10/07/2026
Cailleach Dales Ponies
Some names are chosen. Others find you. Cailleach was one of those names.
In Scottish and Irish folklore, the Cailleach is the Hag—ancient, wild, weathered. She belongs to the mountains, the storms, the bare trees and the cold darkness before spring. She is not delicate and she's not meant to be. She's not a gentle grandmother figure. She's wild nature. She is the landscape after the leaves have fallen, the mountain beneath the storm, the cold wind that strips everything back to what is true, and the darkness before spring. She represents the part of the natural cycle that is necessary, but not necessarily comfortable.
When I chose “Cailleach” as the registered prefix for my Dales Ponies, I knew I wasn't simply choosing a word. I was choosing something that spoke to a part of myself that I have only come to understand with age. For those that know me, you will know why this resonates....
Something in me resonates with the Hag- not because I see her as ugly or something to be ashamed of, but because I recognize her in myself. I am the Crone- I have been weathered by life, carved by grief and shaped by heartbreak and loss. I have crossed mountains I never asked to climb, and lost people whose absence became woven permanently into the fabric of me.
The years have taken things from me. Youth. Softness. Perhaps some of the beauty I once recognized in myself. But they have also left something behind.
Strength- but not the kind of strength I ever wanted, the kind you develop because there is no other choice. The kind that comes from surviving the things that were supposed to break you and from learning to carry yourself when there is no one else but you….. from discovering that you can bend, break, rebuild and still become something whole again.
Maybe that is why I find myself somewhere in transition, here in the landscape of late autumn, before the season of the Cailleach. There is still softness there, the golden light, the brilliant colour and beauty everywhere you look. But there is a knowing in the bones that the Cailleach’s winter is at the doorstep. The air has changed. The trees are letting go. Everything is becoming quieter, barer, more honest. Autumn stands on the threshold of winter.
And I think that is where I am now in life….soft beneath the armour, weathered, but not diminished, and older, perhaps, but carrying a different kind of beauty. And maybe that is what draws me to the Cailleach. She is old, wild, weathered and formidable. She belongs to the mountains, the storms, and to the ancient places where things are shaped by wind, stone and time. She doesn't need to be delicate to be beautiful. She doesn't need to be young to have value. She has endured. And there is something profoundly beautiful about that.
I also see these qualities in the Dales Pony. A pony who is strong, hardy and intelligent with an enduring beauty that isn't fragile.
So Cailleach became more than a name. It became a reflection of something I recognize in myself and something I admire in my ponies. It is a personal tribute to the beauty that can emerge from hardship—and a reminder that even after the hardest seasons, something new can take root, grow, and become a dream you never knew you were waiting for.
