Land of Women: Tales of Sex and Gender from Early Ireland by Lisa M.  Bitel

When I buy a book with a big old Síle na Gig* on the cover, I expect to like it.  Not so much this time around.  It had its good parts, but it also has some big problems. 

First, there’s a problem with the title.  It should be "medieval Ireland."  Early Ireland, to me at least, implies pre-Medieval.  Gimme some Iron Age, damn it. 

Secondly, the author did a good amount of research in the Vitae,  medieval legal tracts like Cain Adomnain, and some mythology.  But oh, what a mistake she made in interpreting the myths.  Frankly, she made a blunder that most Freshman students would make just once, and then they would be so ridiculed by any prof worth even a teaspoon of salt that they would never make it again.

Let me make this clear: There is almost always a huge span of time between when a myth, saga, or epic is composed and when it is transcribed.  Huge.  Hundreds of years.  Imagine how much any society changes in hundreds of years.  Sadly, Bitel conflates the Ireland of the Táin Bó Cúailnge and the Ireland of monks in the scriptorium copying the Táin Bó Cúailnge.  That conflation allows her to make some huge errors in judgment about what the Ireland of the Tain was like for women.  Of course it does. Ireland changed utterly in the span of time between 100 BC or so to the early Christian era.  Tribal systems collapsed, external influences from pre- and post-Christian Rome filtered across the water, invading Northmen found and sacked Britain and Ireland.  Hundreds of years, left out of the explanation.  Badly played, dearie.  Sloppy.

In Old-Irish texts, we know that the monks did not understand the Irish they were transcribing.  It contains linguistic forms that were out-moded and ill-understood by the early medieval period.  Scholars far more qualified than I have dated the language of the Irish epics, and identified the periods in which they were composed.  Doing one’s homework is truly all that’s required for those of us who wish to interpret mythology.  So do it, damn it.  Sheesh.

I get that many scholars want to focus on Patrician Ireland in their studies.  But, as in all forms of scholarship, once you pick your specialty you either need to stick to it or you need to do huge gobs of extra research and work when you decide to branch out.  I don’t think Bitel did.  I think her mind remained ensconced in the context of Patrician Ireland, and that prevented her from better understanding the Ireland of the sagas.  More’s the pity. 

All that said, I’m glad I read the book.  Bitel makes a lot of great points.  But I think her mistake in dates wrecks her thesis, and that’s a shame.  She could have moved the debate forward with this book.  Instead, she negated her own opinions.  She’s wrong when she rails about how powerless women were in ancient Ireland, and she’s wrong because she messed up her dates and neglected her studies. 

* Pronounced Sheila nuh Gee or Sheila nuh Gig (either option with a hard g, by the way).  It means either hag on her haunches, or hag with her breasts out, or one of many other things depending on who you ask.  Most of the Síle na Gigs in Ireland date from the 12c onward.

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