Fireside Folklore: Warrior Women

Stories of Scotland

Annie and Jenny

History, Places & Travel, Society & Culture

4.8 • 728 Ratings

🗓️ 23 March 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

From the Fortress of Shadows just off the Isle of Skye, to the Palace of Dreams in Arthurian legends, Jenny and Annie visit the homes of warrior women.

Jenny begins with folklore and mythology of Sgàthach, sometimes called the Shadow, or the Striker of Fear, and we learn how she was the greatest teacher of warriors in all the world.

Next, Annie takes us to a strange Arthurian story about a woman of King Arthur’s dreams and how one of the Knights of the Round Table must make an incredible journey to find her.

Between the swooshing weapons of these two warrior women, we look at the strength, strategy and second sight of these incredible legends. Borrowing from the Ulster Cycle of the Irish heroic sagas, and the Scottish Gaelic song Am Bròn Binn, from Dunscaith Castle to the halls of the King of Scotland, these stories still inspire wonder and awe to this day. We hope you enjoy!

Independently made in the Highlands, Stories of Scotland is gratefully funded through listener support on Patreon.www.patreon.com/storiesofscotland

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this fireside folklore episode of Stories of Scotland. I'm Annie and I'm a beaked toad.
0:18.1	And I'm Jenny, a repugnant snake. This episode is inspired by the chat I had at
0:24.4	Dundragon rewilding centre the other week. If you haven't listened to the episode that came from that,
0:29.9	then go give it a listen. It's great. But whilst I was chatting to Kiva, who does a lot of
0:35.2	the folklore over there, she mentioned a mysterious warrior
0:39.3	woman who lived in the fortress of shadows on the Isle of Sky. And so naturally, this set me off in
0:47.0	search of the fortress of shadows and the warrior women within its walls. But first off, I do have to
0:53.3	just say I just finished reading the Lord of the Rings,
0:55.8	and something called the Fortress of Shadows could happily be situated in the middle of
1:00.2	Middle Earth and no one would bat an eye.
1:02.8	Tolkien loved Celtic and Norse mythology, so this wouldn't surprise me at all.
1:08.0	The Fortress of Shadow can also be translated as the fort of fear
1:13.5	sometimes and it can be another name for the other world. So it's indicative that we have some
1:20.1	very heavy legends coming our way. Before we get to them, let's stick to the real world for a little
1:27.0	bit. After some digging, I found the castle that is said to have been home to this mysterious warrior woman.
1:33.3	Its ruins are still just about visible today, but it's very often overlooked.
1:39.3	So much so that it's not even mentioned in my Castles of Scotland book,
1:44.5	and that has never happened before, no matter how ruinous the castle is.
1:49.1	I am shooketh, Jenny. I am shooketh.
1:51.7	I checked four times. There's like multiple different names for the castle.
1:56.7	I was checking Gallic spellings. I was looking at all these different things, nothing.
2:02.2	This castle was called Dunscar Castle and it sat on the western side of the Sleet Peninsula
	...

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