Celtic Medicine Stories

The medicine story I offer to you today comes from the deeper layers of the Brythonic Celtic culture, the people who are my ancestors and once stewarded most of the island of Briton. They are known as the Britons and continue on as the Welsh. This story was re-discovered in the modern era in a Old Welsh text known as The Mabinogi that we think was written in the 1200s. Many scholars and most story...

This is one of my favorite tales. It calls to the wild part of me, the one that longs to sleep on the earth and find moss in my hair. The story follows the thread of the balance between the wild and the domesticated It warns us of the lack of fertility that seeps into life when we live too far from the earth. It strikes me that this is not a modern problem. This story was first written down in Nor...

This one again. This story won’t leave me alone. This is a re-telling of Merlin’s story as it comes through me often. We have little on record of this battle, the battle of Arfderydd recorded in the year 573. It’s location is thought to have been in what is now an old field just north of the Scottish- English border. And it is recorded as one of the three futile battles of Britain. It is also reco...

This story captured my heart when I first heard it. It comes from the Irish Travelers tradition and is recorded in a beautiful book called "Why the Moon Travels" by Oein BeBhairduin. These tales stand out to me as distinct from most other Celtic tales that I have come across, they explain the origins of things in a way I am used to coming across in Native American stories but not Celtic ones. This...

Stories of the seal people are prevalent all along the west coast of Ireland and Scotland and up into the Faroe Islands. if you’ve spend any time wandering the shorelines of those places you’ll know why - the seals are very present, you can hear them breathing and see their big, brown eyes watching you as they hover on that threshold between sky and water. And if you’r lucky you might see them on...

There are variations of the Fairy Midwife story from up and down the British Isles, it seems to be ubiquitous and wound deep into the fabric of Celtic lore. This is my own telling of this old story that highlights the complex role midwives have played in our cultures. These women who stand at the portal between the worlds assist in births, and deaths, and the opening to The Otherworld in more ways...

This is the second part of the first branch of the Mabinogi that we began in the last episode . These tales carried in the oral tradition of the ancient Britons contain teachings about how to be. Here our hero, Pwyll Prince of Dyfed, faces more trials as he learns about the importance of consent and generosity from a female tutor. Rhiannon is a beguiling figure who appears from the Otherworld but...

Nine hundred years ago in Medieval Wales, an unknown author wrote down tales that have been carried in the oral tradition for at least 2,000 years. Some think this collection of tales, known as The Mabinogion, is much older than that. This story, about Pwyll Prince of Dyfed is set before the Saxons, before the Romans, in a time when the native Brittons roamed freely across most of what is now Wale...

This story grabbed my attention and I'm still not sure why, it's deeper mysteries have yet to be revealed to me. I keep telling it as a way to honor the medicine it carries and let it sink further into me. I'm very curious to know what you make of it. The Lad of the Skins is from the Fianna Cycle of Irish mythology. These tales of the Fianna, a roving band of warrior-poets, were told all across Ir...

This story is again from my home of the Scottish Borders. It continues the theme of the last two episodes, these extreme moments of total enlightenment after the accidental consumption of a magical liquid - just like Taliesin in Wales and Finn McCoull in Ireland. Michael Scott was a historical person in the early thirteenth century who became knows as the Border's Wizard. Adventures in the Otherwo...

This story from Ireland is from one of the deep layers of Celtic mythology. If you listened to the previous episode with the Welsh story of the Birth of Taliesin you will see the similarities between these two tales that suggest an older, foundational myth. It's an iconic Celtic tale of the crossing between the two worlds - ordinary reality and the place of all Wisdom - and here it happens in one...

The story I am sharing with you today is The Birth of Taliesin. The word means "radiant brow" in Welsh, and you'll see why at the end of the story. Taliesin is another one of these Celtic figures who crosses back and forth between history and myth. There was indeed a famous Welsh Bard in the 6th century called Taliesin and there seem to be stories that pre-date that person and weave throughout the...

This is a re-telling of an old Welsh tale captured in the 12th century text The Mabinogion. Its not usually told quiet like this. I see Elen as an expression of the Sovereignty Goddess who is so prevalent in Celtic myth. She is the abundance of the land and recognizes the need to be in partnership with humans for everything to flourish. To me this story speaks of the human-nature relationship but...

This is the third and final part of this telling of Merlin's story. This is the part you may be more familiar with and has taken many different forms over the years as the story traveled around Britain between the North and what is now Wales. This story speaks of Merlin as a great prophet implying that he has found some opening to the Otherworld through which knowledge, unbound by time and space,...

This is the second part of Merlin's story, please listen to Part 1 first as it will give you some context for the battle that is about to happen and Merlin's grief The battle happened in a field, by a river, in a place that now lies on the Western section of the English-Scottish Border. In the old texts the battle is recorded happening in the year 573 and is labeled one of the Three Futile Battles...

Myrddin of the Wildwood -Part 1 of 4: The Old Ways Merlin has become a legend, many fantastical tales have been woven about him, and he continues to show up, in various guises in our popular culture. He has captured our imaginations as the archetypal Druid or Wizard. When we trace the history of his story we find at the beginning the fragments of an historical figure. A man who existed on the edge...

The Dream Makers story comes from the Isle of Skye in the West of Scotland, a beautiful island full of mountains and mystery. It's one of those stories that comes across as a simple folktale but carries some deep medicine from the realm of dreams. It speaks to me of how The Otherworld erupts into this world through our dreaming and the importance of our attending to its messages. Like so many othe...

What happens when we go into the forbidden places in the woods? There are times in life we are determined to find out. This story comes from close to Selkirk in Southern Scotland, just a little west of the Eildon Hills we spoke about in episode 1 - Thomas the Rhymer. The Queen of Feary appears again, this time in a darker guise but still as an initiator or men. Our protagonist is a fearless young...

This is an old story from the Tweed Valley in the Scottish Borders, just down the road from where I grew up. It is the tale of an historical person known as Thomas the Rhymer or True Thomas who is said to have the gift of prophesy. Sir Walter Scott reported in the late 1800s that local families still had books of Thomas’s prophecies that they consulted in uncertain times. This story tell of how he...