St. Brigid of Kildare; a few notes on Ireland's second patron saint

 A chairde,

Today is the Feast of St. Brigid of Kildare, patron saint of Ireland, second only to Patrick and the first actual Irish-born saint. You'll see her name as Brigit or Bridget, also Bride (St. Bride’s, the church in Fleet Street, London, is dedicated to her, for example); the Irish is Bríd. She is said to have died on February 1, 524, in her early 70s. That would put her birth in the middle of the Fourth Century, about the time (we can't be very certain) of St. Patrick's missionary activities in Ulster and Connacht.

To put this in a bit wider perspective, in the year 451, the pagan Germanic tribe of the Franks invaded Gaul as far as the Somme River (which is as far as the Imperial Germans got in 1914, come to think of it), and in the year 496, they were baptized en masse into the Catholic Faith (most Germanic tribes serving Rome at that time were Arians). The island just to the east of Ireland was still Britannia in those days, though fast collapsing into petty pagan Germanic kingdoms that eventually evolved into what's now England. So, St. Bríd lived a long time ago, indeed.

She was born in Faughart, it is said, near Dunalk in what's now the northeasternish County Lough. Her mother a slave, and both mother and daughter may well have been influenced by either the roaming St. Patrick or his disciples. In any event, she was a Christian from early on. Her pagan father found her difficult, as she was always helping the poor and giving away his goods, even his sword, which he foolishly left unattended in his chariot. (I can't imagine he'd let the beggar keep it.) Her father, Dubhthach, sold her (and her slave mother Brocca) to a Druid, for the Draoi had spoken in her favor, telling the father not to punish her, for he foresaw (as druids did) that she would be one of Ireland's greats, a woman marked by the gods. Her new master treated her very well; no doubt she was taught much in the way of language and poetry, and a great deal of the legends of the ancient Celts. 

This old story is more significant than many realize. St. Brigid's legend contains no animosity between pagan Ireland and the Christian Faith, and indeed, Ireland is unique in not having early martyrs to the Faith, i.e. Christian killed by the pagan Irish. Irish Christians were martyred by Christian British raiders (in Patrick's own lifetime) and of course by the Christian English throughout the 800 years of their occupation of Ireland (and also by pagan Vikings, during their heyday, as the movie The Secret of Kells illustrates all to graphically).

• But how Christianity was adopted by the Irish is one of those mysteries that will remain that way: mysterious.
  
• Irish Christianity can be said to have developed in a sacred "dream time", as did the Traditional Latin Mass. No true records exist of the early development of either.
  
• There was no Irish Constantine nor Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, nor Clovis of the Franks, imposing the Faith by force of arms.
  
• By the time we have a primarily historical Ireland, the island is Christian, and the druid schools, as court poets and bards and lawyers and doctors, maintain their place until the Elizabethan conquest, a 1,000 years later.
  
• (For details, I refer you to the book: The Christian Druids: On the Filid or Philosopher-Poets of Ireland by John Minahane.)

But there's a lot to all that, and to St. Brigid's era. For example, Ireland's third patron saint, St. Colm Cille, or Columba – who was born (521) about the time Brigid died in 523 – in 575 participated in a political/legal/constitutional convention at Druim Cett in the northeast of Ireland (he was THE northern saint, and the great missionary to what is now Scotland). At the convention, the politics involved settling the relationship of Scottish kingdom of Dalriada (i.e. Irish-Celtic people who settled in what's now southwest Scotland, eventually creating the medieval kingdom of Scotland) to mainland Ireland. But Columba also famously "saved the druids" at same the assembly, as well, granting them various legal rights. Usually, they're called "poets" in old histories, though there's no doubt who they really were. So you can see that within the lifetime of Naomh Bríd herself, and a little more, half the lifetime of St. Columba, how Ireland slowly had become Christianized and how the pagan Irish intellectuals (the druids) were maintained after the country became mostly Christian. Surely St. Brigid was an essential part of that conversion.

Although said to be born in the north, she settled in Leinster, in Kildare (Oak Church) and founded a double monastery, one that had both men and women. It seems quite possible that it had been a great pagan sanctuary of the Celtic Goddess Brigit, and St. Brigid "converted" it into a major Christian shrine. If that is what happened, then in doing so she'd be following Pope St. Gregory the Great's (pope from 590 to 604) teaching to convert pagan shrines into Catholic churches, if possible, and doing so 70-80 years before Gregory reigned.

A sacred flame was kept alight at Kildare, tended by the nuns and monks, until (of course, who else?) the Norman-English invaders stomped it out. (The Church of Ireland cathedral there now was originally built in the 13th century by the Normans. I've not been in it; the old Catholic cathedral in Armagh, now Church of Ireland, as well, was depressing enough; it does have a pagan god idol, though, sitting in a corner: I said to it, "Bhuel, bíonn tú anseo fós, ar aon nós". And at least it was never Vatican II "wreckovated".)

Anyone of Irish cultural background knows St. Brigid's importance, from being invoked at a woman's giving birth to being patron of beer to lighting fires in the hearth to holy art, for her special straw crosses adorn many a wall in Ireland, usually inside but even outside, as well. (I used to make them for Irish-American festivals, but today is the day to do it.) She's definitely the embodiment of the strong-willed Irish womanhood, and is a natural ecclesiastical version of the famous Irish women, from pagan Queen Maebh down to the Grainne O'Malley, the Connacht "pirate queen" who corresponded with Queen Elizabeth Tudor.

This prayer to Naomh Bríd is from the famous Carmina Gadelica:

I am under the shielding
Of good Brigit each day;
I am under the shielding
Of good Brigit each night.
I am under the keeping
Of the Nurse of Mary, *
Each early and late,
Every dark, every light.
Brigit is my comrade-woman,
Brigit is my maker of song,
Brigit is my helping-woman,

My choicest of women, my guide. 

*"Nurse of Mary", Irish legend says she was the Blessed Mother's midwife.

I've always remembered this simple prayer below, and only in Irish; this is the first time I've seen it translated:

A Bhríd, a Mhuire na nGael
Translation:  Brid, Mary of the Gael.
 
A Bhríd, scaoil tharam do bhrat
Translation: cover me in your cloak
 
Agus coinnigh faoi do chumhdach mé
Translation: and protect me
 
Go mbeidh mé leat i bhflaitheas Dé
Translation: until I am with you in God's heaven.

• (A note attached says: The Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians in California Wishes to Thank Melanie O'Keefe from Division one in Orange Co. CA who made this page possible.)

Raghn again:

Much more could be said of St. B. And Ireland today, a narcissistic, plastic sort of consumer place just coming out of strict lockdowns, needs her indomitable spirit more than ever. But then we all need such daughters of God, such mothers in the Faith, as that little girl sold long ago to an old druid, back in the dream time.

An Préachán