Letting Your Wild Woman Rest
By Amelia Furlong
This year, as the days darken and the winds grow chillier, I find myself preparing my heart and my home for Samhain. The candles are lit, my intentions for the Celtic New Year are written, and my cauldron is filled with resin for burning. My plans to visit The Hill of Ward for the bonfire-lighting are underway.
In the Celtic Calendar, Samhain is a time for letting go.
For me, it is also a time to let my body rest. I find the darkening of the seasons very difficult on my mental health, so during it I allow myself to indulge in pleasure and sensuality. I also allow myself to be cared for by my partner. This hasn’t always been easy for me. As a wild and wounded woman, I spent many years rejecting vulnerability with men and spurning their intimacy.
This changed last summer, when I enrolled in the Celtic School of Embodiment’s Banríon Celtic Circle. In this life-changing course, we journeyed deep into Irish myth. To the ancients, stories were a way of understanding the world, making meaning, and teaching lessons to the community. Our modern experience of myth is no different. And in the Banríon Celtic Circle, I met a woman who showed me a different way of living. Her name is Mis.
THE MAD WOMAN IN THE MOUNTAINS
The story of Mis runs deep in both the Irish imagination and landscape. Sliabh Mis in Co. Kerry is named for her, and she is thought to be the first Irish vampire. And yet, her story was not re-discovered until 1954, when it was found tucked away in a manuscript in the old ecclesiastic library at Maynooth University.
Mis was the daughter of Dáire Dóidgheal, who came from Europe to conquer Ireland and landed in Ventry, Co. Kerry. After Dáire was slain in battle by the hero Fionn mac Cumaill, Mis found his bleeding, broken body on the beach. Consumed by grief, she threw herself upon her father’s corpse and began to lick and drink his blood. She then escaped to the surrounding hills, where her hair grew long, she sprouted feathers and fur, and her hands and feet curled into claws. For 300 years, Mis terrorised Kerry, ripping apart anyone or anything that came close to her.
Despite this, the local monarch, King Feidhlimidh, forbade her to be killed. Instead, he offered a handsome reward to anyone who could capture her alive. Many tried, and all of them failed. That is, until a gentle harpist named Dubh Ruis offered to bring back the mad woman.
THE ROMANCE OF MIS AND DUBH RUIS
Dubh Ruis was not a warrior. Unlike the men who had tried to hunt and subdue Mis before, Dubh Ruis had a different plan. He thought that if he could serenade her with his harp, he might be able to woo her. This, he hoped, would heal her wounded soul and cure her madness.
Mis was, indeed, transfixed by the sound of Dubh Ruis’s harp. She was also transfixed by his naked body as he played the sweet songs. They made love, and afterward, Dubh Ruis cleansed Mis’s body of its dirt and massaged her joints with deer fat. For two months, he remained with her, making love to her and cleaning her, until the whiskers and fur fell off, and her hands and feet returned to normal. Eventually they married and had four children. Dubh Ruis was later killed by warriors, and she cried a great keen over his body.
EMBODIED DESIRE
When I first heard the story of Mis, I felt an immediate and instinctual connection. Here she was, an ancient character from a long-dead civilization; and yet, she was me.
Much like Mis, my emotions have always been a powerful force that can take control of me and turn me into someone I don’t recognise. The passionate intensity with which I feel everything is a blessing and a curse. On my best days, it is an intoxicating quality that has allowed me to form deep, life-long connections with people who are drawn to my openness and thirst for adventure. On my worst days, it has gotten me dangerously close to tearing apart everyone and everything that comes close to me. But as much as my nature is volatile, it is also the best part about me, and I would never want someone to take that away.
I think for this reason, I am sometimes unsure how to interpret the story of Mis and Dubh Ruis. On the one hand, it seems to me that Dubh Ruis is taking away Mis’s power. Yes, she is wracked with grief and insanity. But she is also strong. When Dubh Ruis says he is hungry, she goes into the woods and chases down a deer, which she kills with her bare hands. She has an inhuman speed and strength. She is wild. After she falls in love with Dubh Ruis, she becomes domesticated. Her fur and claws fall off. I worry this story says that a grotesque, feral, and dangerously strong woman must be tamed, masculine order brought to the feminine chaos.
On the other hand, debilitating grief is a terrible thing. Dubh Ruis doesn’t so much as tame Mis as he does help her remember gentleness and love. Moreover, he embraces her sexuality. He may serenade her, but she seduces him. She makes the first move and unabashedly embodies her desires. Furthermore, Dubh Ruis doesn’t just make love to Mis, he washes her and massages her tired body. He builds a home for her in the woods and promises never to leave her. He takes care of her. She is a strong woman who nevertheless allows herself to rest, to have pleasure, to be sexual, and to be cared for. This is a powerful story of a person reclaiming themselves through their embodied desires.
Beyond Here by Andrea Kowch
This is why I was drawn to Mis. Much like her, it was the love of a gentle storyteller that brought me back from my own rage.
TEARING THE WORLD APART
I moved to Ireland in 2019 to heal myself. I was hurting at the time, deeply traumatised from my time working in abortion advocacy in San Francisco. This work, and its seeming futility, had filled me with an anger that was constant and consuming. It coloured all my interactions with men and led me into several dangerous situations. I was always worried it would explode into violence, which it sometimes did. But as terrible as this fury was, it also gave me purpose. It called me to better the world.
After a trip to Ireland, I became fascinated with the stories of strong, resilient Celtic women, and I decided to move here. I also hoped that learning about these women, and my own ancestors, would heal me.
Once in Ireland, however, I fell in love with a sweet, gentle writer, and everything changed. My anger left me. My boiling rage cooled to a simmering cynicism. I no longer worried that I would explode over the slightest injustice.
I was happy romantically for maybe the first time ever, but I still felt lost. A part of me was afraid I had been tamed; saved by a man, instead of by myself. This made me feel weak, not like the strong, wild woman I had been. I had also stopped pursuing activism, but I was excelling in my professional goals as a writer and had found a rare and beautiful love. All this was good; all this was what I had worked for. So why didn’t I feel like myself? As these feelings swirled, my relationship suffered, and there were a few terrible months when I thought I would leave Ireland and return home, with or without him.
Then I joined the Banríon Celtic Circle. When I read how Mis was saved by Dubh Ruis, I began to wonder if I was interpreting my own story all wrong.
Radical Vulnerability
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Dubh Ruis doesn’t just save Mis. Mis chooses to let herself be saved. Despite knowing the depths of her despair at losing those she loves, she opens herself up to love again. This is an act of bravery. And when she lets herself be cared for, this is an act of radical vulnerability.
Much like Mis, I allowed myself to be vulnerable with another person. I trusted him, despite my deep mistrust. I let his kindness heal my wounds. And with those wounds healed, I think I will be a better advocate and activist in the future.
The story of Mis and Dubh Ruis also reminds me of another Irish woman who drank the blood of her dead lover. I’ve recently been reading The Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa. This book tells the story of Eileen Dubh Ní Chonaill, the 18th-century noblewoman who, when she found her husband dead, drank fistfuls of his blood and composed the epic poem Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, Lament for Art Ó Laoghaire. A keen, for a beloved who is gone.
Irish myth and Irish history are filled with passionate women whose emotions, and griefs, are too big for their bodies to hold in. They suck the blood of their beloved with a ravenousness that seems to say: give me your pain. They do not shrink from their feelings. Their stories are reminders that deep emotion is not something that makes us weak, but powerful. However, in these stories, their emotions can only exist outside the beloved - in the case of Eileen, when he has died; for Mis, before she meets him - outside the ordered, civilised, masculine world. What this says about my own, I am not entirely sure yet.
Every reader of Mis and Dubh Ruis’s romance will have their own interpretation. For me, the tension between my two readings isn’t easily reconcilable. Perhaps for love - to build healthy, strong relationships with your partner and your community - you do have to give up some of your rage. Is this worth it? Is the sacrifice too great? Only you can decide.
What about you?
As we celebrate Samhain this Sunday, these are some questions and intentions that you can ask yourself as you let go and surrender to the darkness.
How can you invite radical vulnerability into your life? What about pleasure and rest?
Do you need to be cared for? If so, who can you lean on to care for you right now? How can you connect deeper with them and nurture a reciprocal healing relationship?
Which interpretation of Mis’s story resonates with you? Why? Is there another interpretation that feels more authentic in your body?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amelia Furlong is a content writer, ghostwriter, and novelist living in Galway, Ireland. She graduated from the MA in Writing at the National University of Ireland, Galway in 2019 and has published articles and poetry in Ireland and abroad. She is currently working on a pirate romance novel and an anti-romantic comedy screenplay.
Sources:
Greene, David [tr.], “The romance of Mis and Dubh Ruis”, in: Mercier, Vivian [ed.], Great Irish short stories, New York: Dell, 1964. 32–36
The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Ancient Celtic Europe & Early Ireland & Wales by by John T. Koch & John Carey