Crios Chú Chulainn ar Loch Mucnú / Meadow sweet on Lough Muckno

Original Painting

Medium: Palette knife oil painting on canvas.
Size: 20”x 42”

One of my visits to White Island on Muckno, was in July, between the showers. A fishing competition had ended a couple of days previously, and so I wandered along the banks, using the track that ran behind the fishing area. What struck me was the beautiful display of wildflowers, Willow herb and Meadow Sweet in particular. Meadow Sweet has a really interesting connection with Irish folklore. In Irish there are two names for it, Airgead Luachra, meaning Rush Silver, and Crios Chú Chulainn, which is also its name in Scottish Gaelic. This version I love as it tells how Cúchulain would sometimes be over come by battle frenzies in which he turned into a monstrous being, and the only thing that would calm him was Meadow Sweet which he tied around him like a belt, the Irish for belt being Crios. It’s a wonderful story which is so fitting for a wildflower that adorns so many places during the summer months, it being like a lovely long creamy belt on many a hedgerow. Out of interest, I used the modern Irish spelling here for Muckno, which has lost the more meaningful version of older times.