Cailleach

Joining the show in season four are Nathaniel Parker as Agravaine, as well as guest stars Gemma Jones as Cailleach and Phil Davis as a sinister Circus master.

Exclusive: Syfy Picks Up Fourth Season of Merlin 2011

It formerly contained a nunnery: hence the name of Inch – Cailleach, or the island of Old Women.

Rob Roy 2005

Inch – Cailleach is an island in Lochlomond, where the clan of MacGregor were wont to be interred, and where their sepulchres may still be seen.

Rob Roy 2005

Thence the fleet ran across to the Lewis, whence it proceeded on a southerly course by Rona, into the Sound of Skye, and brought up at the Carline, now the Cailleach, Stone, in Kyleakin or the Kyle of Hakon.

Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time or, The Jarls and The Freskyns James Gray

Ben Cailleach and the other high tops were shimmering.

Mrs. Miniver 1939

Among the Highlanders of Scotland the last corn cut at harvest is known either as the Old Wife (Cailleach) or as the Maiden; on the whole the former name seems to prevail in the western and the latter in the central and eastern districts.

Chapter 45. The Corn-Mother and the Corn-Maiden in Northern Europe 1922

In the island of Islay the last corn cut goes by the name of the Old Wife (Cailleach), and when she has done her duty at harvest she is hung up on the wall and stays there till the time comes to plough the fields for the next year’s crop.

Chapter 45. The Corn-Mother and the Corn-Maiden in Northern Europe 1922

Again, just as in Scotland the old and the young spirit of the corn are represented as an Old Wife (Cailleach) and a Maiden respectively, so in the Malay Peninsula we find both the Rice-mother and her child represented by different sheaves or bundles of ears on the harvest-field.

Chapter 46. The Corn-Mother in Many Lands. § 2. The Rice-mother in the East Indies 1922

Now there are parts of Scotland in which both an Old Wife (Cailleach) and a Maiden are cut at harvest.

Chapter 45. The Corn-Mother and the Corn-Maiden in Northern Europe 1922

The following general account of the custom is given by a careful and well-informed enquirer, the Rev.J. G. Campbell, minister of the remote Hebridean island of Tiree: “The Harvest Old Wife (a Cailleach).

Chapter 45. The Corn-Mother and the Corn-Maiden in Northern Europe 1922