The Queen in Yellow
Irish and Celtic myths and legends, Irish folklore and Irish fairy tales from the Historical Cycle
The Queen in Yellow
Long and long is the history of Ireland and deep her stories, deeper than her rivers which dance gladly in glittering raiment from lake to lake, deeper than the seas in which she is girdled, so deep that much has been buried and forgotten, only to live on as echoing whispers in the ears of those whose slumber takes them far enough into the dreamlands...
But the wise know that sometimes dreams become real and walk the earth—and so it was with the fearful tale of the Queen in Yellow.
Long ago in Ireland, but not long after St Patrick arrived to spread Christianity throughout the land, all was well with the land and the people—perhaps a little too well, for the two High Kings Diarmait and Blathmac, who shared the rulership of Ireland between them, became worried that there would soon be too many mouths to feed!
They called a council at Tara with all of the lesser kings and lords, and they also summoned the Saints of Ireland, who were the wonder-workers deemed to be successors to the druids, or so it is written in the Life of Saint Gerald of Mayo and in the notes to the hymn Sén Dé.
To this council came the religious man Félire Óengusso, he whose name meant "little raven", and who was then known as Saint Féchín, founder of a monastery in Fore in County Westmeath.
He was known as a mediator and negotiator and was welcomed by all, but even the angels turn their faces away from what happened at that dread council!
Sipping on their fine heady-scented mead and enjoying rich delicacies, the assembled nobility of Ireland spoke of how there had been no substantial wars—since their way of making war involved raiding and challenges between champions, not mass destruction—and the people had been growing in number. Why hardly anyone had even gotten sick for nigh on a century, if you could imagine such a thing!
Soon, they feared, there would be a famine, for the land could not sustain them all! Had there not been strangely cold winters and poor crops within living memory of their fathers?
The two high kings appealed to Féchín and other churchmen, asking them to inflict a terrible plague upon the lesser folk of Ireland, for so long had these men and women sat on their high thrones that they nearly saw themselves as a people apart, and the tales tell that Féchín agreed, although others did not and removed themselves from Tara.
The Lord had smiled upon this land and people, he reckoned, so the Lord could fix the problem. Sure weren't they only going to Heaven anyway?
The working of plagues and diseases had been a strange old mastery of Irish druids and magicians in a line stretching back to the Fomorians, who had known more of such things than anyone before or since.
Whether Féchín devised some prayer for death of his own or more likely used some of those dread ancient arts still held as coveted secrets, or even uncovered some hoard of disease from the elder days of shadow dug up out of a plague-pit, or Tamlaght, is not known, but whatever door he opened, through it walked the Queen in Yellow.
Féchín was the first to die, and die horribly, but he was far from the last. The Queen moved swiftly, passing through locked and barred doors as if they were no more substantial than mist on a cool morning, and all who beheld her face died.
She brought the buidhe conaill or the crom conaill, which means the yellow perishing. It turned the skin yellow like withered stalks of corn, and few indeed were those who survived once they had felt the breath of the Yellow Queen on their lips, most lasting only a few days or a week before the sickness took them.
She was described as a "golden-haired" or "yellow-clad" figure who could be seen moving across the landscape marking those who would die, sometimes as a young girl, other times as a haggard old woman, and lastly as a monstrous... thing with yellow hair, teeth, and eyes.
Soon the plague spread and it spared few. The first to die were those clergy who had worked with Féchín on his murderous spell, and then many of those nobles who had asked for a pestilence. Be careful what you wish for indeed!
By the year 666 AD Ireland did not have two High Kings or any High Kings, but only one Queen, dressed all in yellow. Writing of the time tells us that she favoured the wealthy and powerful with her gifts, as the Annals of Clonmacnoise recount
"the following number of the Saints of Ireland died of it...The second year of Seachnasach. A great plague raged, of which died four abbots at Beannchair-uladh which we today call Bangor, namely Berach, Cummine, Colum, and Aedhan, their names".
Nor did she stay confined to Ireland, but flew across the sea to nearby lands! For Bede writes in his Ecclesiastical History at the time, "a sudden pestilence depopulated the southern coasts of Britain, and afterwards, extending into the province of Northumbrians, ravaged the country far and near, and destroyed a great multitude of men".
The Welsh wrote of her as Fad Felen or the "Queen of the Yellow Plague," related to Gwrach Y Rhibyn, the witch of the mist, a creature that flies in the night bringing pestilence.
Many died in Ireland, and with the passing of the old order chaos rose and rode alongside the Queen in Yellow. Banditry and murder were done when warriors perished in their beds and none stood to defend the weak, so people began to build fortresses, stone walls, banks and ditches to hide behind.
The prayers of many rose to Heaven asking for help and healing, and great monasteries were constructed, holding the wealth and wisdom of the land.
Worse yet was the toll the Queen in Yellow took on the elderly and the Bardic schools, wiping out the collective memories and traditions of the learned classes. This loss of traditional leadership and local knowledge caused more trouble, and brother drew sword against brother, grievous to tell.
Yet even in the darkest night there are stars, for some holy men and women stood against the ravages of the Queen.
Saint Ultan was known as a hero of the time, he famously cared for infants orphaned by the plague, feeding them using cow teats filled with milk—an early form of a baby bottle. The abbot Adomnan claimed that the Irish and Picts in northern Britain were spared the plague due to the intercession of Saint Columba.
A legend from Bohernagore, Ardpatrick in County Limerick, tells of a nameless priest’s encounter with the Queen. He was crossing a hill near a glen as the sun set, when he saw a girl dressed in yellow standing on the opposite bank of a stream.
She asked for his help to cross the water, which he did, before she turned as asked him if he knew whom he had served. He said that he did not.
Then she said, "I am the Queen of the yellow plague." Terrified, the priest fell down and begged her to go back, which she did. Upon hearing about this, people living on the western beplagued side of the hill moved to the eastern side. Marks of their original plots and ditches are still said to be visible on the hill today.
For some the only victory they could claim was survival; Saint Colman of Cloyne fled to an island near Cork, believing the plague could not travel over sea further than nine waves from the mainland.
Soon the Great Silence fell across all of Ireland, the music favoured by the Queen in Yellow, who left empty houses and abandoned fields behind her from one shore to the other before she departed.
The people of Ireland were slow to recover from the horrors of this time, when men and women would dig their own graves and lie down in them, and when the first Viking raiders arrived in Ireland only a hundred and fifty years later they found a land still in mourning.
Few and of lesser skill than their forefathers were the fighting men able to defend the coastlines and the unwalled monasteries which held the treasures and memories of the Irish.
Those kings and chieftains whose lines had survived were fractured and prone to infighting without traditional strong leadership, a weakness the Vikings exploited to the full.
As to the Queen, none know her final destination—perhaps to sleep, perhaps to some other realm, maybe even back to the hell from whence she first emerged.
Let us pray she does not come forth again.
The hill of Bohernagore, Ardpatrick in County Limerick is marked on the map below!
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