"It is refreshing to read in a book by a woman on medieval women that not all clerics hated women and that not all men were oversexed villains consciously bent on exploiting women. Bitel challenges not only the medieval Irish male construct of female behavior, but she is also courageous enough to question constructs of medieval women invented by modern Irish medieval historians."—Times Higher Education Supplement "Lisa M. Bitel's extraordinary excavation of pre-modern women's lives . . . is useful and fascinating. . . . Male-authored medieval texts provide access to prevailing gender ideologies and at the same time reflect anxieties about how these ideologies were threatened by the productive reality of women's lives. . . . As Bitel shows in her beautifully written account, early Ireland witnessed a wide range and flexibility in gender relations."—Nancy J. Curtin, Lingua Franca "This book disperses the shadows in an obscure but important landscape. Lisa Bitel addresses both the history of women in early Ireland and the history of myth, legend, and superstition which surrounded them. It is a powerful and exact book and an invaluable addition to our expanding sense of Ireland through the eyes of Irish women."—Eavan Boland, author of In a Time of Violence: Poems "An overview of this kind is not an easy undertaking. . . If by provoking the specialists Bitel gives an impulse to the indispensible groundwork, she fully deserves our gratitude."—Doris Edel, Utrecht University