¹⁹Ó Crualaoich, Gearóid. "Non-Sovereignty Queen Aspects of the Otherworld Female in Irish Hag Legends: The Case of Cailleach Bhéarra." Béaloideas "Sounds from the Supernatural: Papers Presented at the Nordic-Celtic Legend Symposium" 62-63 (1994-1995): 147-62.
The author writes, "A huge population of the plain people of Ireland was, in those times, effectively beyond the reach of strict pastoral control or orthodox teaching by any church and that population's continued official and consciously - deliberate overall allegiance to Catholicism impinged to only a limited degree on ancestral loyalties in regard to the forces of the native Otherworld realm. These loyalties include in a pre- eminent way, loyalties to the name and the legends and the authority of the Goddess - and more specifically to her Cailleach / Hag persona - in its benign and nurturative as much as in its destructive and threatening forms."
In his book, Ó Crualaoich quotes Mairin Ni Dhonnchadha in the suggestion "that the author of the lament is an historical female poet, Digdi, who for the purposes of poetic composition, identified herself in the poem with the figure of Cailleach Bhearra." (Ó Crualaoich, Gearóid. The Book of the Cailleach: Stories of the Wise-woman Healer. Cork: Cork UP, 2003. 48-52.)