Reclaiming the Hag: author Tracy Fahey on Writing with Lore in Queens of the Crone Age.
Since the 16th century, the word ‘Hag’ has been used negatively in reference to the monstrous fairytale archetype or propagated as a derogatory term for older women. However, in earliest Irish lore, the Cailleach, or Hag, is a totemic figure of matriarchal sovereignty who both represents and shapes primordial landscape. My book Queens of the Crone Age (2026, PS Publishing), is a linked short story collection that attempts to reclaim this mythic figure from monstrosity and connect her with contemporary culture as an icon of healing, power and autonomy.
Cill Rialaig Artist Retreat
I’m writing this where this project originally started, in the wonderful Cill Rialaig Artist Retreat on Bolus Head, near Ballinskelligs in Kerry, a residency conceived of my visionary Dr Noelle Campbell Sharp. This place is a locus of Irish lore, and in 2021, while on residency here I first encountered the Cailleach in the stories of local storyteller, Seán Ó Conaill (1853-1931).
His stories were transcribed by Séamus Ó Duilearga, the founder of the Irish Folklore Commission, into a huge compendium: Seán Ó Conaill ‘s Book: Stories and Traditions From Iveragh. Among over 150 stories captured in this volume are amazing wonder tales of the three old women – the Old Woman of Bolus, the Old Woman of Beara, and the Old Woman of Dingle. They bestride the crags of the peninsulas, turn livestock into islands, and are commemorated by landscape features all over Iveragh, most notably an Chailleach Bhéarra (the Hag of Beara).
The Hag of Beara
The Hag of Beara is an ancient megalith that faces out to sea near Kilcatherine on the Beara Peninsula. There are several local legends that surround it, the best-known is the claim that the rock is the Cailleach herself, turned to stone as she awaits her lover, Manannán MacLir. For hundreds – perhaps thousands – of years, women have come to this rock to leave votive offerings. Even today, her rock is decorated with coins, candles, medals and other tokens.
Reading Seán Ó Conaill’s Old Women tales and visiting the Hag piqued my interest in her. Over the next three years I started to write stories in response to the figure of the Cailleach, but also her associated descendants—the midwife, the wise woman, the keener, the storyteller, and the síle-na-gig. The project was driven by overarching questions—How do we revoice historical and mythological Irish female figures? How do we link their stories with those of contemporary counterparts? And, more pressingly, how do we find new ways to lay old ghosts?
Invisible Women
In the midst of this research, an indignation arose at how invisible perimenopausal and menopausal women are in our contemporary culture—sidelined as somehow ‘used up,’ somehow ‘less than female.’ This image didn’t tally with the strong, brilliant women I knew. As I was working on this project I was encouraged by the writing of Sharon Blackie and her positioning of the Cailleach as the centre of her celebration of mid-life women in her If Women Rose Rooted: A Life Changing Journey to Authenticity and Belonging and Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life. Also a source of inspiration was Ali Isaac’s Substack H A G, a beautiful chronicle of all things relating to the Cailleach.
My mission was to join with them in reclaiming the word ‘Hag’ from its current, reductivist, and frequently misogynistic use and to reinstate it in all its original connotations of sovereignty and power. I wanted to write something that leaned into an older, softer way of living. Something female and strong that had a deeper connection with land and folklore, that was inclusive and nurturing. Something gentle, something healing. Something hopeful.
Queens of the Crone Age
The result of this researching and thinking and writing was Queens of the Crone Age, a linked collection woven through the meta-narrative of the Hag of Beara. It reconsiders female stories of drowned goddesses, síle-na-gigs, storytellers, victims of historical injustice, and bean feasa figures. Published by PS Publishing in hardback and paperback, and gorgeously illustrated by artist Jacob Stack, it includes ‘What Happens At The End,’ which won the Paul Cave Prize for Literature, and ‘The Women In The Water,’ shortlisted for the London Independent Story Prize. The collection, while dark and unflinching in places, is filled with redemption songs, spaces where older women wield power, and it feels….
Well, in this era of eco-anxiety, of war, of threat to female body autonomy, it feels good.
It feels right.
Hag Tour 2026
So much so, that I’m taking the research behind this book on the road as part of the Hag Tour 2026. Following the UK launch at Cymera Festival in Edinburgh, the Irish book launch of Queens of the Crone Age takes place in Banner Books, Kilrush on the 4th September, and later that month I’m discussing the Hag at the Shannon Literature Festival, Shannon, the Doors Into The Dark conference in Belfast, and the Haunted Futures conference in Cork.
Seed Talks have also invited me to deliver a series of talks on ‘Folklore, Female Ageing And The Hag.’ Seed Talks was founded in London in late 2021 to’ bring together leading researchers, practitioners, and thinkers to share their insights on the mind, brain, and human experience. From the rigorous science of psychology to the rich narratives of folklore, we explore the many lenses through which we understand ourselves and each other.’
Folklore of The Hag
The first talk in the Sugar Club, Dublin on the 26th of July sold out in advance. There’s another Irish Seed Talk upcoming on 7th September at Cyprus Avenue, Cork. Tickets for this are available here. In November, the schedule shifts to the UK with talks on ‘Folklore of The Hag: Film, fiction and the depiction of female aging’ scheduled for Cambridge Junction, Cambridge (1st November), 21 Soho, London (2nd November), and Hen & Chicken, Bristol (3rd November). Both London and Bristol events are hybrid, and tickets will be available for both in-person and online attendees via the Seed Talks Eventbrite from mid-September.
At this point in the tour, I would like to thank those who made Queens of the Crone Age possible. The research and writing of this collection was supported by Limerick School of Art and Design, TUS, who granted me a career break to work on this project. I’m also grateful for a 2023 Saari Fellowship, awarded by the Kone Foundation, Finland, residencies in Cill Rialaig, Kerry, and funding from Grants Under The Arts and an Individual Arts Bursary. It seems that the Cailleach strikes a chord that resonates with a heartening amount of folk who want to celebrate this powerful and glorious older woman.
(c) Tracy Fahey
About Queens of the Crone Age:
The mythic Hag of Béara reawakens to find older women now ignored and marginalised. Devotional talismans left at her altar unlock fourteen stories:
- a young doctor inherits a strange and troubling patient (‘What Happens At The End,’ winner of the Paul Cave Prize for Literature 2024)
- a pregnant woman becomes enmeshed in a fertility cult (‘Witchwalking,’ on US editor Ellen Datlow’s Recommended Reading List for 2024)
- a domestic abuse survivor finds refuge in water (‘The Women In The Water,’ shortlisted for the London Independent Story Prize 2024).
The Hag listens to these stories, and as she does, her own wounds reopen. Can the narrators – and the Hag herself – find liberation and healing? Ideal for fans of Sharon Blackie’s Hagitude, Kirsty Logan’s A Portable Shelter and Daisy Johnson’s A Retelling.
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