Chasing the Cailleach

A Quick-Fire Q&A with Stuart McHardy

Join us as Stuart McHardy, author of Scotland's Sacred Goddess, takes part in our series of quick-fire Q&As!

What is a quick-fire Q&A?

We have our interviewee pick a number at random and we ask them the general question listed next to it.

Shortly after we switch to asking book-specific questions, to give you a brief insight into our wonderful writers and their books.

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What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

If you're going into creative writing, always start out with what you know. Base your writing on what you actually are sure of.

If you're doing more the kind of stuff I do, which obviously sometimes it drifts into story, but for the more kind of non-fiction type writing, basically try and set yourself, not so much targets, but a procedure. You know, if you're going to try and do something, set aside specific times, specific days and stick to that. And don't overdo it. Give yourself however many hours or whatever you think is right, but always stop, stop regularly.

But the key thing I think for any book is know what your ending is. Because if you know where you're going to finish, then you'll know when you're finished. Because it's easy to get caught into writing something and then just go on and on.

I would say the key thing is start off with your ending.

In what ways have you changed as a writer since writing your first ever book?

That's a difficult one.

Obviously I've changed as a person because it was a long time ago!

I get asked a lot actually, how do I write? And I have to basically say I don't know. I just start and I know where I'm going to finish and then it's done.

But I think that's because over time, and that's now 40 books I think I've had published plus God knows how many articles. I think what has happened is that I've just stopped worrying about it. And I don't believe in writer's block, I don't think that exists. I think that's just people being self-indulgent.

I wouldn't say become blasé. But you definitely, don't worry about it anymore.

I would say that that's the main thing: I just got used to doing it.

People seem to think that it's a big deal but I don't, maybe just because I've been doing it for so long.

If you could invite three famous, famous guests to dinner, dead or alive, who would they be?

Mark Twain, Paul Robeson and Robert Burns.

Where is your happy place?

Home, I suppose. I like being at home.

And I like where I live; we moved down to the costa del Forth from the city.

I used to have to every so often get away from the city and get into the hills, just to clear my mind.

But living by the harbour, I'm on the beach most days and it's just glorious.

What is something people wouldn't know about this book just by reading it?

Well, one of the things is that the whole approach to this book ties in with what I'm teaching at university, which is a thing called ‘geomythography’.

And the one thing that I didn't emphasise in the book, but I'm very, very aware of, is that even since I finished it, which isn't that long ago, I keep finding new material.

There is so much stuff out there and I believe there is an awful lot more to be found not just in Scotland, but in general. Partly a combination of landscape analysis and all the rest, but it's also partly to do with an upsurge in matriarchal studies, driven by, you know, modern feminism to a great extent, but there's very interesting work going on in places as diverse as Korea and Germany.

The fact that there is this worldwide growth of interest in the figure of the goddess and what she represents. Like for instance in Ireland, a whole new movement has sprung up since basically the shaming of the Catholic Church and, you know, the abuse scandal.

There's a lot of women who are basically looking to rebuild spirituality, a sense of spirituality for themselves and they're going back to the same type of material that I have.

So there is a kind of worldwide growth of awareness of this type of material.

And the book just didn't have room to cover that.

How long has this book been in the works for?

On one level, this book has been in the works for about 40 years.

Another level, three, because I was actually asked to write this book by an archaeologist pal of mine. He said, nobody's ever put together all this stuff about the Cailleach. Could you do that? And I thought, well, nobody has.

So in a sense, I see this book as the beginning of something rather than the end of something.

The actual project is quite recent, but the research behind it has been going on since at least 1974.

Is the finished book what you expected when you first started writing it?

No, and that's partly because of the nature of the information, and because the information has never been collated before it is necessarily very diverse.

I am attempting to impose a form of order on it that's maybe not the right way of doing it.

So in a sense, its shape is different from what I expected. And I wouldn't say it's totally amorphous, but it verges on the amorphous. It also at times gets very repetitive because of the information. For instance, one site can give you about three different angles and you're putting the different angles together. There's stuff in it that crops up time and time again.

And it's also been quite noticeable that since finishing it, I'm finding new material.

If the book could have any other title, what would it be?

Hunting the Cailleach or Chasing the Cailleach.

Because when you're dealing with something that apparently has a great deal of material that ties in to what was once belief, it's very much a pursuit. I mean, it really is. It is investigative.

And yeah, I would say Chasing the Cailleach would be quite a good title for it.