Crone

Warfare in the history of Ireland was frequent, and according to some of the earliest Irish folklore, there was at one point a goddess of warfare, or a goddess of the fallen on the battlefield. However, the Morrighan is not explicitly described as a goddess in most of the literature she is featured in. The popular belief was that she was something like a banshee, or a phantom. Some sources say that she was but one form of a triple goddess. The other two were the Badb and Macha. The Morrighan is most often depicted much in the same fashion as a valkyrie. Some historians and experts in Irish mythology have claimed that the Morrighan was a patron deity or at least a guiding spirit to Irish männerbund groups. The männerbund were something like what most of us know as guerilla war groups, except eventually the youthful warriors involved came into their inheritances, and left off.

Other experts claim that warfare was not the Morrighan’s primary function, and though the battlefield may have been her favourite haunt, she was not limited to it. Instead, she may have been representative of the spirits of sovereignty, cattle, and fertility as well. In Ireland, located in County Tipperary, there is a burnt mound site, known as the “cooking pit of the Morrighan”, or Fulacht na Mór Ríoghna. Other similarly known goddesses or crone like spirits have had similar hills or mounds, such as the goddess Danu or Anu, who has her own hills in County Kerry. The Morrighan also has two hills, called Dá Chich na Morrigna or “the two breasts of the Morrighan” in County Meath. Grian has similar hills as well, in County Limerick. Some attribute the hills to groups such as the Fianna, which were outsiders, and mainly a group of mercenaries, or the bands of  männerbund. Others believe that the character of Morgan Le Fay from the stories of King Arthur is related in some way to the Morrighan. However, experts on the subjects say that the Morgan from the Arthurian lore is from Welsh origins, and is related to the sea, while the name Morrigan is related to either terror, or the word for “greatness.”

Black Annis is another version of the crone character in English folklore, in the form of a witch, something like Jenny Greenteeth, however, she does not live in the water. Black Annis resembles the story of a kind of bogeyman, except naturally female. Black Annis lives, according to English legends, in a cave somewhere in the Dane Hills. She mainly haunts the Leicestershire countryside, particularly hungry for the taste of a child’s flesh, but also is known to eat young sheep, or lambs, and other baby farm animals. She is described in stories from the region as being blue, ancient looking and very old, and as having long claws, made out of iron, or iron claws that grew there naturally.

At night, she goes out prowling the glens and farmhouses nearby, searching for food; lambs and children. After Black Annis has eaten the young animal or child, she hangs their skin from a belt around her waist. According to the traditions of the area, the farmhouses in Leicestershire were built with tiny windows. Namely because Black Annis had long arms, or was very tall; she could reach into the homes of farmers, and snatch children right out of their beds. Another legend of the area states the Black Annis’s claws were so sharp, that she was able to climb a sandstone cliff, and hollow out a cave, using her claws to cut away the rock. The cave in the cliff is known as Black Annis’s Bower.

Some sources claim that the legend of Black Annis came from stories that surrounded a hermit from the fifteenth century, known as Agnes Scott. Other sources claim that Black Annis is from older origin, first appearing perhaps in Celtic mythology, as one of several goddesses such as Aine, Annis, Ana, Anu, Dana and Danu. Black Annis, according to the latter sources, is just a demonised version of one of the previously mentioned goddesses.

The crone, in her mythological sense, is most often thought of as a hag or a witch from fairy tales, and folklore warning to children not to stray into the woods or near the river. However, the crone’s second most popular association is with Atropos, whether or not people actually remember that is her name. She is the oldest of three goddesses known as the Fates; the maiden, the mother, and the crone. Usually the people who forget her actual Greek name are posers to Wicca, or Pagan worship. Like the Morrighan –sometimes, because the Morrighan was often a singularity instead, –Atropos was merely one of three faces of a triple goddess. Much of mythology associates the triple goddess representing the fate of all humanity, with the moon, and its various cycles. From new, to half, to full, turns the moon in its cycles, as does the three Fates. The Roman equivalent of Atropos is Morta, although neither system of belief has a specific origin for the Fates. Like pan, the Fates may have been even older than the Greek gods and goddesses.

The first of the three fates was in Greek, Clotho, or what is more popularly known as the virgin, or the “Maiden.” She was also the youngest, and it was her job to spin the threads of life for each individual. Clotho was the middle goddess, known as the “Mother” more popularly; she is often depicted as a pregnant woman. Clotho’s function was to measure the length of each of the threads of life. Atropos, the oldest of the three is depicted just as she is popularly known, as the “Crone.” She was often called the “inevitable” or the “inflexible.” Her name actually meant in Greek, “without turn.” Her function was to decide how the individual would die, and then cut the thread of life. The word for all three goddesses, or the triple goddess, was Moerae. They were also said to be children of Zeus, and the goddess of night, Nyx; though Zeus was their father, even he must adhere to their will. An example of a similar triple deity are the Furies; which are sometimes mistakenly merged with the fates because of their similarities. The Furies were the goddesses of vengeance, also children of Nyx, and supposedly, it’s extremely bad luck to even say their actual name(s) out loud, for fear that they might start following you.

One version of the crone in popular Slavic folklore is Baba Yaga, sometimes malevolent, sometimes beneficent, but always dangerous. Many cultures have the Baba Yaga legends, such as the Russian, Bulgarians, Slovene, Slovak, Bosnian, Croatian, Ukrainian, Macedonian and Serbian, –and that is to name only a few. Naturally if you travel the world, stopping in every country to ask about here, –well, if you’re polite and interested about it, –you’ll most likely get a response. She’s portrayed as a witch, a wild old woman, spirit of the untamed and wild forest, and leader of other forest spirits.

In the most well distributed and popular Russian folklore on Baba Yaga, she lives deep within the woods. She flies through the air in a mortar (bowl used for mixing/crushing herbs into powder, obviously not the explosive) using the pestles as a steering device, while sweeping away her tracks with an old birch broom. She lives in a cabin, perched atop a pair of chicken’s legs, that might appear to be trees to a traveler, –once the unwitting traveler is inside, the legs bring the house to Baba Yaga, or move elsewhere, so that whomever is inside will be hopelessly lost. The cabin is surrounded by poles on which sit skeletons, sometimes with on pole empty; a reserved spot for the hero’s skull to sit. The hole for the key in the cabin’s front door, is a mouth fill with sharp teeth. In other stories, the door won’t even appear until the hero has spoken the phrase, “Turn your back to the forest, your front to me.”

Sometimes the story is told with the a connection to three horses and riders; the red, the black, and the white. In this version, Baba Yaga’s home is tended to by invisible servants as well. If a hero should speak to Baba Yaga, and inquire about the riders, she will tell him or her, that the red rider represents the sun, the black rider, the night, and the white rider is the day. However, if someone asks about her servants, she kills them instead.

A crone is not unlike the other word, “hag” which is less politically correct when used in front of crones; –for instance, one can rest assured that one’s grandmother would surely slap one if they were to call her a hag to her face, however, crone might get a better response. Crone seems to denote for lack of a better description, a sense of neutral wisdom about the world, while hag on the other hand, is more akin to, “Gretel, would you mind checking to see how hot the oven is?” And in that fashion is how the hag or crone is often referenced in many instances of folklore from cultures all over the world.

The hag is most often than not a malevolent figure in folklore. She appears as a very, very old woman, and the Old English term for witch was  “hægtesse”; hence where the hag’s naughty reputation came from. In British and Anglophone North American legends and folklore, the hag was a nightmarish spirit. This legendary form of the hag is very closely related to the Anglo-Saxon “mæra”, a term for the spirit of nightmares with Germanic origins, as almost identical to the Scandinavian mara. According to the folklore surrounding the Old Hag, or just Hag, she would sit on a sleeper’s chest, and put nightmares in their heads, also making it hard for them to breathe –there is a similar legend that cats in the form of witches will steal a child’s breath in the same fashion. In the morning, they would find it hard to breathe, and in a disarray… The term for this state was “hagridden.”

In Irish mythology is the hag goddess Cailleach, who rules over storms, harvests, and sovereignty. In Scotland, the similar legend is of “The Cailleachan” who are actually three hags, that represent the destructive aspects of nature, mainly storms. The period in Scotland known as A Chailleach in spring, when storms and winds are frequent, is when the three hags are supposedly the most active. The legends of Peg Powler, Jenny Greenteeth, and Nellie Longarms are stories of wicked hags invented by British mothers to keep their children away from the water’s edge. Parents would tell their children that if they got too close to the lake/river/water’s edge, that the hag would reach out with monstrously hideous long arms, pull them in, drown them, and eat them.