Original Fairy Tales

The Abbot of Druimenaig, Who Was Changed into a Woman

A medieval folkloric anecdote. As translated by Barbara Hillers in: "The Abbot of Druimenaig: Genderbending in Gaelic Tradition." Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, vol. 15, 1995, pp. 175–197. Irish, collected or written 1484-87.

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A certain young man who held the abbacy of Druimenaig endeavored to make a great and fine banquet in observation of Easter. After preparing the banquet the young man goes out of the house and sits on a big high pleasant hill that was above the settlement; and it is thus the young man was, a very comely linen hood around his head and a tunic of royal silk closely fitted to his white skin, and an excellent very beautiful robe on top of that, and a cloak of dark brown scarlet flowing around him, and a gold-hilted sword fit for assembly in his hand. And when he had reached the top, he put his elbow to the ground and slept.

And after he woke up from his sleep, when he wanted to take his sword, he only found a woman's weapon in its place, i.e. a distaff. And this is how he was, the skirt of a woman's tunic on him down to the ground, and on his head there was a woman's hairdo, long golden very beautiful hair falling in fine curls from the top of his head, and when he passed his hand over his face he did not find any hair of a beard or mustache there, and he put his hand between his thighs and he found the sign of womanhood there. Nevertheless the young man did not believe those various signs, for he thought that it was shape shifting and magic which had been played on him.

Then a certain big woman comes past him, and she was very ugly, brown and exceedingly hideous, an apparition with grey bristles and deep-set eyes, and this is what she said: "Why are you here, smooth young blond girl, alone on this hillock at the end of the day and the very beginning of night?" And he was gloomy and tearful and sad at this news and he said after that, "I do not know where I will go or what I will do hence. Because if I go to my house, my people would not recognize me, and if I should leave, I'm in danger as a single woman going about on her own. Therefore then this is best for me, to go through the world until God may pass judgment on me, for it is he who has distorted my shape and my form and has put me in disfigurement and repulsiveness. But still, although God has given me this change of appearance, I swear in the presence of the Creator that I have not hung a person or wronged anyone, that I have not committed an outrage against bell or relic or staff, nor persecuted a church, nor spoken evil against anyone, nor has a guest ever gone dissatisfied from my dwelling and my house."

He descended then from the knoll and from the pleasant, beautifully sloping hill, and he raised a sore lament and a heavy sorrowful cry, and this is what he said going down the hill: "Pity," he said, "that the ground of the hill does not swallow me up this very moment, because I do not know whither I will go or what I will do." She went off after that down across the slope of the hill, until she reached the green of Croimglenn, a church that was to the west of Druimenaig. After that she meets a certain tall soldierly young man on the village green, and the young man felt eager excessive love for her and began to entreat her and did not leave off until he had union and intercourse with her. And after they had slept together, the young man asked the girl from what place she came and who she was. The girl told him that he would not get that knowledge from her whether they would be together for long or short. "I, however," he said, "will tell you my name, for I am erenagh of this church, which is called Croimglenn, and my wife died two years ago, and you will be my harmonious and well-matched wife." And they went together then to the erenagh's house and the people of the house bade her a friendly and courteous welcome, and she was with him for seven years as his wife and his spouse, and seven children she bore him during that time.

After that a messenger comes to the erenagh from the congregation and assembly of Druimenaig to invite him for Easter and she goes together with the erenagh to the hill on which her shape was first transformed, and she falls immediately asleep on the hill, and the erenagh goes with his people to the church. And after the girl woke up from her sleep, it is thus she was, a man, with the same appearance she had had in the first place, and she found her gold-hilted, ornamented sword on her knee, and this is what she said: "O powerful God, the lamenting in which I am is great," and after a great lamentation he went to his original home and his wife says to him then: "It's long that you are absent from home." Then the drinking hall had been arranged and that strange story was told to the people of the house. However, that story was not believed by them, for his wife said that he had not been absent for more than one hour of that day. Finally, after giving them many various proofs, his case is presented and a judgment made between him and the erenagh of Croimglenn, and this is the judgment that was made between them: to divide the children in half, giving the extra son to the erenagh for fosterage, and this is how they parted from each other.