Fedelm The Prophetess: A Tale About an Irish Poet-Seer

Imbas Dispatch #1

A Chairde, Friends,

Today, I share my first Imbas Dispatch monthly newsletter. Imbas is an Old Irish word for poetic inspiration. It was also a ritual, Imbas forosnai, meaning ‘knowledge that illuminates’ practised by our ancestors the ancient filí of Ireland, the poet-seers. A poet-seer would journey into the Celtic Otherworld, deep into the realm of the Unconscious and remain there until the fire in their head was ignited with the wisdom they sought.

Like the filí, I’d love to put a sign on my office door, “Do not disturb. In the Otherworld. Make your own dinner. I could be back in three minutes or three days, who knows”, to curb the interruptions of daily family life. Yet, in a moment of undisturbed imbas a few months ago, I did have an otherworldly visitor fan the flame in my head, her name is Fedelm. She appears in Irish mythology as the poet-seer of the kingdom of Connacht in the west of Ireland. Through active imagination, dropping Fedelm’s stories into my body, and her visiting my dreams, I was able to co-create this retelling with her, ‘Fedelm The Prophetess’.¹

I recently shared this as a visual story in the wonderful Trailblazery’s Hedge School, I include some of the images below. As we approach International Women’s Day, it feels pertinent to honour Fedelm as a Creative Ancestor.

Fedelm The Prophetess

Art inspired by John William Waterhouse

Let us begin to weave words together. I, with my white bronze weaver’s beam that is grooved with a gold inlay. On each groove hangs a thread that makes up the infinite tales of human destiny. My thread spells my name, “Fedelm”, meaning prophetess, to see, to know. I am a file, a poet-seer, an oracle in ways, less well known of course than the famous Oracle of Delphi. Really, I am not famous at all except to a small yield of scholars and Celtic Studies enthusiasts. But you know, I hold no hard feelings for who or what stories are remembered, what mythologies are revered. I’ve had millennia of practice shrugging this off and truth be told, I will always bow my head in recognition to the women who held the Oracle at Delphi and to their power to channel the Olympian god, Apollo. To channel his light, his prophecies, his poetry, his healing arts, rapturously shaking his wreath as I shake my beam. 

In my time, there were many of us oracles on Inis Fáil, the ‘Isle of Destiny’ that we now call Ireland, and across the Celtic Isles. Not a ten a penny mind you, but enough. We were the Áes Dána, the ‘People of the Arts’, the many-skilled ones. The ensoulment of our bloodlines, our myths, our poetic divination, our respective crafts, was not a random mystic occurrence, it happened by combining two complementary forces — education and magic. We honed these forces moving through seven grades of learning over 20 years that were infused with magical practices like imbas forosnai, ‘wisdom that illuminates’, the gift of prophecy, for apprenticing your life to creativity is in essence prophetic, you have to learn to see with an otherworldly eye what can be brought into form in partnership with the spirit of creation itself, with nature.

The Druids: Bringing in the Mistletoe by Hornel and Henry

Like Pythia at Delphi, I too learned to channel the immortals. I claim my descent from my patron, Goddess Brigid and from the lineage of Lugh, our shining Apollo. A god who owes his life to the forgotten druidess, Biróg. Tossed into the sea at the behest of his grandfather, Balor of the Evil Eye, Biróg’s wrinkled claws caught baby Lugh before he gulped his last breath and she sent him then by way of the galloping waves to safe fosterage with the god of the sea, Manannán Mac Lir. Lugh flourished on Manannán’s otherworldly plain of delights but as he grew so did his holy ache to return to the mainland, to Inis Fáil, for he had his own destiny to fulfill. He left his beloved foster-father and went to the place where all of the ancient roads of Ireland met, to the Kingdom of Tara. 

Art inspired by John William Goddard

Approaching Tara with his band of warriors, Lugh asked the gatekeeper to announce their arrival. The keeper responded, “Who should I announce?”

“I am Lugh Lámhfhada, Lugh of the Long Arm”.

“What art do you practice?”, enquired the gatekeeper, “for no one without an art enters Tara.”

“I am a master builder”, Lugh declared.

“We don’t need you so, we already have a builder”, responded the keeper.

“Ask me again then gatekeeper, for I am a smith.”

“We already have a smith.”

“Ask me again then gatekeeper, for I am a brazier." 

“We already have the best of those who tend to the hearth.”

Determined, Lugh pressed on. 

“Ask me again then gatekeeper, for I am a cupbearer.”

“We already have the most honeyed of pourers.”

“Ask me again then gatekeeper, for I am a healer.”

“We already have a physician of leechcraft”, the keeper sighed. 

“Ask me again then gatekeeper, for I  am a champion warrior.”

“We already have a celebrated hero.” 

“Ask me again then gatekeeper, for I am a harper.”

“We already have a harper, chosen for mastering the sweet music of the fairymounds.” 

“Ask me again then gatekeeper, for I am a poet-seer.”

“We already have a poet, a scholar of the lore, and a historian”, the keeper shook her head.

“Ask me again then gatekeeper, for I am a wizard.”

“We already have wizards. We are many in our druids and magical powers.”

Finally, Lugh persuaded the gatekeeper: “Go and ask your king if he has a single soul who possesses all of these arts and if he has I will not enter Tara.”

The gatekeeper croaked, “Are you telling me that you are samildánach, the many-killed one?”

“Go and ask your king”, urged Lugh.

The gatekeeper went into the royal house and whispered in the ear of the king, Nuada of the Tuatha Dé Danann, “A young warrior has come to Tara looking for hospitality, he is the rarity we seek, he is samildánach, skilled in all of the arts.”

With this, the gates to Tara opened along with arms of the king for long had the Áes Dána prophesied Lugh’s coming. He was given the most coveted chair after the royal throne, the Sage’s Seat, for he was now the high poet of Inis Fáil. 

Such is the value that we, your ancestors placed on the arts. Myth loves to exaggerate to get its point across but the bottom line was, no one could enter the royal capital of Tara who was not devoted to their craft. Not many of us are samildánach, Lugh is a god after all, but we are all creative. Whether you are awake to it yet or not, Lugh’s light flows through your veins intermingling with the flame of Brigid, the fire of inspiration in the head, the home of the Celtic soul. 

Lugh and Brigid were of the same stock, of Ireland’s supernatural race, the Tuatha Dé Danann, the ‘Tribe of the Goddess Danu’, our Great Mother. Lugh was there when Brigid birthed the art of the keen over the corpse of her cherished son, Ruadán. From her grief, Brigid created this Irish ritual of mourning that has been a source of great comfort generation after generation on this island. She too was samildánach, a triple goddess skilled in a triplicity of talents. 

A goddess of poiesis, the art of soul-making through poetry and storytelling, she was worshiped by us poet-seers. A goddess of smithcraft, Brigid turned the dark, craggy, raw materials of the underworld of imagination, into tools and treasures that transformed life for the better and brought delight and wonder to others. A goddess of leechcraft, Brigid midwifed the pangs of birth as we entered the world, the pangs of life as we lived in this world, and the pangs of death as we left the world. Every time we created in life, Brigid helped us to midwife our creation into being, and to keen whatever inner-destruction it caused in the process, as death is so often an inevitable part of birth. When a mother is born, the maiden within her dies, death and life in the same push. 

The tale that I, Fedelm, am most known for is one that brought woeful death, the great Irish saga, Táin Bó Cualigne, ‘The Cattle Raid of Cooley’. I’m not sure how ‘great’ it was for us womenfolk being at the mercy of a Christian scribe’s quill. But I am part of this story so it will never escape me. In it, I appear wearing a speckled mantle fastened around me with a gold pin, a red-embroidered tunic and shoes with gold fastenings. My yellow hair was in three tresses, two wound upward on my head, and a third hanging down my back, brushing my calves. In my eyes, there were triple irises. I rode a chariot drawn by two black horses wielding my weaver’s beam. 

On the road, I met Queen Medb of Connacht and her army who were moving east to do battle. She appeared to me not in her original divine form as a goddess of sovereignty, but as a glory hunter, a woman gone rogue defying the sensibilities of the early church, a woman who doesn’t know her place in the new religion. Medb asked of me:

“What is your name?”

I tell her, “I am Fedelm, poet-seer of Connacht.”

“Where have you come from?”

“From learning verse and vision in Alba [Scotland].”

“Have you imbas forosnai, the light of foresight?”

“Yes, I have.” 

“Look for me then and see what will become of my warriors.”

So, I looked for my queen as she wished.  

“Fedelem, prophetess, what do you see for us?”

I answered, “I see it crimson, I see it red.” 

For all I saw was blood. I told Medb not to fight, you can’t win as a woman when a patriarch is writing your story. 

Art inspired by John Collier

I can look for you now, yes you reading these words to see, to prophesise on your behalf. But the truth is, parts of you know who or what has narrated your life story, other parts remain unconscious but that is your journey, it is the gift that will enable you to continuously unfurl into the stories that your craft is here to tell. Old worn-out stories will die, new creative stories will live. I see your bright thread hang here on my beam beside all of the threads of your ancestors. The doors to Tara have opened for you, take a deep breath and cross the threshold into your creative lineage. 

Mother Tongue Words

As part of Imbas Dispatches, I would love to share an Irish Gaelic affirmation for the month. I am not a Gaeilgeoir, a native Irish speaker, like most Irish people I studied Irish until I was 18 and spent three teenage summers living in the Gaeltacht in Donegal to immerse myself in our teanga, our mother tongue. Given my current rustiness, I find affirmations the loveliest way to bring Gaeilge back to life in my voice each day. Any Irish speaker will tell you that we have a gloriously poetic and magical language and of course, it is where our mythology emerges from. Inspired by Fedelm… one hand on the heart, the other on the belly, taking a life-giving breath and repeating three or nine times:

Táim réidh le cuimhneamh cé mé féin.

(“Tah-im ray leh kwee-niv kay may fayn”)²

I am ready to remember who I am.

Heart In

Beautiful art by Dee Mulrooney

A few days ago, I read these rousing words from Kerri ní Dochartaigh, ‘I suppose what we're witnessing is brutality of a form that I haven't witnessed before. So that means that the tenderness that I offer has to be the likes of which I haven't offered before either.’ They will not leave me (and perhaps they won’t leave you too). As won’t Seán Mulrooney’s song, No Two Sides, described as a clarion call for compassion and peace in Palestine. I spent most of my adult life working in human rights and global citizenship education, in which I'm still involved as a volunteer, and as a young anthropologist, I did my undergrad thesis on ‘Songs of Dissent’, the power of protest music as a form of creative activism. I am reminded today that words matter. Song matters. Creativity matters. Love matters.

On love, I learned the warmest new phrase for ‘hug’ from Ulster Irish so I’ll sign off with it. It means ‘heart in’, bringing your heart in towards another, more of which we need in these harrowing times.

Croí isteach,

Jen

1. This retelling draws upon two Irish myths: Cath Maige Tuired and Táin Bó Cuailnge.

2. There are three regional dialects in Gaeilge: Ulster, Connacht and Munster. I use the Munster dialect here.