Talk:Cailleach

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Good article Cailleach has been listed as one of the Philosophy and religion good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
November 24, 2007 Good article nominee Listed

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Cailleach article.
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[edit] NeoPagan Bias

Once again the neo pagans subvert celtic mythology for their own purposes. This article reads just like the new agey, neo-pagan claptrap you can buy at your local wiccan bookstore. There is little reference to authoritative work to support any of what is written. The section about "the Cailleach" in folklore reads as if people in Ireland and Scotland still believe this. Please add a disclaimer that the "folklore" section is really just a neo-pagan revision of a very thinly attested aspect of celtic mythology. --12.181.190.99 (talk) 17:02, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'm going to be bold and attempt to clean up the dodgier bits here. --Kathryn NicDhàna 20:38, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I did a fairly major rewrite. It could still use some work. Still need to thoroughly vet the links posted by previous editors, and possibly footnote the folkloric bits, though I did include sources in the bibliography. I think there's more Wikifying to do, such as linkage on the festivals. --Kathryn NicDhàna 21:54, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I've done a major overhaul. Deleted the dodgy bits no one else was able to source, and fleshed out the stuff I have good sources for. I might expand this more later, but I figure this was enough of a change to remove the flags. And hey, look at that date above. Perhaps I was unable to resume work on this till the shift to Samhuinntide ;-) --Kathryn NicDhàna 04:07, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I was looking at my family tree and there was a guy called Cailleach Bheur who was a king of Ireland from 642 to 654. I've been trying to find some sources but i've not had much luck yet. - 80.47.123.193 20:39, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

No one mentioned yet that the name Galicia derives from Cailleach. In more detail, the Roman name for this land was originally Callaecia, meaning 'Land of Cailleach'. This is due to the fact that one of the biggest Celtic tribes Romans fought when first entered the country called themselves 'worshippers of Cailleach' (according to Roman chronicles). Callaecia was eventually transformed (by local phonetics) into Gallaecia > Galecia > Galicia / Galiza. There is an internet reference on this (in Portuguese) at http://agal-gz.org/portugaliza/numero0/boletim00nova05.htm There are plenty of references in books and articles, i.e. it's pretty well documented. I'll try to compile the most relevant info on the issue and document it properly, before adding anything to the main article. Still, I think it's important to mention that, in a strange way, there's a People out there whose homeland's name could be roughly translated as 'the land of the worshippers of Cailleach'. --Milesio, 21:36, 2 September 2007 (GMT)

[edit] Good Article nomination

After boldly rewriting, sourcing, and adding pictures to this, I decided to be bold and nominate it for Good Article status in the category of Mythology. If anyone who hasn't contributed substantially to the article would like to participate in the review process, that would be helpful. Or if you think you can further improve the article, that would be great, too.

I vacillate on whether this should be longer. It could conceivably be expanded, and the legends split into Irish and Scottish sections, but I actually like it the way it is now. I think it's a nice little article. If we were to go for Feature status, we'd want to expand it, imho, but for now, I'm interested to see if people think it at least merits a GA. - Kathryn NicDhàna ♫♦♫ 23:18, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Good Article Review

Hello! I am Rudget, and will be carrying out this GA review. I lived in Ireland until I was 9, and I'd heard about the Cailleach, but this has enlightened me more. But getting back to the review (!), it looks great on first appearances. Regards, Rudget.talk 16:12, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Good Article Assessment

This is my assessment of the (current revision) article. Below the assessment are some tips that will help the page even further.

GA review (see here for criteria)
  1. It is reasonably well written.
    a (prose): [reasonably well written, just needs another look over by the nominator] b (MoS):
  2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.
    a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
  3. It is broad in its coverage.
    a (major aspects): b (focused):
  4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.
    a (fair representation): b (all significant views):
  5. It is stable.
    (It is stable, and as it's been solely edited by Kathryn (who has extended quite a bit) I doubt any harm will come to it)
  6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.
    a (tagged and captioned): b lack of images (does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):
  7. Overall:
    a Pass/Fail:

Here is a greater analysis of my review:

  • I can find no original research, but some claims like, and I quote "..Legend has it that if she intends to make the winter last a good while longer, she will make sure the weather on February 1 is bright and sunny, so she can gather plenty of firewood to keep herself warm in the coming months", has no reference provided and was changed by me where Feb 1. was changed to February 1st.
  • All images were appropriately tagged, and (if any?) fair use images were rationalised.
  • Only a few grammar mistakes, most corrected by me.
  • More references are needed, for example in the lead - last sentence (The word simply means 'old woman' in modern Scottish Gaelic, and has been applied to numerous mythological figures in both Scotland and Ireland)
  • If possible use inline citations.
  • All current references provided are reliable and verifiable.
  • Most prose is excellent, some patches though.

[edit] General Comments

There's a few problems that have been described above, like the lack of more sources and some patchy prose, but everything else is good and I am willing to pass this article on the assumption that as Kathryn is the sole editor, these problems will be easily and swiftly recognised and corrected. Congratulations to the Kathryn and all the other editors invovled with the article. Rudget.talk 13:10, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your thorough and helpful review! I think all the places needing sourcing are covered in footnotes already in the article (usually a sentence or two later), but I will add additional footnotes to make it clearer. If I can't find an exact quote in an existing source, the dicdef of "cailleach" I can pull from a Gaelic dictionary. I wrote this in a less dry style than many other articles I work on, but decided to go for it and see what people thought. Others have worked on the article, though not recently. Here and there are sentences that are pretty much the way I found them but, in general, since I started working on it any other edits to the article have been fairly small. This is what it looked like when I first found it: [1]. Thanks again for your work on this. I'll see if I can pull the books out and deal with the additional sourcing some time today or tomorrow. Slán, - Kathryn NicDhàna ♫♦♫ 20:23, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for replying to the comments left by me during the assessment. I see you've carried out all the correction notes I set out. It's nice to see a reviewed article go that extra bit further, thanks. Le gach dea-mhéin, Rudget.talk 12:59, 25 November 2007 (UTC)