Flidais

A friend recently asked me about the Goddess Flidais. Flidais (pronounced Flee-dash, Flee-dish, Flee-ish) is one of the less well known of the Tuatha Dé Danann (the people/tribe/nation of the Goddess Danu). The fair haired Flidais Foltchaoin or Flidais 'the beautiful haired', is an archetypal Mother Goddess figure of abundance, fertility and nurturing, but also she's much more.  Flidais is the woodland Goddess (often equated with Diana or Artemis), mistress of stags who travels through the forests in her chariot drawn by deer; she's the huntress but also the protector and nurturer of the woodland and wider landscape along with all its wild inhabitants, its trees, its flora and fauna. For me Flidais is the Earth Mother avatar through which I communicate with the woodland and wider nature, the Goddess to which I feel closest and the one I most frequently seek a connection with. Flidais doesn't just protect wild animals, no, she also protects domestic animals too, to which end she's said to possess a herd of cattle who can produce bountiful quantities of milk on demand. She's a shape-shifter, so can appear to us in many guises according to necessity, though often in the form of a woodland animal, hound or deer; for me she appeared as a deer. Some historians doubt her existence although Flidais features in several of the ancient Ulster Cycle of tales such as in the Cattle Raid of Cooley, The Driving off of Flidais’s Cattle (where her magic cattle feature) and other texts. These texts also described her as strong and as knowing her own mind, a highly sensual and sexual Goddess, and is mentioned as having great sexual prowess. Flidais as you'd imagine being a Mother Goddess figure is a Goddess of nurturing and healing, she's the one you'd turn to when it's all getting to much and you need some support as only a mother can give; she protects the poor, the destitute, the outcast and the fatherless children. She's a mother herself, in the 'Book of invasions' to daughters Dianann and Bé Chuille (sorceresses of the Tuatha Dé Danann) and Bé Téite (the cultivator) and to son Arden (also a cultivator); in the Metrical Dindshenchas she is said to be the mother to Fand (the sea Goddess) and in the 'Fitness of Names' Nia Segamain is also sited as her son. That in brief is Flidais.

The chickens are hatching!

Walking through Great Huntley Bank, the sites of last seasons Chicken of the Woods (Laetiporus sulphureus) were clearly identifiable through their now bleached remains, either still clinging to their hosts or on the ground below. We'd hope that even though the season was still young, we might have come across some, although after an exhaustive search, covering a couple of miles of woodland, it appeared our search would be fruitless and forlornly we turned for home. The friend I was walking with is only back in the country for a couple more days, now living on the other side of the world; he and I had been regular foragers for years, since the late 80's in fact, before his move abroad and it would've been nice if he could've had the taste of home he'd been looking for. So, I asked for help from the woodland Goddess Flidais (pronounced Flee-dish or Flee-dash), offering to help her by collecting some bags of rubbish from the woodland in return; boom, 2 minutes later this fine clump of Chicken of the Woods. Now, some folk may say, 'yeah, that's just coincidence', but I'd like to think otherwise.  The fungi was harvested by my companion, with a big smile; whilst I duly got out a bag to collect any rubbish I saw, and it wasn't long before that bag was filling up. I still owe a few more bags, which I'll dutifully fill; if you make a bargain, you've got to stick to it.