I used to go to workshops sometimes...there was a little cottage way up near the top of Carrowkeel which had been converted into a studio...run by a woman who really had followed the Hippy trail to India in a VW caravanette.
She was something of an Earth Mother...silver bracelets and amulets...she was always barefoot, but I think that was a pose actually.
We learned how to make St Bridget's Crosses from the reeds gathered from a nearby field and to make Lentil soup...don't laugh...this was twenty years ago, long before the advent of supermarkets in Ireland...lentils were thought to be foreign food. My friend Bridie and I tried our very best to keep our faces straight while we chopped onions and asked could we please add a couple of garlic cloves...the other ladies looked at us with something akin to sheer horror at the very thought.
We once grated Rhubarb root to make a mordant or fixative for dyeing wool with Lichens...those orangey coloured Lichen you find on old stone walls. You stuff a jam jar full and add female urine...leave it in the dark for a month and then use it to dye pure wool a soft pinky purple colour...it didn't work and the smell from ten ladies open jam jars was perfectly horrendous...
Bridie pointed out we could have used Madder instead which didn't endear her to the Earth Mother...
We made soda bread and ate it for lunch...then spent the afternoon combing fleece ready for spinning. Bridie wandered off outside and I went to find her...she was sitting in the laneway making Daisy chains and asked me if I'd noticed the girl under the table...
I said I had, but didn't like to mention it...she was sucking her thumb when I last looked.
The next workshop was using a Donegal Spinning wheel...I was quite over-excited by the prospect 'cos I have one...
We turned up on the appointed day and all was quiet...the door was locked and bolted...all the curtains were drawn...there was no-one there but us.
Like a pair of ninnies we sort of hovered about wondering whether we had the wrong day when a woman who lived almost opposite came out...You'll be waiting for Herself she asked us...she's upped and gone. Gone where? Dunno...packed up that old car of hers and away she went...
Where are all the other women we wondered...what happened to the girl under the table...why didn't anyone tell us...where has Earth Mother gone...
We never did see any of those women ever again.
A Ghost Story or Maybe Not?
Above and beyond the call of duty
