Tough, resilient, no-nonsense goddesses... just what we need

DID you know that an analysis of the titles of more than 5,000 children’s books showed that boys featured nearly twice as often as girls?

Or that the central character in children’s fiction, generally, is one and a half times more often male than female?

Or that studies have found similar trends in, yes SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS all over the world?

The fact of the matter is that stories about the lives of girls are significantly under-represented, which reinforces the attitude that girls and their stories are less important than boys and their stories.

This trend, by the way, is reflected in the modern film industry. One study shows films like The Hunger Games, which feature strong female protagonists, accounted for a miserly 23% of films between 2010 and 2013.

So why am I telling you this? And what has it got to do with author and journalist Ellen Ryan and her passion for Irish myth?

I came across Ryan’s fabulous book, Girls who slay Monsters – Daring Tales of Ireland’s Forgotten Goddesses – while looking for a really useful, affirming gift for a young girl who was having a hard time with some schoolyard bullies.

Published just a few months ago, the book is packed with tales of Ireland’s magical, powerful but forgotten goddesses; stories of brave, resourceful, amazing and utterly fearless explorers, spies, warriors, war heroes, royalty and shape-shifters, all of them female, wielding incredible powers and reaching Ireland from mystical lands hidden by magic and accessed only through invisible portals in caves, in hollow hills, or beneath the water.

These are tough, resilient, no-nonsense goddesses who hail from Cork and Dublin, from Kildare to Sligo, and from Wexford to Kerry – and who have now been all but forgotten. 

Yet they have much to teach our little girls about themselves.

There’s the soldier and secret agent Bé Mannair, who was sent to Ireland to spy on the shenanigans of a trouble- some band of male thugs called, yes, The Fianna, the big-haired, big-boned fashionista Bé Binn who defeated an arrogant bully prince and stole his cloak of purple feathers, and the Goddess Medb, who ruled Connacht and was famed for being a clever, forceful and formidable businesswoman.

There’s Nemain, lawmaker and law enforcer, Macha, the High Queen of Ireland, and Bé Chuille, the Monster Slayer from Sligo.

The girl’s mother told me the girl read it from cover to cover - and immediately started reading it from cover to cover again.

The book, beautifully illustrated by Shona Shirley MacDonald, contains some marvellous quotations, one particularly memorable one from the 13th century Acallam na Senórach (Tales of the Elders) which goes as follows: “ It is she who goes in the shape of a water spider or a whale, who transforms herself into the shape of a fly or into a person’s best friend, whether male or female, so that the secrets of all are entrusted to her.”

We need this book. Every parent in Ireland should buy it, and encourage their daughters – and sons – to read it. Every primary school classroom should have a copy, every children’s section in every library should have several, and every Children’s Literature Programme in every Irish university should have a copy.

Because, firstly, despite all our chest-thumping about equality and the battle to eliminate gender discrimination, we are still quietly but effectively writing women out of history and producing children’s fiction that encourages young girls to adopt traditional gender roles and behave in ways that please men.

From a young age, our society nudges girls towards a social media that demeans femininity, normalises even hard-core porn, and brainwashes them into believing they’re worth nothing if they cannot be sexually attractive to, or, worse, know how to sufficiently pleasure a boy.

And, secondly, while our boys can thrill to the awesome deeds of heroes like Fionn MacCumhail and the great warrior Cú Chulainn, and the legendary abilities of The Fianna (though personally, I’m beginning to have my suspicions about that lot), we have lost our mythical goddesses, who have either disappeared completely or been re-framed as silly, nasty, troublesome ladies who get their just comeuppance.

Now here’s the thing. Most of us know at least something about the great Greek heroes – Achilles, Odysseus and the rest. But it wasn’t until the re-telling of some of these great myths by writers like Madeleine Miller ( The Song of Achilles and Circe) or Jessie Burton’s re-telling of Medusa that it emerged that quite a few of these golden heroes, these super-human warriors, these handsome gods, these great princes and kings and their noble liegemen, were little more than psychopaths, thugs, thieves, and rapists who saw women as no more than servants and sex slaves, used them brutally, and passed them around to each other when they got tired of them.

Achilles was a great warrior but he was also cold, psychopathic, brutal and selfish– the recollections of his slave girl Briseis do him no favours. Odysseus was intellectually brilliant, but also a callous, self-serving, treacherous hypocrite (and, not to say, more than a bit of a user who always sought personal benefit in everything he did).

When you read into things a bit more, you learn that the sorceress Circe turned men into pigs because so many lost sailors who had, over the years, been blown off course, landed on her island and availed of her food and hospitality, then tried to gang-rape her.

And then there is Medusa, the so-called man-hater, murderess and monster with a head of snakes - she was raped by the God Poseidon in the shrine of the goddess Athena, then turned into a monster by Athena as punishment for defiling her temple!

Following which, Medusa was betrayed, betrayed and betrayed.

So, personally, I’ve begun to wonder where all the Irish goddesses are? It can’t have been just Fionn MacCumhaill and Setanta and The Fianna? Where are the women in this? I have latterly come to suspect that Fionn MacCumhaill, the great Celtic super-hero and godlike warrior leader of The Fianna, can’t have been all sunshine and roses. The evidence is there if you look for it.

In Tóraíocht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne, for example, where, as we should know, the young and beautiful princess is ( likely reluctantly) betrothed to the extremely powerful but elderly Fionn MacCumhail by her father. She falls in love with one of The Fianna, a handsome warrior called Diarmuid, and, things always having to be the woman’s fault,

Gráinne supposedly cast a love spell on Diarmuid so that the two of them run away and are hunted for years by an irate, revengeful Fionn. Eventually, Diarmuid is killed by a huge boar and the story ends with Gráinne supposedly being led back to the Hill of Allen by a triumphant Fionn, now a really wrinkly old codger.

The story ends with the fact that when the Fianna see Gráinne returning on the arm of this old fogey following the death of Diarmuid, they burst into a loud shout of laughter and derision; so much so, it is said, that Gráinne bowed her head in shame.

Well, well, well. A fine tale for every man’s man to snigger at. Like I said, we could do with an antidote.

Girls Who Dlay Monsters: Daring Tales of Ireland’s Forgotten Goddesses by Ellen Ryan, published by HarperCollins Ireland.