Product Description

Ireland: land of rambles, burning peat, dark beer, misdirection, lilting speech, enchanting melodies, green hills, ruddy faces, and goddesses. Goddesses? In Ireland? Like many Irish Americans before her, Pat Monaghan traveled to Ireland for the first time as an adult, seeking her roots. What she found was much more than her physical ancestors. She found spiritual forebears in the legends and landmarks of spirited women: witches, hags, wanton girls, mothers. This book is the story of her journeys, and the story of the journeys the legends have made through time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #259105 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Booklist
Monaghan begins with a confession of sorts. Raised in Alaska, she always had thought of herself as Irish yet for a long time knew next to nothing about Ireland. In her mind's eye, her ancestral home was part myth, part history--unreal and intangible. Here she tells the story of going home for the first time, as it were. Her Ireland isn't one place but a mosaic of places, and as she travels the byways of old Ireland, which aren't far removed from contemporary Ireland, tracing the pagan calendar of the Celtic year, she also explores Ireland's fierce love of poetry (she reminds us that books of poetry often appear on Irish best-seller lists). She makes a poet's circuit as well as an Irish American's journey into the spiritual and ancestral past--and present--and from Connacht and Ulster to Leinster and Munster, she proves a perfect guide, introducing long-departed ancestors and a land in which the human, the natural, and the divine come together. A dreamy, utterly enchanting walking meditation on Ireland's pagan heart. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Beautiful--a stunning homage to the land and its Ladies
Beloved women's spirituality author Patricia Monaghan does it yet again with _The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog_, once more demonstrating to me why she's one of my favorite religious authors. Her focus here is Ireland, and its goddesses, whose myths are intimately connected with the landscape. After all, the country itself *is* named after a goddess...Monaghan traveled to Ireland for the first time in her early adulthood, in search of her Irish roots. She was so moved by the experience that she has returned many times. And in this book, she takes us on a "tour" of what she has experienced in her journeys. We travel vicariously to the rock said to be the Cailleach, the field where Macha ran, Medb's burial mound, and the shrine of Brigid at Kildare, where the sacred fire has recently been lit again.

But lest you think this is just fluff, Monaghan does not ignore the bad stuff either. Woven together with her beautiful spiritual experiences and warm friendships are the dark threads of the Troubles, the potato famine, and the English invasion, which forever haunt Ireland. And also, there are the personal tragedies. Some of Monaghan's friends have died over the years, ahd she pays them tribute here. The result is a book by turns uplifting, melancholy, and sometimes riotously funny, but always emotionally moving. Read this book if you are interested in Ireland--a land which, like the Cailleach, has survived against the odds.

A Masterpiece!
Some books have a life of their own and cannot be ignored. Long after you finished reading the last page, something about the book will return to you; an image or perhaps a phrase; possibly an entire sequence will be recalled in solitude. Words, like music, have a resonance that lasts long after the initial encounter. Such a book is Patricia Monaghan's The Red Haired Girl from the Bog.
As a travel memoir, it is splendid; as a history book it is marvelous. But on a deeper level it is a magnificent essay, at once lyrical and moving. This book has resonance and because of its quality I know I will return to it again. Celtic myths, fairy woman, mystical places that speak to visitors, fog-shrouded landscapes that are so much more than they appear, sunlit fields and the voices of poets calling from the past. Monaghan's journey is captivating, compelling, and like all good stories, just a shade frightening. Exploring the Celtic myths and legends, interspersed with narratives about her many trips to Ireland, I found myself unable to set the book aside. Her book has that rare quality of taking the reader along for the trip, an accomplishment that only the best writers can manage. This book is subtitled "The Landscape of Celtic Myth and Spirit" and I cannot think of a better, concise description of what you will find in its 295 magical pages. A toast then, to Patricia Monaghan, and may the Muse never leave her side.

A Sacred Passage Through Ireland
Voluptuous, sensuous, at times filled with unparalleled humor and wit, Patricia Monaghan's writing saturates the reader with the spirit of wide-eyed discovery, good Celtic mischief, prayer flags at holy wells, and sacred teaching--not just of the ancient past, but just as much from the 'ancient future' of the Irish soul. There are many books on Irish history, and books about the Irish landscape, but none convey the living soulscape of our ancient mother, Eire, like The Red-Haired Girl From the Bog.--Frank MacEowen, author of The Mist-Filled Path