An Chraobh Airgid

Being of the sídhe

The Old Woman of Beare

An Chailleach Bhéarra · Old Irish Caillech Bérri

The woman of the early Irish lament, who had her youth seven times and outlived every man who lived with her.

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The prose before her poem says she was called the Old Woman of Beare because she had fifty foster-children there, and that she had seven periods of youth, one after another, so that every man who lived with her died of old age and her descendants became tribes and peoples. For a hundred years she wore a veil that Cummin had blessed; then old age came on her, and she made the lament that begins with the ebb-tide. Her age became a byword: in 1912 Patrick Pearse wrote “Sine mé ná an Chailleach Bhéarra”, I am older than the Old Woman of Beare.

In the tales

  • The Old Woman of Beare She had her youth seven times, and outlived every man who lived with her. Now she sits under a white veil, and her lament begins with the ebbing of the tide.

See also

  • Béarra The Beara peninsula. The long peninsula in the south-west that gave the Old Woman of Beare her name.

Sources

Medieval manuscript. Written down by Irish scholars between the eighth and seventeenth centuries.

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