Scotland’s Sacred Goddess: Hidden in Plain Sight – An Interview with Stuart McHardy

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Stuart McHardy
Date: September 21, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode dives into Stuart McHardy's latest book, Scotland's Sacred Goddess: Hidden in Plain Sight (Luath, 2025), exploring early Scottish belief systems centred around the Cailleach—the shape-shifting goddess of landscape, weather, and fertility. Through oral stories, place names, and landscape features, McHardy reconstructs how ancient worldviews survived beneath layers of Christianization, lingering in place names, local myths, and the very geography of Scotland.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Who is Stuart McHardy and the Genesis of the Book

• Background: McHardy is a writer, folklore lecturer, and Teaching Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, specializing in Scottish history and folklore for over 30 years.
• Origin of the Book: Prompted by an archaeologist friend to collect and synthesize information on the Cailleach, responding to a scholarly gap in consolidating her lore in Scotland.

  "I was asked to put together all the material pertaining to this supernatural figure of the Cailleach... No one's ever collated this information to any extent in Scotland. You fancy it?" —Stuart McHardy [02:42]

2. Sources and Research Methods

• Material Gathered: Primarily a blend of recorded oral stories, songs, place names, and landscape features noted by earlier folklorists.
• Living Traditions: New, previously unpublished stories are still discovered through oral tradition, showing the persistence and adaptation of myth.

  "I've actually come across material that is relevant to this book, contained in stories that are still being told today, some of which has never been in print before." —Stuart McHardy [04:15]

3. The Cailleach: Dual Nature and Landscape Connections

• Key Figure: The Cailleach ("the veiled one")—primarily the hag of winter, but also associated with summer and fertility, embodying the dangerous yet generative aspects of the land.
• Environmental Reflection: She personifies unpredictable weather and the perils of Scotland’s mountains, explaining natural phenomena through myth.
• Duality: The Cailleach also appears in opposition or complement to Brigid, representing summer and life.

  "She is seen as this very kind of dark figure, representative of the winter period... but she seems to be a dual figure, and the other side of her is actually the summer and fertility." —Stuart McHardy [05:19]

4. Landscape Shaping and Place-Based Myths

• Landscape Maker: The Cailleach often creates mountains and landscape features in stories—dropping boulders from her apron while flying, explaining erratic stones and mounds.
• Embedded in Geography: Local tales tie named hills, stones, and archaeological features directly to mythic acts.
• Example: The White Cattle Hillfort—a story describes a supernatural female (an “Amazon”) carrying stones to build it, echoing pan-Scottish motifs.

  "There’s a massive, great...hill fort up in Angus...it's known as the White Cattle...created by a supernatural female who carried all the stones to the top of this hilt in her apron." —Stuart McHardy [08:54]

5. Archaeo-astronomical Alignments

• Stone Alignments: Consultation with archaeoastronomers shows some isolated standing stones and their relationships (e.g., lines between stones aligned to midsummer or midwinter sunrise, with former stone circles on intervening high ground).

  "You draw a line between them...there was a stone circle on the high ground...this was a midsummer alignment." —Stuart McHardy [10:22]

6. Place Names & Body Imagery

• Naming the Goddess: Many Scottish hills are named outright for the Cailleach, especially those with distinctive shapes ("paps" meaning breasts).
• Body Parts Across the Map: Landscape features are often named after body parts—breasts, noses, teeth, backs—implying the land itself is imagined as the goddess's body.
• Ritual Sites: Places like the Paps of Jura and Paps of Fife have both mythic and archaeological traces (e.g., “Maiden Castle”), suggesting long-standing cultic or fertility associations.

  "What you're finding is that there are places in the landscape that seem to have been created for reasons which...archaeologists saw...as hill forts...But they're not." —Stuart McHardy [15:40]

7. Powers of the Cailleach and Local Variation

• Weather and Creation: She controls weather, especially marking the change of seasons on the highest local hills.
• Many Cailleachs, One Principle: Every locality had its own iteration of the goddess, adapted to that specific environment, yet all are facets of a single archetype.

  "For the people in these different small communities, their Cailleach would be their own. So in that sense, there are many Cailleachs. But it's not a contradiction to say that though there are many Cailleachs, there is just one." —Stuart McHardy [19:57]

8. Survival and Transformation: From Goddess to Witch

• Link to Witchcraft: The image of the Cailleach influenced later perceptions of witches; Scottish witch trials targeted knowledgeable women embedded in healing and ritual, many of whom echoed the goddess’s role.
• Focus on Locality: Localized traditions resist broad theoretical models, reinforcing the importance of micro-histories in Scottish folklore.

  "I think there is enough evidence to suggest that some of these groups date back far enough in time that they would be linked in with the beliefs that are associated with the Cailleach." —Stuart McHardy [22:23]

9. Reading the Land with New Eyes

• Continued Pagan Traces: Sites with churches atop mounds are often older pre-Christian ritual grounds, deliberately repurposed by Christian authorities.
• Layered Belief: The book encourages readers to reinterpret the modern Scottish landscape in light of this deep, feminine mythic history.

  "If you go through the Scottish landscape and you see a church sitting on a mound, it's almost 100% certain that that mound was there before the church and it was being used for ritual, communal purposes." —Stuart McHardy [24:15]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Origin of the Book:
  "I was asked to put together all the material pertaining to this supernatural figure of the Cailleach...No one's ever collated this information to any extent in Scotland. You fancy it?" — Stuart McHardy [02:42]

• On the Locality of Belief:
  "For the people in these different small communities, their Cailleach would be their own." — Stuart McHardy [19:57]

• Landscape as Goddess:
  "Many of these Paps...seem to be surrounded with both stories, place names, and with archaeological remnants that suggest these were places of particular significance to local communities." — Stuart McHardy [15:40]

• On Scientific Verification:
  "I got my kind of friendly archaeoastronomer to check it out...there was a stone circle...which would be seen from one looking north at midsummer, the other one looking south at midwinter." — Stuart McHardy [10:22]

Important Timestamps

• [02:33] – McHardy introduces himself and the inspiration for the book
• [04:15] – Discussion of sources: oral tradition, written records, new discoveries
• [05:19] – Who is the Cailleach? Her dual nature
• [08:54] – Examples of location-based myths (White Cattle, Angus)
• [10:22] – Archaeo-astronomical alignments and new research
• [15:40] – Place names and the body of the goddess; “paps” and ritual sites
• [19:57] – The local variation of the Cailleach and implications for Scottish folklore
• [22:23] – Connections between goddess traditions and Scottish witchcraft
• [24:15] – Reading the landscape: churches on pagan mounds and surviving ritual sites
• [26:11] – McHardy’s work in progress: “Scotland’s Geomythography”

Closing Thoughts & What’s Next

McHardy urges readers to see the Scottish landscape as a palimpsest of ancient belief, encoded in names, stones, hills, and community memory. He hopes the book inspires readers to look anew at familiar places and recognize the powerful presence of the feminine in Scotland's mythic geography.

Next Project:
McHardy just finished a related book, Scotland’s Geomythography, and is teaching a course on the subject at Edinburgh University.

"I'm now about to spend time teaching it and we'll see what happens from there." — Stuart McHardy [26:11]

Recommendation:
Scotland’s Sacred Goddess: Hidden in Plain Sight (Luath, 2025) is for readers wishing to uncover the living mythologies beneath Scotland's hills and in her place names, and to approach the land with a revitalized, mythic perspective.