, hidden in plain sight. We forget that we are part of nature, and that nature is part of us. This is where we should look, and indeed used to look, to mark the change of the seasons. This knowledge is woven into the tales handed down over generations. And when you look for the stories, they too are hidden in plain sight. Often the tales show up in local place names, and so as you look at a map, you might start to see the tales mapped out for you as well as the topography. 

This is why I fell hard and fast in love with the tale of Brigid and The Cailleach.

Brigid is one of the patron saints of Ireland, but she has very strong connections to Scotland too. The Hebridean islands are so called because this is where she first made landing. She arrived with oystercatchers on each wrist, and their name in Gaelic is gille-brighd — Brigid’s Servant. Her travels and or her impact extended around the entire country. Around me in Perthshire are several Churches named St. Brigid. 

Since I love living in Scotland so much, I began to learn a bit of Gaelic here and there (tha Gaidhlig snog — thanks DuoLingo!) and it’s become a new obsession to pore over maps, tying stories and places together. 

The story of The Cailleach & Brigid, or Brìde, is one of my favourites, and speaks to the transformation from winter to spring. It features Brìde, who may or may not be the same person as St. Brigid, and The Cailleach — the Goddess of Winter. 

Cailleach is the Gaelic word for old woman and is related to the word caileag, young woman. (This word I knew from my mini lessons.) Cailleach literally translates as ‘veiled one’ and is thought to stem from the Latin word pallium, meaning cloak, which in Gaelic became caille (‘veil’ ), due the Vs and Cs being what they are in Gaelic languages. The veil is associated in many cultures with wisdom and knowledge, and so there you have the veiled one, the old woman, the wise one, the witch. And the Goddess of Winter. The Goddess of Winter, the Cailleach is known in many Celtic stories and so it’s likely there was no one single Cailleach, but instead many spirits and legends that Cailleach became more of a title — but stay with me for this particular story.

Brigid & The Cailleach

Every Samhainn (Halloween), winter takes hold when The Cailleach comes down from where she lives on top of Ben Nevis and washes her cloak in the Corryvrecken — The Witches Cauldron, or Cauldron of the Plaid. At this moment, her reign over winter commences. It is a bleak, harsh rule, and by spring her subjects begin to rebel against her, campaigning for the return of the Summer King. As you’d expect, this challenge causes the Cailleach to be furious, and she unleashes holy, frosty hell across the lands. This comes in the form of storms — the winter storms, A’ Chailleach. And this is how winter starts to transition to spring. 

There is also a version of this story where Brìde and the Cailleach are the same person — and that each spring, the Cailleach drinks from the Well of Youth to enable her to transform into a young woman again, to become Brìde. However, the effects of the transformation wear off after several months, and she reverts to an old hag in time for her winter reign to begin again. I like this story because it appeals to my non-dualist take on life, where we are all one. Of course Brìde and the Cailleach are one — just like in each of us, we are both good and bad, light and dark. 

And then we have Mackenzie’s ‘The Coming of Angus and Bride’ — a very beautiful version of the legend of Brìde and the Cailleach.

In this story, the Cailleach holds Brìde prisoner because she is jealous of her youthful beauty, and also because the Cailleach’s son Angus is in love with Brìde. The Cailleach subjects Brìde to much torture and punishment, including forcing her to wash her brown woollen cloak. The Cailleach demands Brìde to wash it until it is white as snow, but Brìde is unable to — until she is visited and helped by Father Winter. Father Winter bids Brìde to return to the Cailleach with the now-white cloak, taking snowdrops with her as a gift, with the message from Father Winter:

“…tell her that they came from the green rustling fir-woods. Tell her also that the cress is springing up on the banks of streams, and that the new grass has begun to shoot up in the fields.”

This news enraged the Cailleach — clear evidence that her reign was ending. In a fury, she wages war against all growth… “smiting the world with frost and tempest, so that no flower may bloom and no grass blade survive.”

At this point, Angus, far away in the Land of Youth, had a dream that he rescued Brìde. He borrowed three days from August, and aided by far milder conditions, was able to make the journey safely to commence his search for Brìde. Although the Cailleach did all she could to prevent him from finding Brìde, including borrowing three days from Winter, he managed to persist and eventually pull off the rescue, liberating Brìde from the Cailleach on the first day of Spring. 

With support from the Fairy Queen, the pair were married and an enormous feast was held to celebrate. To this day, we honour St. Brìde’s Day. The union between Angus and Brìde’s caused Spring to strengthen, grass to grow, and harvests to flourish. As old age crept up on The Cailleach, she could no longer maintain her reign. The day of her defeat was the spring equinox — the point at which Brìde dipped her hand into the rivers and lochs which were still frozen, causing the Cailleach to fall into a deep sleep from which she could not awake until summer and autumn were passed. 

And that is the story of The Cailleach and Brigid, and my favourite story of the transformation from winter to spring. It captures my imagination because the battle against age is extremely relatable, and also, as a gardener, the desire to have control over the seasons is quite relatable. But most of all I like the mysticism and the creative take on the reality of nature. I like this mysterious Father Winter character, who just knows that seeing the snowdrops will tip the Cailleach over the edge — triggering her wrath and unleashing the A’ Chailleach storms. We’ve been battered by storms over the last few weeks, and it is almost a comfort to think that they are simply because the Cailleach also saw the snowdrops and she is now taking out her vengeance on us all. 

However, as in the story, nothing lasts forever — the Cailleach’s rule is coming to a close. She cannot win the fight against nature. The snowdrops signal spring and the changing of the seasons is inevitable. The brutal storms will (subject to climate change) give way to spring and then to summer. 

So please, please, enjoy St. Brigid’s Day. Feast, soak it up, knowing that brighter, longer, warmer days are ahead. 🌱