Of Brothers and Bog-Cotton

Folklore and a fairy tale for June's Writing Down the Weeds

June, in Ireland. Meitheamh. We are less than two weeks out from the solstice now. The new moon (what our ancestors would have called the dark moon) fell on Thursday and so tonight she should just be visible as a thin sickle overhead, but there is still so much sunlight in the sky at night that I can move through the rooms at 10pm, clear as day. The days flit between sunshine and showers. A cold north wind shook the last of the hawthorn blossoms from the trees but the garden spills over with elderflower, foxglove, and roses. There are buttercups everywhere, the freshly cut fields are golden and greening and the ripening barley is the opposite. Soon we will tilt towards harvest. But first we are still climbing, towards the light.

I have light induced, bleed induced, stress induced insomnia. I’m awake in the wee hours, longing for starry darkness and deep sleep. I’m out of words. I’m watching people get excited about an incoming heatwave and I want to scream. The twelve hottest months in the last hundred thousand years have all been recorded in the last year. Read that again. It’s hard to believe. It is an aching sentence to come to terms with. Both as a statement and our path ahead. We are mid-mass extinction, mid-multi-genocide. We are mid-apocalypse. An unveiling of things. The decisions we collectively make now will ensure our survival or destruction, nothing less. We have but months to turn the tide, to act. And so, I am awake in the wee hours trying to fathom it all.

It seems futile to write here of flowers and plants, of folklore and mythology, and yet they keep me rooted, to this land, to the ancestors clamouring at my back, “root it down”, they said in a dream, “use your voice”. Is this it? I feel like I’m writing into the void, I feel like it is too little, too soft too late. I want to keen with those crows, I want to tear a hole in the warp and weft of the world. The strings rattle so hard I cannot sleep. The land screams, the ancestors weep. I hold my son as often as he allows it. I want to do nothing but tend to him and sleep. But tending to him means turning this world, it means I must build community and education and step into my grandmother’s shoes, my mother’s. I must hurl the little streets upon the great. And I must teach him how to throw too. We all must.

I want to open this community, as small as it is, to a discussion on acts of resistance, of social justice and community building. And how to root it down, so we are held by the land, so we become allies of the land, not squatters nor consumers, but active guardians. Is this resistance? Is it resistance to grow and share our own food? To rewild spaces? Is it resistance to raise children who can think for themselves? Is it resistance to form community so we are held when needed and care for others in turn? Is it resistance to renounce the capitalist mode of constant productivity and unlimited growth to follow a land-based cycle of work and rest, fertile and fallow? And how do we do that and survive in a violently dying capitalist system? How do we stop the destruction of our children’s futures? What is resistance to you? And how do we escalate? How do we turn the tide? Please feel free to comment below or perhaps I will create a chat where we can discuss this and share our resources, education and ideas?

I am going to continue bringing you the mythology and folklore of native Irish flowers and plants, in the form of my on-going (eighteen months now) project Writing down the Weeds and my latest project (since March) Na Scéalta, the tales, which retell local mythology and folklore from the Irish landscape, as a way of rooting down. As a way of resistance against a system that would destroy the land in which these tales live and the ecosystem in which these plants thrive. Today I bring you one of my favourites, Bog-cotton, and a fairy tale which in its retelling may have been an act of nationalist resistance. I have been working with both this plant and this tale since I was a teenager and so below, past the botanical lore and a retelling of the fairy tale, there is my poetry and a woven art piece made from this plant and inspired by the tale.

Each of these posts take hours to research and write, all the photos are my own and writing well means extra time spent editing. Today’s post would usually be for paid subscribers, simply due to the time involved but I have made it free until the next moon. I have set the monthly fee as low as Substack will allow, however if money is an object for you and you would like to receive all my writing, please just send me a message and I will make sure you have access. I am as ever, incredibly grateful to all of you here, that you chose to spend time reading my work is an honour and that some of you should chose to spend your hard-earned money on my writing, particularly when the cost of living is so dire, is a support that means so much more to me than the monetary value itself. Thank you.

Bog-Cotton

Ceannbhán

Eriophorum agustifolium

Common Cotton-Grass, Bog-down, Bog-silk, Cotton-sedge, Hare’s-tail, Cat’s-tail (Tyrone), Cushy Bracken, Flowans, Moscrops (Donegal).

Lukki-minnie’s oo (Scotland), Pisky/Pixie wool (Cornwall, England), Pixie’s Flax (Devon, England).  

Bog-cotton is a sedge rather than a grass and thrives in very damp, peaty ground, hence the name. It flowers, producing fluffy seed-heads in May and June. Here an abundance of bog-cotton was thought to suggest a dry summer ahead and should the heatwave we’ve been warned of materialise this should prove true locally.

Due to their preferred growing places, they developed a reputation as an unlucky plant to pick and bring indoors in most areas. These superstitions and the association in England with the “pixies” who would spirit children away, serve to keep those who would pick them from venturing into the unpredictable and dangerous bogs where they grow. You can read more on the bog in my piece on the lore of Heather here.  

Despite this, bog-cotton appears to have had a wide verity of uses. The seed heads were used to stuff mattresses and pillows and they make great tinder for lighting fires. The stems were used as candle wicks and in lean times they were also used as a fodder supplement for cows and sheep.

The leaves and roots are highly astringent and were used to dress wounds, alongside the seed heads, and as a treatment for diarrhoea.

In parts of Scotland the seed heads were also made into a wad and used at night to keep young children dry. Indeed, most of the lore and use surrounding bog-cotton is connected to fabric making. Mixed with twenty five percent wool the plant was used to create cloth, carpets and even roofing felt. The Scottish name refers to Lukki-minnie, a witch who was believed to spin her clothes from heather, the tufts of bog-cotton were imagined to be the small pieces that blew off whilst she carded the heath-wool.

Almost all the folktales mentioning this pretty, little plant involve garment making. In one Scottish tale a girl refuses to marry unless her suitor acquires a gown made of bog-down, in another a girl weaves the bog-cotton into fabric and uses it to create shirts turning a beast back into a man. The Irish tale I retell below is one such story.

The Twelve Wild Geese is a tale classified as “The Maiden who seeks her Brothers” (Aarne-Thompson tale type 451), which is a fairy tale told all over Europe under several names; The Seven Ravens, The Six Swans, The Twelve Brothers, The Twelve Wild Ducks, The Wild Swans, The Three Shirts, and so on. In each of these tales the brothers are made by enchantment into beasts of various kinds and their sister must weave garments for each from a difficult plant to break the spell. In some cases it is nettles (widely used to create fine fabric across Europe, even as recently as World War II), but here in Ireland, and in Scotland, it is Bog-Cotton.

In the Scottish version of this tale the heroine must change her brothers back from dogs, yet in the tale as it is wildly known in Ireland, they are Geese. W.B. Yeats “recorded” this fairy tale and published it in his book “Fairy Tales of Ireland” entitled “The Twelve Wild Geese” in 1888, and his naming of it could be argued to be a deliberate act of nationalism.

In Ireland the Wild Geese referred to Irish men who fought in foreign wars, either through British conscription or as mercenaries. Yeats published this collection on a wave of Celtic Revivalism flourishing in Ireland at the time, as a nationalism continued to build towards the, as yet unfinished, revolution of the early twentieth century. And so, this version of the tale, in which an Irish Princess saves her “wild geese” brothers using a plant so symbolic of the land itself could be read as political piece (as all literary fairy tales must be). A version of this exists in the schools’ archive, collected in the 1930’s however it is unclear whether it was influenced by Yeats literary retelling or not.

It is this story I have been reworking in various ways for almost twenty years. Below you will find my retelling. It is not a rewrite and barely varies from Yeats version, aside from my removal of his anglicised “burnt at the stake” form of capital punishment, which was never something prevalent in Ireland. Yeats retelling of the tale uses the common fairy tale colouring of black, white, and red, Snow white in the woods, which is again a motif I have been working with these near twenty years. You can read a little on this here. Below the retelling you can see the crafted version of this tale I created over a decade ago. Later this month, near the Full Moon, we will continue to explore this fairy tale but under the guise of a world-renowned (and incredibly local to me) Irish tale. Be sure to subscribe to get it directly to your inbox.

The Twelve Wild Geese

 Once, when the land was full of kings and queens, when the snows still fell in winter, a queen sat at her window. She sat there for want of light on her sewing. A shirt for one of her many sons. As she watched out the window a raven landed in the snow. It so distracted her she pricked her finger on the needle in her hand, drawing blood. “Oh” she sighed, “if only I had a daughter with skin as white as snow, hair as black as a raven and lips as red as blood I would give all my twelve sons for her.”

The cold north wind scattered the snow and when it settled an old woman stood where the raven had been, black cloaks wrapped about her. “That was a wicked wish” she said “so I will grant it. You shall have your daughter, skin as white as snow, hair as black as a raven and lips red as fresh drawn blood. And the moment she is born you will lose your twelve sons.” And with that she was gone.

The queen was horrified. She told the king, who stationed guards to watch over the boys night and day. But it was no use. The moment the queen gave birth, some nine moons later, a great swirling wind was heard throughout the rooms and a guard opened the door to the boys’ chamber just in time to see a goose fly out the window. The boys’ beds empty, goose down still falling like the first of the snow, all twelve of them transformed and on the wing.

The princess grew up beautiful, as princess must in these tales. She was raven wing and deep red rose, blackthorn, blossom, and sloe. And she grew up lonely, as princesses often do. Her parents too deep in their grief to cherish their wish made flesh and blood. And so, she took to wandering. She wandered the woods and through the rooms. One day she found a room with twelve empty beds, each with a goose feather placed on the pillow and fresh flowers beside. She did not understand. And so, she asked questions. But no one would answer. Not her mother, nor her father, their eyes filled with tears. Not her mother’s ladies not her father’s guards. But finally, a kitchen boy told her all he’d heard. Her mother’s wish and her brothers gone as geese. The boy had pointed in the direction they’d supposedly gone and so, without much thought at all, the princess set out. Alone. Into the forest.

She slept under trees on the soft mossy ground, lulled to sleep by the chatter of crows. She followed deer tracks and blackbirds’ flit between the branches. Then, when she was so hungry, she thought she could go no further she came across a cottage in a clearing. It was empty, save for twelve beds, and twelve plates on the table, twelve cups and twelve chairs. She stole food from the store and slept sound in one of the beds. She was woken at sunset by the noise of beating wings and ran outside to watch twelve geese land outside the door. As each of their feet touched the ground they were transformed into men. Her brothers, grown. Naturally they were hesitant of a strange girl in their midst but when she told them who she was they wept with the joy of seeing her. The princess wept too, blaming herself for their plight, geese by day and men only by night. “Oh” she sobbed “I wish I could save you from this spell, I would do anything if only I could break it.”

The forest was filled with the noise of a thousand crows and an old woman walked from between the trees. “That was a noble wish” she said “so, I will grant it. You must gather and spin bog-cotton, you must weave it into cloth and make each of your brothers a shirt. You must be silent until the task is done. Only then will the spell be broken.” And with that, she was gone.

The princess was dismayed, it seemed an impossible task, but she set to work. She gathered and spun, wove, and stitched, until her back was strong, and her fingers calloused. She kept her silence and kept her brothers’ house. Long years passed and she was not half-way through. Then one day as she sat sewing beneath a tree a man happened by. And he just happened to be a prince, as men in these stories often happen to be. He was, of course, so overcome with the princess’s beauty and so intrigued by her apparently coy silence that he took her home with him as his bride. Before the wedding and after, and during all the months of her first pregnancy, she continued to gather, spin, weave and sew. The prince was bemused but allowed it, so small a price it was for such a beautiful and silent wife. But his mother, the queen, grew suspicious. And her suspicions, fuelled by jealousy brewed into a bitter hatred. So, when the princess gave birth, in complete silence, she queen took the child and tossed it from a window. She watched as a grey wolf carried it off. She then pricked her finger and smeared blood around the princess’s mouth before screaming so loud and so piercing the crows left for days.

And still the princess kept her silence, still she kept spinning and weaving and sewing. The prince, so in love with his wife, refused to believe his mothers’ claims. He did, however, have his bride followed when next she went to the bog, and kept her under watch even as she sat with a flock of wild geese by the river as she always had. But all she did was gather and spin and weave and sew to the point that no lady would keep company with her, and the whispers grew. She was a fairy who had enthralled their prince. A sorceress who had him bound in some spell. She was already wed elsewhere, and their marriage was not valid by any law. On and on the whispers grew, a poisonous vine creeping through their kingdom.

But soon the princess fell pregnant again and the prince busied himself killing every wolf he could find. Now the princess had almost finished her task, just one shirt left. Each of the others safely with her brothers in the forest. Again, she kept spinning and weaving and sewing. Again, she gave birth in silence. Again, the spite filled queen tossed the child from the window. Again, a wolf carried it off. And again, she smeared the princess’s mouth with blood and screamed so loud the birds took flight in the next kingdom over.

This time the whispers turned to shouts and the prince could no longer ignore them. He had the princess locked in her chamber and a judge summoned. Still, she kept silent. Still, she kept sewing. And just as the queen was wailing her lies through fake tears to the judge the princess finished the last of the shirts. After seven long years she broke her silence. Screaming each of her brothers’ names. The room was filled with shouts as twelve huge geese flew in and as she threw the last of the shirts over the smallest one’s head. Then the spell was broken, and she was surrounded by twelve strong men. With her brothers to guard her and her voice allowed to her again she told her side of the story and wept for her children. It was, of course, just then that an old woman, dressed all in black, made her way through the crowd. In her arms she carried a tiny baby and beside her she led a young boy by the hand. She was wolf and crow and raven. And once the children were safely with their mother the old woman turned her magic to the spiteful queen.

The princess, her children and her brothers all went home to their parents, who lived out their days in joy surrounded by their children. The prince followed begging behind. And they say that when the wind wails across the island, screaming so loud the crows fly away it is the queen, still bound to her hatred.                      

Sister

Woven garment and Poem

Siobhán Rodgers 2011

This garment was woven from rushes and bog cotton as part of a huge fairy tale project I undertook for my master’s degree in Applied Art (craft) consisting of thirteen pieces. Rush basketry is traditionally made around a frame and this dress was no different. I spent countless hours weaving round and round a mannequin, a dance with the bog. It pays homage to the tradition of Brídeog and the shirts of the Fairy tale alongside traditional Irish basketry and weaving techniques. I was honoured to have this piece included in an exhibition alongside the best basket weavers in Ireland, pictured below.

For my master’s I also wove a men’s rush waistcoat, trimmed in bog cotton resembling royal ermine however I cannot find a photograph. All of them are long gone, I had a bonfire some years ago when clearing out my studio. I hope it released a little magic back into the land.

Selected Bibliography:

Irish Wild Plants, Niall Mac Coitir
Vickery’s Folk Flora, Roy Vickery
Fairy Tales of Ireland, W.B. Yeats
Straw, Hay & Rushes in Irish Folk Tradition, Anne O’Dowd
Rush Basketry, The Basket Makers Association
Forty Shades of Green, A Convergence of Irish Arts and Craft, Crafts Council of Ireland