{"id":361,"date":"2011-02-26T07:34:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-26T07:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/2011\/02\/26\/once-upon-a-time\/"},"modified":"2020-08-30T22:13:40","modified_gmt":"2020-08-30T22:13:40","slug":"once-upon-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/2011\/02\/26\/once-upon-a-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Once Upon A Time&#8230;."},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Once upon a time, I believed that the past was filled with women warriors and there was a great deal of evidence for it especially among the Celtic cultures. Oh, a minority for sure, but there was so much evidence. Such as Boudicca, whose story is told in this video (from the BBC shorts <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/cbbc\/horriblehistories\/\">Horrible Histories<\/a>), Sc\u00e1thach, Aoife, Medb&#8230;.the list goes on especially from Ireland, as well as the <i>C\u00e1in Adamn\u00e1in<\/i>. After all, warriors wouldn&#8217;t follow a woman if they didn&#8217;t have faith in women as warriors, there wouldn&#8217;t be all these stories if there were no women warriors, there would be no need to outlaw women warriors if there were no women warriors&#8230;..<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1LhT7rCC6O8\" width=\"350\" height=\"227\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Now I no longer believe that. Oh, don&#8217;t get me wrong, I believe there were Celtic women warriors. What I stopped believing was that there is any good evidence.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">It took me a long time to get here and even when I was I was at first a bit reticent about it. After all, I AM writing a book on the Gaelic warrior path for women. The slowness was in part due to the fact that many renown Celticists have supported the that this is evidence, usually just in passing and often citing such evidence as noted above. For example Nora Chadwick stated following noting the <i>C\u00e1in<\/i> as well that, \u201cTaking what we\u2019re told of Gaulish women warriors by classical writers, together with Boudicca, Cartimandua and Maeve, and with these stories, we cannot but wonder whether there was not some such institution among the most ancient of Celtic people.\u201d (<i>The Celts <\/i>pg. 136, see below) She is hardly alone in such statements.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">As I started up Teh Project again, however, I couldn&#8217;t let things go &#8220;just in passing.&#8221; I actually had to face the evidence issue, because it is something that we must confront and be truthful about. That there is no good evidence, yet I whole heartedly do still believe there were some women warriors in the early Gaelic cultures.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">My belief is based simply on the simple fact that no matter how misogynist and repressive a culture is, there are always some women who are of a warrior nature. They may not be accepted as part of mainstream armies or able to openly show themselves to be both women and warriors. They may have been forced adopt the guise of men. They may have been pirates, highwaywomen, outlaws of some kind. And Outlaw in the Gaelic form is something we&#8217;ll discuss in a moment.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This puts me in lonely place in the on going debate within both Celtic studies and the Pagan Community about women warriors. Because one side continues to use this evidence, while the other refutes it as evidence or even claims that because because these women warriors typically have supernatural powers it means that there never could have been any women warriors (one would think they never heard of Fionn Mac Cumhail and C\u00fa Chulainn or seem to think that their skills are common among men?). Those who take this view, and there are too many to cite here (go on nearly any &#8220;Celtic&#8221; email list and dare to write the words &#8220;women warriors&#8221; and you&#8217;ll find them), often also include a deep seated belief that women are inherently unable to be warriors, for example Michael Enright&#8217;s unsubstantiated (in a book otherwise filled with obsessive citations) long ranty footnote about how women are constructed in such a way as to not have any ability to fight at all. (<i>Lady With a Mead Cup,<\/i> pg. 211) It should be noted his evidence for women as Seers, and only Seers, in the warbands mostly consists of exploring stories with some mix of history, when it comes to the Irish tales he only considers to Feidelm, not, for example, Sc\u00e1thach who was both warrior and Seer).<\/p>\n<p>So here&#8217;s the problem with the &#8220;evidence&#8221; in a nutshell (yeah, I&#8217;m going to make you wait to see if I finish Teh Project for more details nah nah nah nah nah):<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">A lot of women have led armies who have no experience with warfare in history, for instance Joan D&#8217;Arc; others have been rulers who sent armies into war, pretty much any ruling queen. (Fraser, <i>The Warrior Queens<\/i>) Boudicca may have been a trained warrior or she may have been a symbol of hope through horror who male warriors fought for but had never fought herself, we actually do not know. Those who tell us of her, <a href=\"http:\/\/penelope.uchicago.edu\/Thayer\/E\/Roman\/Texts\/Tacitus\/Annals\/14B*.html\">Tacitus<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/penelope.uchicago.edu\/Thayer\/E\/Roman\/Texts\/Cassius_Dio\/62*.html\">Cassius Dio<\/a> had only others&#8217; tales to repeat. There is good propaganda, which we&#8217;ll also consider in a moment, for a patriarchal culture to have an enemy who supposedly said &#8220;&#8221;We Britons are used to women commanders in war; I am the daughter of mighty men.&#8221; (see also <i>The Agricola and The Germania<\/i>)<\/p>\n<p>Nor do they tell us anything about whether other women fought under Boudicca or not. The idea is pervasive, but we don&#8217;t have evidence. All we have is a bit of logic and the knowledge that during times of crisis, during uprisings and civil wars, women often did take up arms even if it was not the norm. Often they were the push aside and their stories seldom told. (Goldstein, <i>War and Gender<\/i>)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Other Roman&#8217;s such as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tertullian.org\/fathers\/ammianus_15_book15.htm\">Ammianus Marcellinus<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/penelope.uchicago.edu\/Thayer\/E\/Roman\/Texts\/Diodorus_Siculus\/5B*.html\">Diodorus Siculus <\/a>tell us of Celtic women as big as the Celtic men and as or more courageous and formidable in a fight. The problem with these accounts, however, is that it&#8217;s a common tactic for for patriarchal cultures to paint the enemy males as effeminate by claiming their women are masculine and not in proper control, therefore, fighting. (see Goldstein, <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">War and Gender<\/span>). Again, it may or may not be true, but you can&#8217;t use the source as actual proof.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">But I&#8217;m not writing about Gauls or Britons, I&#8217;m writing about Gaelic women warriors, there are tons of them, right? Indeed. In the Irish literature. In fact, along with the well known Medb, Sc\u00e1thach and Aoife, as well as the Warrior Goddesses, Badb, Macha and Morr\u00edgan, who is Anann, there are others. The problem is, they are all stories, some not very flattering to the women warriors. It&#8217;s as simple as that.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">And people do write, and even fear, things that aren&#8217;t real, (think <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Aliens<\/span>, for example) so while the fact they&#8217;re fiction does not prove women warriors didn&#8217;t exist, although I&#8217;ve seen such claims actually made on &#8220;Celtic&#8221; mailing lists, on the basis that the women tend to have supernatural capabilities yet no one claims that stories of the amazing abilities of C\u00fa Chulainn and Fionn Mac Cumhail prove there were no male warriors, it also doesn&#8217;t really prove they did. It&#8217;s inspirational, it&#8217;s hopeful, it&#8217;s not proof. And while some may call them myths and proclaim they are a &#8220;window&#8221; to the Pre-Christian ways, that has been refuted by current scholars. (see, Mallory, ed. <i>Aspects of<\/i>&#8230;, McCone, <i>Pagan Past..<\/i>, Nagy, <i>Conversing with&#8230;<\/i>)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">But certainly no one would make a law forbidding something that wasn&#8217;t taking place and the<i> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/details\/cinadamninol00meyeuoft\">C\u00e1in Adamn\u00e1in<\/a><\/i> outlaws women warriors. Well, the citation thing here is getting dense for a blog post, so I&#8217;ll let you go looking for silly laws, some are just silly things to have laws about but others just aren&#8217;t going to be an issue. But the problem here is that that&#8217;s not what the original law Adamn\u00e1n, or someone, issued. The <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Lex <\/span><span style=\"font-style: italic; visibility: visible;\">Innocentium<\/span> or &#8220;Law of the Innocents,&#8221; was a much shorter proclamation that clerics, women and children were not to be harmed during warfare, as non-combatants and the punishments if one did. The prologue where the Saint and his mother see butchered women and she forces her son to protect them, actually claims that in Pagan times all Irish women were slaves, the best of them forced by their husbands to fight against each other, not glorious, autonomous warriors. It becomes a problem to claim this shows there were women warriors unless you want to claim those women warriors were slaves. (Kelly, &#8230;<i>Early<\/i> <i>Irish Law <\/i>and<i> <\/i>Bitel, <i>Land of Women,<\/i> pg. 85, 103-110, 211, 223)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">What about archaeological evidence? As far as I&#8217;ve been able to find, after much looking, and I&#8217;m still trying to get more resources on this, there hasn&#8217;t been any. And it&#8217;s always a problematic evidence where it is found. Burial practices vary a lot, sometimes cremation was used, sometimes there are artifacts and sometimes not and we don&#8217;t <i>really<\/i> know when there are if they were used in life or indicated something else.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Female burials with weapons are often credited with being warrior women (Davis-Kimball and Behan, <i>Warrior Women<\/i>), but in some cases this may not be correct. As Deborah J. Shepherd points out in \u201cThe Elusive Warrior Maiden Tradition: Bearing Weapons in Anglo-Saxon Society\u201d (in Carman and Harding, eds. Ancient <i>Warfare<\/i> pg. 222-224) in Anglo-Saxon culture it was known that sonless men would name their daughter as a surrogate son and she&#8217;d carry weapons as a symbol of that position, but seemingly never would be trained with them. It&#8217;s been pointed out that we need osteoarchaeological study of remains to determine if someone buried with them used them in life; perhaps we need to do so in order to see if those not buried with weapons might have trained as well. (see Hanks, \u201cReconsidering Warfare, Status, and Gender,\u201d iLinduff and Rubinson, eds. <i>Are All Warriors Male? <\/i>pg. 15-34, see the rest of this book for various views on various cultures)<\/p>\n<p>~~~~`~@<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-625 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/maeve.jpg\" alt=\"Meave painting by J.C. Leyendecker 1907\" width=\"153\" height=\"200\" \/><br \/>\nSo what the hells am I doing here, championing the concept of a modern Gaelic warrior path for women, I believe there is no evidence, if I in fact refute the evidence so many believe in? Well, sometimes I wonder. ~;p But really, it&#8217;s simple, as I already noted, I still <i>believe <\/i>there were women warriors, based only on circumstantial evidence as it were. Including the very personal knowledge that no matter what, some women just are called to this path, no matter what their culture might dictate. It may be a small number, but we exist and it&#8217;s unlikely there weren&#8217;t a few in any culture. &#8220;Few&#8221; never means &#8220;none.&#8221; It might make them hard to find, however.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Goldstein estimates the number of women warriors as 1%&#8230;that is both 1% of warriors are women and 1% of women are warriors&#8230;on average through the world and time. At the moment he estimates it&#8217;s about 3% although he&#8217;s noting only within the military, not LEO or others who may be described as warriors. (Goldstein, <i>War and Gender<\/i>, pg 10-11) And he notes not all of these women are in combat positions (although, of course, many non-combat personnel see combat these days&#8230;something that&#8217;s been true a lot throughout history). Given this, it&#8217;s not always hard to hide that 1-3% and can be very difficult to find.<\/p>\n<p>So, I don&#8217;t believe there were a LOT of women warriors, but there were some. I also believe that they may not have been part of the culture, that is, I in the regular tribal groups there may only have been male warriors. I think the place female warriors might have existed is Outside, in the Outlaw warrior bands. While we can&#8217;t take it, obviously, as actual proof, it&#8217;s interesting that the words for &#8220;woman warrior&#8221; are, from what I&#8217;ve found, either a form of <i>ban-fh\u00e9nnid<\/i> or <i>bangaisgedh<\/i>, which tend to indicate an Outlaw Warrior.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">While clerics were happily writing tales of tribal matters, the stories of the <i>Fianna<\/i>, which when mentioned in saints tales were interchangeable with <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">d\u00edberga<\/span>, weren&#8217;t recorded until later (McCone, \u201cWerewolves, &#8230;&#8221;). While we know that young males, prior to attaining their adult rights, would be in these bands, which is also shown in the tales of Fionn, <img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-439 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/wolfrsm.jpg\" alt=\"Red and black Pictish Wolf by Aaron Miller\" width=\"145\" height=\"110\" \/>McCone finds it likely that there were men who were never given inheritance who remained. In the tales Fionn is an example. He doesn&#8217;t speculate about women in the bands, but Nagy notes those associated with Fionn himself, especially his fosterers. (<i>The Wisdom of the Outlaw<\/i>) In most of the tales we have of women involved, with the exception of Fionn&#8217;s fosterers and Aoife, who is so named (Sc\u00e1thach isn&#8217;t, but is clearly a woman warrior who is Outside the culture in question), the women likewise are only <i>ban-fh\u00e9nnid<\/i> for the time they must be for revenge. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.maryjones.us\/ctexts\/conchobar2.html\">Nessa<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/details\/fianaigechtbeing00meye\">Creidne<\/a>, for example) If women remained in the wilderness throughout their lives, how would we even know about it?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Another hint might be that although the early Christian Irish laws tended to see women as incapable of harming any but children and other women, there was concern over female werewolves. (<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">confail conrecta<\/span>, &#8220;a woman who likes to stray in wolf-shape, from Bitel, pg. 219-220, Carey, &#8220;Werewolves&#8221; pg. 64-68) McCone has made the connection between werewolves and the Outlaw Warriors, of course. (&#8220;Werewolves, Cyclopes,&#8230;.&#8221;). It is a connection which intrigues me greatly.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Unfortunately, this is purely speculative and based on the stories. I hope we do get the archaeological evidence someday, but until then, my theory is that we should look to the stories for their inspiration. Many are uninspiring, with the women not shown in good light. I think it&#8217;s reasonable to retell these to ourselves in more positive ways, with the constant caveat that it&#8217;s not the way the stories went. We find inspiration in modern stories.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Stories, ancient or modern, inspire us, stories let us build our own stories, stories become true for us if we make them so. That&#8217;s why I am doing this.<\/p>\n<p><b>Bibliography<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Lisa Bitel, <i>Land of Women: Tales of Sex and Gender from Early Ireland<\/i>, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996<\/p>\n<p>John Carey, &#8220;Werewolves in Medieval Ireland,&#8221; <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 44<\/span> (Winter 2002)<\/p>\n<p>John Carman and Anthony Harding, eds. <i>Ancient Warfare: Archaeological Perspectives<\/i>, Gloustershire: Sutton Publishing, 2004<\/p>\n<p>Cassius Deo, <i><a href=\"http:\/\/penelope.uchicago.edu\/Thayer\/E\/Roman\/Texts\/Cassius_Dio\/home.html\">Roman History<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<p>Nora Chadwick, <i>The Celts: A Lucid and Fascinating History<\/i>, New York: Penguin Books, 1971<\/p>\n<p>Jeannine Davis-Kimball and Mona Behan. <i>Warrior Women: An Archaeologist\u2019s Search for History\u2019s Hidden Heroines<\/i>, New York: Warner Books, 2002<\/p>\n<p>Michael Enright, <i>Lady With a Mead Cup: Ritual Prophecy and Lordship in the European Warband from La Tene to the Viking Age<\/i> Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007<\/p>\n<p>Antonia Fraser. <i>The Warrior Queens: The Legends and the Lives of the Women who have led Their Nations in War<\/i> New York: Vintage Books, 1990<\/p>\n<p>Joshua S. Goldstein, <i>War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa<\/i>, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001<\/p>\n<p>Fergus Kelly, <i>A Guide to Early Irish Law<\/i>, Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (School of Celtic Studies), 2001<\/p>\n<p>Katheryn M. Linduff and Karen S. Rubinson, eds. <i>Are All Warriors Male? Gender Roles on the Ancient Eurasian Steppe<\/i>, Lanham: AltaMira Press, 2008<\/p>\n<p>Kim McCone, \u201cWerewolves, Cyclopes, <i>D\u00edberga<\/i> and <i>F\u00edanna:<\/i> Juvenile Delinquency in Early Ireland\u201d Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, issue 12, 1986<\/p>\n<p>Kim McCone, <i>Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early Irish Literature,<\/i> Maynooth: An Sagart, 1990<\/p>\n<p>J. P. Mallory, ed. <i>Aspects of The T\u00e1in<\/i>, Belfast: December Publications, 1992<\/p>\n<p>Ammianus Marcellinus, <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tertullian.org\/fathers\/ammianus_15_book15.htm\">Roman History<\/a><\/i><i>,<\/i> Book 15. London: Bohn, 1862<\/p>\n<p>Kuno Meyer, <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/details\/cinadamninol00meyeuoft\">C\u00e1in Adamn\u00e1in: an old-Irish treatise on the law of Adamnan<\/a>, <\/i>Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905<\/p>\n<p>Kuno Meyer, <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/details\/fianaigechtbeing00meye\">Fianaigecht :being a collection of hitherto inedited Irish poems and tales relating to Finn and his Fiana<\/a>,<\/i> Dublin: Hodges, Figgis &amp; Co., 1910<\/p>\n<p>Joseph Falaky Nagy. <i>The Wisdom of the Outlaw: The Boyhood Deeds of Finn in Gaelic Narrative Tradition<\/i>, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985<\/p>\n<p>Joseph Falaky Nagy, <i>Conversing with Angels and Ancient: Literary Myths of Medieval Ireland,<\/i> Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997<\/p>\n<p>Diodorus Siculus <i><a href=\"http:\/\/penelope.uchicago.edu\/Thayer\/E\/Roman\/Texts\/Diodorus_Siculus\/home.html\">The Library of History<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<p>Whitley Stokes, trans, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maryjones.us\/ctexts\/conchobar2.html\">&#8220;Sc\u00e9la Conchobair maic Nessa\/The Tidings of Conchobar son of Ness,<i>&#8220;<\/i><\/a><i>\u00c9riu<\/i> vol. II. London: David Nutt, 1908<\/p>\n<p>Tacitus, <a href=\"http:\/\/penelope.uchicago.edu\/Thayer\/E\/Roman\/Texts\/Tacitus\/home.html\"><i>The Annals of Tacitus<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tacitus, (M. Mattingly and S. A. Handford, trans.)<i> The Agricola and The Germania,<\/i> New York: Penguin Books, 1970<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8212;&#8211;<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">copyright \u00a92011 Kym Lambert<br \/>\nMeave painting <\/span><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">by <\/span><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">J.C. Leyendecker 1907 for <\/span><a style=\"font-style: italic;\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=6W0rAAAAYAAJ&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=Theodore+Roosevelt%27s+article+%22The+Ancient+Irish+Sagas%22&amp;hl=en&amp;ei=0FZuTb3HIoG6tge-5b2GDw&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=book_result&amp;ct=result&amp;resnum=1&amp;ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\">Theodore Roosevelt&#8217;s &#8220;The Ancient Irish Sagas&#8221; <\/a><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Pictish Wolf reproduction \u00a9 2002 Aaron Miller<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Once upon a time, I believed that the past was filled with women warriors and there was a great deal of evidence for it especially among the Celtic cultures. Oh, a minority for sure, but there was so much evidence. Such as Boudicca, whose story is told in this video (from the BBC shorts Horrible [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[20,38,64,32,6,27],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pad6Py-5P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":626,"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions\/626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dunsgathan.net\/feannog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}