The Craft of the Wise

The Lament of Macha

by Jani Ni Mhorrigu, a woman of Ulster,

Who was raised with the rebel songs, whose grandfather was born on Falls Road.

a Version for Samhain or Halloween

Macha,

Once it was written of you in Ulster

that you were Grian Branchure - "the Sun of Womenfolk".

Your spirit lived in hills and moors,

our rugged headlands, sweeping shores.

Every Samhain we thanked you

for the harvest that fed us,

for the mast that fed our sacred pigs.

Then you were our mother Goddess, running the skies

as the White Horse, the Sun Goddess.

The ancient capital of Ulster, Ard Machae or Macha's Height,

as Armagh today proudly bears your name.

Then came the savage men, eager to replace you,

who could not tolerate a Goddess they could not tame,

who would not respect a mother's pains.

Their king summoned you to a Samhain gathering of our people,

challenged you to outrace his horses,

thinking you would be weak and slow for you were with child.

Thus he set out to overthrow the mother.

We share your pain as you were forced to plead:

"Help me, for a mother bore each one of you.

Give me King but a short delay until I am delivered."

He would not delay, he cruelly thought he had the Mother defeated,

and so you cried: "My name and the name of that which I shall bear

shall forever cleave to this place of Assembly. I am Macha, daughter of

The Strange Son of Ocean."

And with that she raced the king's horses

and defeating them lay down and gave birth to twins.

And then she cursed the men of Ulster: "From this hour the ignominy

that you have inflicted on me will rebound to the shame of each one of you.

When a time of oppression falls upon you,

each one of you who dwells in this province will be overcome with weakness,

as the weakness of a woman in childbirth,

and this will remain upon you for five days and four nights,

to the ninth generation it will be so."

And the cursed men did not respect the mother of all life,

they tried instead to curse her by saying she was but the goddess of their wars.

On sweet Samhain, where Macha's gifts of harvest were once celebrated,

when she was thanked for the mast that fed the pigs,

these savage men brought to this feast

the heads of enemies, calling these "the mast of Macha"

in savage mockery of her harvest.

They claimed that life came not from the womb but from the head.

By taking heads, they boasted, they had captured the source of life.

Thus they denied the wombs that bore them.

But when the time came for Ulster to be oppressed,

When foreign princes rode their northern necks.

Then Macha with her sisters as the dreaded Morrigan fought to stop the men from fighting

with all the power of the threefold spiral.

As Brighid she stemmed the power of Patrick

as he tried to change one trinity for another.

And still today the men of Ulster are accursed

when they fight against oppression

forgetting the Mother's cry for

all the children of her womb.

So this Samhain we call on you sweet Macha,

We call in the name of all mothers,

For men never more to fight in the name of God or Goddess.

We shout, yell, that life is sacrosanct.

We are one with all who have suffered

Through the death of child or adult,

One with you and with all lost ones

As we gather as your people wheel beyond wheel

At this sacred Samhain feast.

By Jani Ni Mhorrigu (Jani Farrell- Roberts )- c96 Samhain.

Notes. Samhain is the feast at the end of the Celtic year. It is now more commonly known as Halloween. Macha's curse is from an ancient Irish legend known as "Pangs of the Men of Ulster." This is part of the preamble to Ireland's epic saga the "Tain". (Also "The Serpent and the Goddess: Women religion and power in Celtic Ireland" by Mary Condren, Harper Collins 1989.)

An image of Macha is preserved in the cathedral in Armagh. She was the female aspect of the Godhead for many. The horse was an emblem of the sun goddess - it seems she could have been a celtic Epona. Later she became one of the triple Goddess, the Morrigan, with her two sisters, Badb and Morrigan. In Britain she was probably Morgan. As a war goddess she did not participate in battle but rather in curing the wounded, in demoralizing or confusing the male armies.

Brighid was also seen as a triple Goddess - of poetry, of healing and of smithwork. One of her main symbols was that of the serpent. (Thus Patrick was said by Christians to have driven the serpent from Ireland.) However, after the rise of Christianity in Ireland, Brigid became Saint Brigid and it was her nuns that tended the everlasting flame kept at Kildare - the original symbol of a sun goddess. Her feastday is Imbolc, February 1st, a major feast of the Celtic year.

To a longer annottted version of this poem