Excerpt from Celtic Spirit

The Legend of Queen Maeve and her Tomb

There are many legends of Queen Maeve. Here is an excerpt from Celtic Spirit, describing the group’s introduction to her and her tomb. The teenager Megan is our narrator as the group enters County Sligo, in the west of Ireland. 

Dorrie takes the microphone:  

Legend has it that all of Tara’s kings were required to sleep with Queen Maeve before their coronation. It was no doubt a ritual that harkened back to the days of the Goddess. As we know, most ancient cultures had a hieros gamos, a ceremony of union between a representative of the Goddess and of the King. Power of the Mother meets the Power of Father, and Nature meets Man. It was said to assure fertility and a good harvest. As Maeve morphed from Goddess to Queen, she retained the power and sovereignty of the Divine Feminine throughout Celtic times. 

Symbolic of her influence, you will soon notice a mound on a far-off mountain. That is her tomb, which can be seen for miles and miles. It is a bee-hive structure, like Newgrange, with a corbelled roof. The symbolism of the bee was important to the Celts. The names Medh, Maeve, and lots of its variations mean bee. Remember when Timothy brought us mead the other evening? It was made of honey. 

We all know that the Queen Bee is in charge, the beehive is to protect her and that there is only one in the colony. So the legend that the Queen, the Mother, the Goddess was sovereign and that her sanctuary was womb-like and dark with light coming in and out at strategic moments makes sense to ancient people dependent on the land. Maeve’s Howe in the Orkeys of Scotland is even bigger and demonstrates her importance to the Neolithic peoples.

 As people start organizing by kingdoms and not just tribal communities, the need to remind them of the power of the Mother and the sovereignty of the land created the requirement that Queen Maeve travel to Tara for the marriage or sexual meeting with each would-be king. Like the rites of May, where a maiden was taken to bed by the prince, this was seen as necessary for the land to thrive and be fertile. The pervasive sense of women’s sovereignty and the need for men to partner with them for the land to thrive and be fertile is played out in subtle and not-so-subtle ways within Celtic Ireland. Here people never subscribed to the belief in dominion over nature.

 You might have heard of The Cattle Raid of Cooley. In this famous tale of pagan times, Queen Maeve, representing her province, Connaught, against Ulster and its King, do battle over a white bull. There are many renditions, but they all play on this notion of male-female power. The bull, of course, represents power and potency and its symbol is Taurus. It is fun to think about the millennia we know about and how the astrological signs, going counterclockwise around the Zodiac, correspond to the animals most sacred and symbolic to that time period and what that means. Gemini, Taurus, Aries, Pisces, Aquarius: The Twins gave way to the Bull followed by the Ram and then the Fish and now the Water Carrier; each the symbol of an epoch.

Wow, I have to think about that one! And also about this thing about sovereignty; it’s new to me, and something tells me it is important. I’ll ask Mom and Kate. As Dorrie finishes, Timothy adds that the May Day celebrations and the fairs that are held throughout Ireland, but especially in the West, are linked to Maeve and the celebration of the sovereignty of the land and its bounty. 

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