The Cailleach: The Complete Legend of the Ancient Winter Goddess | Gaelic Folklore for Sleep

The Cailleach: The Complete Legend of the Ancient Winter Goddess | Gaelic Folklore for SleepA slow, quiet retelling of the Cailleach, made for falling asleep to.She is older than almost anything else in these islands. Not a goddess in a temple with a priesthood — a presence in the landscape, still attached to specific hills and lochs and stretches of coast in Scotland and Ireland, and in some places still spoken about by people who live there.The stories say she made the country. She carried stone in her apron and dropped it, and that's a mountain. She struck the ground with a hammer and that's a valley. She let a well overflow one night because she fell asleep, and that's a loch, and a village under it. And every year she comes back, because she is winter — she washes her plaid in the sea and it comes out white, and the land goes hard, and stays that way until the season turns. In some tellings she turns into a young woman when it does. In others she's overthrown by one, and comes back the following year regardless. That circling is the whole shape of her: nobody ever wins, and nobody was ever meant to.There's something restful in a figure whose entire story is a thing that keeps happening rather than a thing that ends.The recording itself is the usual thing. A low, even voice, no music, no sound effects, nothing that rises or drops or suddenly arrives. Slow enough that following along stops feeling necessary somewhere in the first twenty minutes. If you drift off in one season and surface in another, that's the intended use. Most people don't make it past the first half hour, and the rest will still be here tomorrow night.Put it on, turn the volume down, and let it go on without you.Mythology & Folklore for Sleep — long, calm retellings of Greek myths, Norse legends, Egyptian tales, Hindu epics, Chinese classics, Gaelic folklore and old stories from around the world, made for insomnia and the hours when you can't sleep. Bedtime stories for adults, told in a slow, quiet voice. New episodes every day.