UKC

Tigh nam Bodach is an ancient ritual site in Gleann Cailliche. This glen leads into the north side of Loch Lyon. It is marked as Tigh nam Bodach (house of the old man) on the OS map, but all the legends refer to the site being a shrine to the Celtic goddess Cailleach (hence the name of the glen and the Allt Cailliche running through the glen). 

Given that it is a shrine to the goddess, it seems to me it should be better named as Tigh na Cailleach, and indeed there are references to Tigh na Cailleach in some online articles. 

Does anyone have any ideas as to why the site should be called Tigh nam Bodach instead of Tigh na Cailleach? Is this old-fashioned patriarchy in action? 

For those who have not been to the site, it is a fascinating place to visit. 

A lot of the old OS surveys have been digitised if you can find them. I always forget the link.

Thank you - I have had a look, without any luck. The old maps are at the National Library of Scotland, but none seem to be at a scale which shows the site (fascinating resource, nonetheless). 

I can't explain how the name came about but Hamish Brown describes passing by during his Munro journey. In 'Hamish's Mountain Walk' it's on the 14th of April day. In it he mentions Duncan Fraser's 'Highland Perthshire' which has 'an eerie passage or two about this glen'.

Thank you. I did find a mention of Brown's reference in an online source. To my shame, I still haven't read 'Hamish's Mountain Walk' - I now have yet another reason to do so.

https://www.streapadair.com/Other/Odds-ends/i-cMKMxqx

I came across the structure almost 30 years ago, when it was in its original form, and found the information contained in the caption to the photo.

Thank you - fascinating stuff! Some work has been done on the structure - when I was there 2 years ago, there was turf on the roof and the stone figures were outside the structure. 

According to James Crawford, the figures are still moved in and out of the structure at the appropriate times of the year by locals living in Glen Lyon. 

Yes, an amazing place, and nobody seems to know who moves the Cailleach and her family into the house in autumn and out again in spring, though it's been going on for centuries (millenia?).

Re the name: the Cailleach goes into the Bodach's house for the winter, so yes a bit of patriarchy going on, but also an echo of earth mother/goddess of growth figures (who seem to be female in most cultures) being eclipsed in winter by gods of darkness/the underworld (generally male). 

Us blokes are a dark and destructive lot?😁

That is a fascinating interpretation, and does go some way to explaining the ambiguity between the Bodach and the Cailleach in the name of the site. Many thanks!

When staying at an AirBnB in Glen Lyon a few years ago we did get an invitation to come along. Would have been a great experience to join, but unfortunately we had made fixed plans for the day. Seemed more appropriate to leave it to the locals, anyway

Certainly at this point it seems like it might not be good idea to stop...

Not sure Jonny, it doesn’t seem to be warding of evil weather spirits given 2024’s winter and summer! 

https://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=37312

Blimey it’s had a bit of a make over, now practically ‘Des Res’.

Some info here:

https://canmore.org.uk/site/23898/tigh-nam-bodach
 

Ian, thank you to you, and the others, for a very interesting thread.

A genuine question, from someone in England. I understood 'chailleach' to mean 'old woman', or 'wise woman'. Does chailleach also refer to a goddess figure, or have I got it wrong? Thanks.

(I know the terms from the peaks at the top end of Glen Coe, Am Bodach and A Chailleach).

BTW you mention other cultures; it does remind me of The Green Man (in England), who goes back centuries, and can, for example, be found in carvings inside some churches.  I've understood him to represent the life force, or nature, i.e. that the Green Man places his seed inside (impregnates) Mother Earth. She then nurtures the seed within her body and brings forth new life.

I'm not a Gaelic speaker but I'd always thought that a 'Chailleach' was a hag or spiritual entity/ghost of an old woman generally with sinister overtones, not exactly alike but in the same cultural space as the Irish Banshee. The pyramid of rock which causes the Corryvreckan whirlpool is called A' Chailleach or The Hag.

Wikipedia has an interesting article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cailleach

Yes I believe that’s the case for instance the folk tale about the cailleach of Beinn a’Ghlo (which I kept thinking about on a snowy and low viz cold day one November up there when I had an eerie feeling, no doubt due to lack of sleep more than the supernatural!). 
 

There were also folk legends that believe that ravens were cailleach’s I think and would sometimes eat men’s flesh.  Seeing a raven on a dark and snowy stob coire nan lochan (that I believe has been known to shred through any left bags at the foot of the crags in the coire) I could well believe it! 

The 'sleeping woman' figure in Lewis upon which Calanais stones are aligned is known in Gaelic as "Cailleach na Mointeach", the old woman of the moors, and is supposed to represent the earth mother, so yes, it can mean goddess. 

There are lots of cases of Am Bodach and A' Chailleach names close together. As well as meaning Old Man I gather the former can also mean a certain part of his anatomy (Hence the various "Old Man of...." pinnacles). A Gaelic speaking friend rather facetiously pointed out that ”Am Bodach”s usually had pinnacles and ”A' Chailleach”s gullies and there were stories of them visiting each other on dark winter nights.... (though the Loch Einich pair seem to have spent their time throwing rocks at each other).

Thank you Ian.

Thank you 65.

Thank you J72

It's also mentioned in Overlander by Alan Brown (no relation to Hamish as far as I am aware), a good read about a bikepacking journey from Loch Etive to the Moray Firth.

I'd have quoted an excerpt from the relevant passage but I can't locate my (signed by the author) copy at the moment 🙁

Found it!  He doesn't visit the Tigh nam Bodach on his route, but he does camp nearby, and mentions the Bodach and the Cailleach a number of times during the Breadalbane chapter of his book.  Excerpt follows:

Once you have seen the characteristic figure-of-eight shape of the Cailleach, you start to spot it in stone all over Highland Perthshire.  She and her man stand proudly on top of the entry pillars to Fortingall Old Kirk at the entrance to Glen Lyon, in a clear show of just which deity is really in charge round here

I think Alan may be being a tiny bit whimsical there, given that Fortingall's original church - which is what I would understand by "old kirk" - was demolished around the turn of the twentieth century and a larger "Scots Gothic" style church was built on its site.  According Canmore https://canmore.org.uk/site/24964/fortingall-parish-church the new church does incorporate some features of its predecessor.

I have visited the church in Fortingall, but at the time I was more interested in its famous yew tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortingall_Yew than in finding traces of local pre-Christian religions.  Maybe I need to swing by there again some time.

Thanks, Martin. It's a shame that the prehistoric inhabitants didn't write things down (but then they wouldn't be prehistoric I suppose!). I haven't been in Glen Lyon for over twenty years but I recall thinking that it was stunningly beautiful even just driving up the road to bag the Munros. Possibly the Picts would have kept a lot of their pagan folklore alive even when they converted to Christianity but they didn't seem to have a written script.

I thought the yew itself was a trace of local pre-Christian religion?!