Jacob's Mother—Chapter 2

A First with a First

Artwork by Laura Ellis

Jacob’s Mother is a serialized novel. Start with Chapter One.

Chapter Two: A First with a First

Ireland—The Old Gaelic World

Long ago, when people cared about ancient traditions, a girl by the name of Elizabeth lived with her ma in a small cottage in the Wicklow mountains. Her da had left them the land and sheep when he died. Her ma, the town’s midwife, knew a bit about mystical things. One night, Elizabeth’s ma sat on the floor near their stone fireplace and patted the hearth next to her.

Her ma’s name was Moya, and she told Elizabeth that she was a descendant of a great Celtic goddess, Danu. Elizabeth believed it with her whole heart, but no one else in the village did, including her da, when he was alive. Elizabeth could remember him chuckling and taking her ma’s face in his rough hands saying, “Yes, you are my goddess.”

Elizabeth looked at his walking stick, leaning against the stone wall, next to the heavy wooden door, and was filled with loss.

Sitting in front of the fire, Ma looked like a goddess, her long black hair hanging loose around her shoulders. A descendent of the Tuatha de Danann, a tribe of warriors that the Mother Danu nursed back to health after exile, Moya always held her head high above the other villagers, proud of her northern warrior roots. The firelight danced around the room, making Ma’s green eyes especially bright with mischief. Her pale skin glowed, and light shimmered off of the silver pendant that she had worn forever, three spirals chasing each other. Elizabeth had never seen her mother without it. It seemed a part of her, like an arm or a nose.

Elizabeth shared the same dark hair as her mother, but she was more lanky than voluptuous. In fact, as a young maiden who had only had two moon cycles, she was already a fist taller than Moya.

“What is life, my daughter?” Moya asked while taking her daughter’s hands in her own. The wind howled through the cracks in the stone walls of their cottage, but it was warm beside the fire. Elizabeth knew that some sort of lesson about the Goddess Danu was impending.

She was unsure of how to answer. Worried that there might be a wrong answer, she thought carefully. She was anxious to impress her ma with her intelligence. Surely, her mother was a descendant of a goddess, for no one in the village was more fair or more knowledgeable in the mystic ways. Elizabeth closed her eyes, trying to feel goddess blood pulsing through her own veins, but all she could feel was the warmth of the fire and the beating of her own heart.

Moya waited patiently for her daughter to answer. Elizabeth was careful in her ways, and she often thought for a while before speaking. While others might become annoyed with Elizabeth, Moya never hurried her daughter when they spoke. Elizabeth focused on the beating of her heart, until it seemed her whole body pulsed with it. She was certain her ma could also feel it through her hands.

“Life is this drum within my chest.”

“No, my daughter.”

“Is it the air I breathe? The wind across the mountains?”

“No, my daughter.” Moya gathered up Elizabeth’s face in her calloused hands and planted a kiss on her forehead. Her skirts brushing across the floor, she rose saying, “Now hand me the spun yarn, so we can work on the loom a bit.”

“But what is life, Ma?” Elizabeth felt panicky because she didn’t know the answer, and she knew her ma was done speaking on it.

Moya paused, touching her silver pendant, a triskelion, three spirals that chased each other--protection. She looked at something in the corner of the room. She sighed and started tightening the horizontal weft yarns through the warp yarns which hung from a beam in the ceiling. The threads were weighted down with stones, tied around each end. She pulled a piece of weft out and held it between her thumb and forefinger. “Ah my dear, you’re going to have to figure that out for yourself. Now hand me that spun yarn, straight away. There’s no time like the present to finish what needs to be done.”

Elizabeth picked up the ball of fuzzy thread and handed it to her ma who deftly tied the end of the weft to the end of the yarn. Holding the ball, she let the thread out as Moya nimbly fed the weft in and out of the warp yarns, tightening the fabric as she went.

Working quietly alongside her mother, Elizabeth wondered what life was. Was it the feel of the yarn between her fingers? Or perhaps it was the green color of the hillside or the blue of the sky? Maybe it was the flutter in her chest when she saw James. She hoped that she would be able to figure it out.

Spring had just arrived, and Elizabeth liked to walk along the stacked stone wall which bordered their property. The countryside was hilly, and from certain parts of the property she could see miles and miles of lush green grass. If she stood at the highest point and looked to the left, she could see the slim, stone tower of the Monastery, and if she looked to the right, she could just make out the village. From this distance, it appeared perfectly still, but Elizabeth knew that it bustled with movement. Grazing sheep dotted the fields, many of them fat with lambs. She saw Rounder, their sheep dog, rolling in the damp grass. She looked at the ground and noticed that each blade and leaf moved with the breeze, and she looked to the sky and watched the clouds migrate across the blue plain. She leaned on the stacked stone wall and noticed some wee beetles, seeming hard at work, going in and out of the stones. She wondered if all this movement was life, because certainly things that moved were alive.

However, she knew that some things that moved weren’t really alive. Water moved. The wind moved. The people of the mist moved. Elizabeth never felt alone in the countryside, since the faery folk were always around, hidden in the mist or shadows. There had been a few times where she thought she caught a glimpse of a sprite in the evening, or where she thought that a mushroom cap or the bark of a tree looked like a man’s face. Even though she couldn’t really see them, she believed they were there. She knew that the mist also hid dark and powerful things, and she knew they were not alive, even though they moved.

One sheep licked the yellow caul off of her newborn lamb. The mother sheep ate at the membrane around the lamb’s face first, directed by her instincts so the lamb would be able to breathe. Elizabeth saw that the sheep was going to birth another lamb, the baby’s black nose bulging out from the mother’s behind. Then came the head, covered in the yellow caul. Elizabeth wondered how the sheep was able to continue eating the caul off of the first calf with the second calf coming out of her body. Living on a farm and having a midwife for a mother, Elizabeth was used to birthing sheep. As for women, their births seemed a part of her family’s routine, although she would only watch from afar before being shooed out of the house. She wondered why the whole process was so much worse for women than for sheep. The sheep continued to lick her first calf clean as the second calf plopped out from her body and onto the ground. The sheep turned to the second calf, and immediately began to eat away at the membrane covering its face. Elizabeth thought it was an awful lot of work to birth something, and although she knew that someday she would go through the process herself, she wasn’t looking forward to it.

The baby lamb lay still on the ground, the cold wind of the Wicklow mountains swirling around them. The sheep continued to docilely eat away at the membrane with pure instinct and not a stitch of panic. Elizabeth wondered if the faery people were riding the breeze and waited to see if they would take the lamb into their world. Was the lamb to die or live?

For a second, she thought she saw a silvery child floating along on the breeze, its skin made of sunshine and air. The child bit his thumb at her. She rubbed her eyes, and of course, there was no child. Perhaps it was a bit of dandelion fluff caught in the wind.

Suddenly, the lamb’s nostrils sucked in air. It’s head bucked. The caul had been cleared away. It sat up, and the mother continued cleaning off the remaining membrane. Apparently, the faeries would not take this lamb. The first born lamb had already taken its first wobbly steps. Its wool pink and yellow from blood and caul. Birthing was a messy business, to be sure.

Elizabeth thought of her ma’s friend, Aideen Mac Liam, who worked in the town’s tavern with her husband. She was fat with her first child and due any moment. Elizabeth’s mother had said, “A first with a first,” because this would be the first delivery that Elizabeth would assist. She had been around human births her whole life, but always from the other room, only glimpsing the process through a curtain. She would watch her mother emerge, sweaty and bloody, as if she had birthed the babies herself. She felt her stomach tighten, thinking about holding up a woman’s leg and witnessing the suffering curse up close. Aideen Mac Liam was a large woman, and Elizabeth wondered exactly how she was expected to support her leg? Aideen was big and beautiful and strong as an ox.

Elizabeth leaned against the stone fence, lost in the thought of Aideen’s monstrous thighs. She didn’t notice James McLaughlin wander up behind her. He grabbed her from behind, and she squealed with surprise. She glanced down at his freckled arms that grabbed her around the waist. His sleeves were rolled up to his forearm, which was carved of muscle. Heat radiated out of his calloused hands as if his touch branded her. Her heart pulsed, and she could feel her ears redden.

“I guess I got you, Lil!” he said, laughing. Rounder came bounding up the hill to investigate, barking and wagging his tail at the same time, since he usually got a thorough pat down whenever James was around.

Elizabeth noticed the way James’s whole face smiled when he grinned. She especially noticed his wide mouth that turned up slightly higher on one side. Everything about James was laughter and warmth. Even his hair was a warm, orangey red. His freckles were both funny and enticing at the same time. Elizabeth untangled herself from the warmth of his arms and found herself unable to speak, blushing furiously and staring at the moss growing between the stones on the fence. When she was around James, she couldn’t talk and found it difficult to look him in the eye without blushing.

James didn’t seem to mind. He just kept talking and bent down to ruffle Rounder’s fur, delighting the dog and filling in Elizabeth’s awkward silence. “This spring will see quite a few births, I think,” he said. “We have several sheep ready to give birth on our land as well. Wool will be plenty next year.” He leaned on the fence and looked out across the fields spotted with fat sheep. “A storm’s coming in. We will probably have rain by this evening.” Rounder rolled over, presenting his belly to James for more petting.

Elizabeth was silent. She liked the way he talked and how he didn’t expect her to answer right away. She looked at the baby lambs wobbling around their mother and thought that maybe she felt just as wobbly around James Mclaughlin. She knew her face was beet red. Finally, she got up enough courage to speak. “I’ll be helping Ma with Aideen soon. It will be my first birth.”

Now it was James’ turn to blush. He glanced towards Elizabeth’s stomach. “Certainly it is not your first birth,” he laughed. “I hope that won’t be for awhile!”

Elizabeth giggled at his teasing and went back to staring at the sheep. They stood like that for quite awhile, staring at sheep and giggling. Then they were quiet, standing side by side at the stone fence. Elizabeth’s arm, clad in woolen yarn, was almost touching James’ homespun sleeve. She could feel his warmth through both the wool and the homespun and felt herself blush even more.

In the middle of the night, Elizabeth heard Rounder barking and barking outside. Her ma bounded out of bed and opened the door in nothing but her nightdress. The damp wind whipped around her nightdress and came right into the cottage. Her hair flew around her face in dark ropes.

Mr. Mac Liam was running up the hill frantically. He called out, “Moya! It’s time! Come quick, it’s time!”

Moya waved at him, and he turned around and started running back towards the town. Moya turned towards her daughter, her cheeks rosy with cold, her loose hair windblown. “It’s time, Elizabeth. You know what to bring.”

When they arrived at the tavern, they could hear Aideen moaning, and the late night guests were leaving. Apparently, Mr. Mac Liam had shooed them out. They rushed through the tavern and into the back room where the Mac Liams lived. Elizabeth’s stomach curled up into a knot. She thought about the sheep and the yellow caul. She thought about Aideen’s robust legs. Mr. Mac Liam was pacing back and forth, rubbing his face, his features haggard in the firelight. Aideen was lying on a pallet on the floor, and Elizabeth was shocked to see that she was even bigger than the last time she saw her. She saw the sweat glistening off Aideen’s body, even in the frigid room. Elizabeth’s heart stopped. She felt a wave of panic rise up. She couldn’t do this. There was no way she could do this. She looked toward the door to plan her escape.

Her ma, on the other hand, thrived in the midst of panic. Moya, descendent of the goddess Danu feared nothing. Elizabeth saw her ma’s face light up with excitement as soon as she laid eyes on Aideen. Moya loved a challenge.

“Well, good evening, Aideen,” she said while quickly tying her long, black hair up into a coil. “I see we have a wee one on the way.”

“That we do,” Aideen groaned with determination. “And I figure if weak little Bessie Green did this four times, I should be able to manage it.” Aideen scrunched up her eyes and grabbed up the pallet into her fists.

“That’s my Aideen,” said Mr. Mac Liam nervously. “Strong as an ox.” He tried to force a smile through his fear.

“Mr. Mac Liam, please boil some water.”

“It’s already boiling,” said Aideen. “I put it on while Sean fetched you.”

Moya was pleased. “Well then, let’s have a look at you.”

Elizabeth stood by while her mother moved about between Aideen’s enormous thighs. She brought hot water and towels. She mopped Aideen’s forehead with a cloth as she labored. The whole thing seemed awful to Elizabeth, but Aideen and her ma continued on with their small talk throughout the process. Even when Aideen was in the throes of terrible labor pains, she managed to joke and smile at Moya and her husband. Mr. Mac Liam sat in a chair in a corner, and looked as if he would faint. Moya glanced at his face and stood up.

“Out you go, Sean.” She shooed him out of the room.

He stopped at the door and turned towards them, his jaw set. “I’m going to stay.”

“Away! An’ wash the back of your bollocks!” Aideen barked at him. “I’ll not have you fainting and getting in the way!”

“But my love--”

“This is women’s work,” Moya murmured, gently pushing Sean Mac Liam through the door and closing it after him.

“My ma said these hips were made for birthing!” Aideen screamed as the pushing time came. Elizabeth wondered if she would faint with all the bulging and gushes of water. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t stop watching.

It was time for the baby to arrive. Aideen rolled over to her side, and Elizabeth got in position, holding up Aideen’s leg. It was terribly heavy, but she found that if she leaned into it with her shoulder, it held all right. At this point, she was more worried that the great leg would slip off her shoulder, since Aideen was slick with sweat. Then it happened. Elizabeth could see the crown of the baby’s head, curls and blood and membrane. She was reminded of the sheep, yet this was so much more than the sheep.

Moya checked the head and said, “Alright, Aideen. On the count of three I want you to give me a big push. One...two...three!”

Aideen let out a low howl and pushed with all her might. Elizabeth was amazed that she had any strength left, and with a little gush of blood, the baby’s head popped out. It looked odd, sticking out like a knob between Aideen’s legs. It was almost comical, if it didn’t already look so uncomfortable. Aideen let out another howl, her face red with exertion.

“One...two...three!” Moya prompted.

Aideen cried out, and Elizabeth almost lost hold of her leg, but then one of the baby’s shoulders popped out and then another. After the shoulders, the baby slid out. Elizabeth watched her mother deftly scoop up the infant and wipe away at her little face. The wee babe took a breath and wailed.

“A girl,” Moya announced, placing the baby on mother’s chest. Aideen cried. The baby cried, and Elizabeth cried. She was overwhelmed at the beauty and the messiness of the whole thing. This is life, she thought.

Sean Mac Liam burst through the door, eyebrows knit together and tears in his eyes.

Aideen turned the baby in his arms towards him. “Your daughter. Your baby daughter.”

Sean reached out his hand tentatively and stroked the side of his daughter’s face. “She’s beautiful,” he said.

“Yes, she is,” Aideen responded, smiling up at her husband.

Elizabeth didn’t think the little pink shriveled thing in their arms was particularly beautiful, but newborn babies rarely were pretty. However, she now understood that the beauty was in the birth and the mess and the mother’s strength.

After the afterbirth was delivered, Moya blessed the baby. First, she placed three drops of water on the baby’s head to symbolize the sky, the land, and the sea. Then she sent Elizabeth down to the stream to fetch more water for the blessing of the nine waves.

It was important that the freshest spring water was used for this blessing, so Elizabeth took the pail and walked down the path towards the stream in the forest. She passed the monastic stone temple and the graveyard. Even though the sun was beginning to rise, she pulled her shawl tight around her to block out the cold.

As she neared the forest, she heard a woman wailing. She couldn’t quite make out what the woman was saying, but a foreboding feeling washed over her, her insides turning to liquid. She almost turned back, but she didn’t want to appear silly, now that she was on her way to becoming a proper midwife, and she continued to enter the woods.

The trees were covered in moss and purple lichen, and her feet crunched over the fallen leaves. The wailing had stopped, so she figured it was the wind through the trees and continued on to the stream. As she neared it, she could hear the rush of water, the crunch of leaves under her steps, and her own breath. Other than those sounds, it was silent. She heard no birds or bugs or little things scurrying beneath the leaves, just the water, the crunch, and her breath. A wave of cold washed over her, and she pulled her shawl even tighter. She walked through a group of trees and saw the washer woman at the stream.

Elizabeth sucked in a breath and stood perfectly still. The woman was frightening. She appeared ancient and was hunched over a pile of washing. Everything about the woman was bulbous. Her pendulous breasts seemed to rest on her misshapen stomach. Her nose hooked down to her lip, and her earlobes almost touched her shoulders. Her clothes were tattered, and her white scraggly hair flew about in the wind. She was washing something bloody in the stream. Elizabeth realized she would have to pass this women to get clean water from higher up. She didn’t want to contaminate the baby’s water with whatever that woman was washing. She took another breath for courage and took step forward. The leaves crunched under her feet, and the woman looked at her with black bird-like eyes. Elizabeth had never seen such eyes on a person.

“Lil!” the woman wailed. “Lil!” She stood up and pointed directly at Elizabeth with a knobby finger. “Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilll!” she screamed and kept screaming and pointing. Her lips curled back to reveal her toothless gums, and she screamed and screamed.

Elizabeth, frozen with terror, knew she had to get past that woman to get to the fresh water, so she held onto the bucket with one hand, gathered up her skirts with the other, and ran right past the nasty old woman. The woman kept pointing and kept screaming, so Elizabeth ran and ran until she could no longer hear her. She ended up quite far up the river, and she knew she better hurry, or her ma would be angry, but when she stopped running she collapsed at the side of the stream, shivering with fright. She had never in her life been so scared, and she couldn’t figure out why. Her head told her that the old woman was probably just a crazy traveller whose tribe was wandering through the village, but her heart told her that this old woman was something far worse.

Her ma was counting on her, so she gathered her wits and stuffed her fears into a little black box within her heart and filled up the bucket with stream water. When she walked back down the stream to get back to the village, her face was pale with fright, and tears streamed down her cheeks. She was terrified of that strange old woman, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to run past her and not spill the contents of her bucket.

She walked on, the leaves crunched, and she could hear the stream and the sniffling of her own nose, but she heard no wailing. She continued to walk, the sun beating down through the treetops and warming her shoulders. She heard birds chirping and little things scurrying along under the leaves. She kept looking towards the stream but saw no woman. She wondered where the old woman had gone. Surely, she would have seen her leave. She couldn’t have finished her grim washing that quickly. She looked and looked, but no washer woman was to be found. There was no sign of her.

When Elizabeth finally arrived back at Mac Liam’s Public House, Sean Mac Liam was out on the front steps holding a bundle of baby out to a crowd of regulars that had gathered. Elizabeth’s hand ached from carrying the bucket of water, and she hastened up to the steps. Mr. Mac Liam was smiling proudly, and the old codgers who frequented the pub were peeking and poking at the baby. Mr. O’Murchadh, the pig farmer, gently poked the babe with a dirty finger.

“Ach! O’Murchadh! You’ll not be touching my daughter again with that finger!” Mr. Mac Liam cried as he snatched his babe out of reach from the distasteful digit.

“Aw, you know it’s clean,” O’Murchadh whined. “It’s only stained.”

“Touch her bonny head, and I’ll kill ya!”

The men roared with laughter.

Mr. Mac Liam continued on, “Be off with you! The pub will be open at suppertime Right now, we have more blessings to do.”

The men grumbled, yearning for their pints, and started up the road to their homes. Elizabeth giggled as they left. She thought they looked like a bunch of puppies that had been scolded. She followed Mr. Mac Liam and the baby through the pub and into the back living quarters. She found the men so amusing that she completely forgot about the strange washerwoman at the stream.

In the room, Elizabeth could see that her mother had already cleaned up all the mess of birth, and the room was in spit spot order. Aideen was asleep on the mat, exhausted after a night of laboring. Moya glared at Elizabeth as soon as she saw her, obviously upset by her tardiness, but she didn’t scold her or say a word about it.

Moya prepared the blessing of the nine waves for the newborn baby. The baby slept in her mother’s arms on the mat on the floor as Moya carefully placed a silver coin to represent the moon in the bottom of the special basin that she brought with her for the birth. Then she carefully poured some of the stream water over the coin into the basin. Mr. Mac Liam was sitting on the edge of the mat with his arm around his wife, and they smiled at each other.

Moya carefully brought the basin over to the mat and set it down on the floor. The mother and the father kneeled on the floor on one side of the basin, both of them holding up the wee baby. When they removed the baby’s covering, she cried uncomfortably.

“You’ll be cold for a moment my dear, just for a moment,” Moya cooed as she dripped three drops of water onto the babe’s forehead. “And now for the Blessing of the Nine Waves. Elizabeth, you will scoop the water over the babe with your hand.”

Elizabeth, surprised to have an important role in this ritual, knelt beside her mother. She dipped a cupped hand into the stream water and poured it over the baby’s chest.

“The little wavelet for thy form,” Moya chanted as the water dribbled over the baby’s chest. The baby’s feet stuck straight out from the shock of the cool water, and she opened her mouth to scream, pausing to fill up her tiny lungs with air.

“The little wavelet for thy voice,” Moya continued as Elizabeth poured water on the baby’s chest a second time. This time the baby found her voice and howled. The MacLiam’s laughed heartily and continued to hold the baby up for the blessing. Moya continued chanting, and Elizabeth continued pouring.

“The little wavelet for thy sweet speech.

The little wavelet for thy means.

The little wavelet for thy generosity.

The little wavelet for thine appetite.

The little wavelet for thy wealth.

The little wavelet for thy life.

The little wavelet for thine health.

Nine little palmfuls for thy grace

in the name of the Triskelle, the Three of Power.”

By the end of the blessing, everyone was soaked through with stream water, the baby was used to it, and she stared up at her parents with curiosity.

“What will her name be?” Moya asked.

“Caitlyn, she will be called Caitlyn,” Aideen said, bringing the wee babe close to her bosom in a motherly embrace. Baby Caitlyn stared wide eyed at her mother, the everlasting bond between mother and daughter sealed within their gazes. Moya and Elizabeth left the happy family and walked home, exhausted. By this time, Elizabeth had forgotten all about the washer woman.

Read Chapter 3.

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Jacob’s Mother is an original publication by Laura Ellis. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law and fair use.