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Brigit's Forge Website Brigit the Saint |
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Brigit's Miracles and her Connection With Ale Brigit's Connection with Water Brigit: Virgin, Mother, Spinster, Lesbian Brigit in the Kitchen and Commanding Kings Brigit Associated with the Number 8
The Lives of St
Brigit It could be, however, that St Brigit never existed since there is no historical evidence to support that she did. The earliest reference we have comes from around 600 AD in an origin story for the Fotharta sept or clan, where it is claimed that she was one of the sept and is referred to as ‘truly pious Brig-eoit’, and ‘another Mary’. Dáithi Ó hÓgáin records that the rise of her cult was a result of the rise to power of a new sept in Leinster, the Uí Dhúnlainge. As the wife of the clan leader was a member of the Fotharta and his brother was the bishop of Kildare it was in his interest to promote the cult of Brigit.(5) The Vita Brigitae of Cogitosus is thought to have been written no later than 650 AD, at the request of the Kildare church which is described in it as “the head of almost all the Irish Churches with supremacy over all the monasteries of the Irish and its paruchia extends over the whole land of Ireland, reaching from sea to sea.” According to another scholar the leaders of Armagh were promoting St Patrick and had allied themselves with the ruling families of Meath in an attempt to dominate the whole island.(6) The promotion of Brigit and the see of Kildare rivalled this.
We must look elsewhere to overlay the thin layers of evidence that begin to build up into the vibrant and glowing picture of Brigit as sun goddess which is generally accepted today. Another layer is made up by Gerald of Wales’s account of his visit to Kildare in 1185. Back to top “In Kildare, in Leinster, which the glorious
Brigid has made famous, there are many miracles
worthy of being remembered. And the first of
them that occurs to one is the fire of Brigid
which, they say, is inextinguishable, but that
the nuns and holy women have so carefully and
diligently kept and fed it with enough material,
that through all the years from the time of the
virgin saint until now it has never been
extinguished. And although such an amount of
wood over such a long time has been burned
there, nevertheless the ashes have never
increased.
This account points
to a more ancient site where there may have been
a temple of the goddess Brigit in which an
eternal flame was tended by 19 priestesses and
dedicated to women’s mysteries, forbidden to
men. The power and veneration of the site is
certainly attested to by the fact that the flame
was kept alight for so many centuries. It was
extinguished in 1220 by Bishop Henry of Dublin
in an attempt to stamp out pre-Christian
practises, and the abbess was raped and unable
to continue in her role. However the flame was
eventually relit and all continued as before
until the Reformation of the 16th c when the
flame was put out and the monastery destroyed.
All that remained of the flame house next to St
Brigid’s Cathedral in Kildare was the
foundations, until recently when it was rewalled
to show where it had been. However, in 1993
Sister Mary Minehan of the Order of Brigidine
Nuns (established in 1807) relit Brigit’s flame
in Kildare. Brigit's Miracles and Her Connection with Ale
The many miracles
St Brigit performs are reminiscent of those of
Jesus. She turns water into ale and stones into
salt; she makes a little food become enough to
feed all the people present; she performs many
healing miracles; she looks after and heals
lepers and the poor, giving away her father’s
wealth, even his sword. This accords with her
divine status, in a sense raising her to the
same level as the son of God - the goddess
Brigit was, after all, the daughter of the
father god, the Daghda. It is interesting to
note that two of the miracles recount her
turning water into ale - unlike Columba who
turns water into wine - and there is one miracle
in which she ensures enough ale for 17 churches
even though there has been a dearth of corn and
malt.
It is interesting to connect this emphasis on ale with the folklore view of the Irish poet as someone who could not make a song when sober. Intoxication is connected with a state of being excited or elated beyond the normal and the imbibing of certain liquids is one way to achieve this. There may be an echo behind these folklore traditions of ancient Irish ideas that poetic skill was obtained by drinking or eating substances which contained imbas forosnai, knowledge which illuminates. Many ancient texts connect poets with the word meisce which can mean ‘in a mental ferment’ as well as ‘intoxicated’, and often describe them as being heated or having inflamed faces while composing. (15) Back to top But ale is also connected with the giving of kingship and more than one scholar has suggested that Brigit is a Christian version of Queen Medb of Connacht, whose name means ‘she who intoxicates’.(16) Brigit is said to have been born at Faughart which had associations with Medb (the Cooley Peninsula may be seen from the old hilltop graveyard at Faughart where there is a well dedicated to Brigit). Medb has mythic associations with the goddess of sovereignty; in the stories she has many lovers and it appears that sexual union with her confers kingship upon them. But also in the old Irish tales kingship is sometimes conferred by drinking dergfhlaith, red ale or red sovereignty (there is a pun on the Irish word for ale, laith, and sovereignty flaith) so it is possible that Brigit’s connection with ale points not only to her functions as a mother goddess of plenty and fertility and a goddess of poetry, but to her function as sovereignty goddess. It has been convincingly argued that the Welsh word for king, brenin, originally meant consort of the goddess *Briganti and that its first use was in reference to the male leaders of the Brigantes. The title occurs on a Continental Celtic coin (17) which depicts a veiled female head on one side and a bull with laurel crown on the other. The goddess of sovereignty very often has two guises - that of a hag and then when the young hero agrees to have sexual union with her, that of a beautiful young woman. There are tantalising traces of this dual nature in lore relating to Brigit. Lady Gregory says of the goddess Brigit that she had two faces, one that is young and comely and one that is old and terrible. In Scottish folklore Bride, the bringer of Spring, is closely associated with the hag, the Cailleach of the stark Winter, and some people assert that they are two sides of the same being. More than one of the lives of the saint describe an incident in which Brigit plucks out her own eye rather than marry - by this act making herself not only unattractive, but also haglike (although she is able to heal herself by using the waters of a well.) Although the Irish scholar Dáithi Ó hÓgáin asserts that this motif was borrowed from Continental hagiography about St Lucy, another saint connected with light, it is still interesting that it is associated with Brigit. Back to top We have looked at Brigit's connection with fire and the sun, but she is also connected with water. Celtic goddesses are often connected with rivers and Brigit is no exception. The British goddess Brigantia of the Brigantes of northern Britain was linked with river and water cults and her name is remembered in the Braint on Ynys Môn (Anglesy), the Brent in Middlesex and rivers in Munster in Ireland. Many sacred wells are dedicated to her and are still used and venerated today. At Faughart, her birthplace there is not only a well but also a sacred stream which now has the stations of the cross positioned along it. At Liscannor on the Burren a pilgrimage to the well used to be undertaken at Lughnasad, this has now moved to August 15th. At Kildare there are two wells dedicated to her - one still very much in use, the other, by the side of the road, is rather neglected although a few rags on the trees behind it give evidence that it is still being visited [in 1999].
Eyes
were
connected with both the sun and with water (the
sun on and in water was seen as a powerful
healing agent), and not surprisingly many wells
had the reputation of curing eye problems.
“And you,
cupbearers,” said Lugh, “what power?” Brigit is here able
to use the destructive power of both fire and
water. And having this power, she also has the
ability to give protection against death by fire
and water. The Genealogy of Bride from Scottish
tradition refers to this ability of Bride to
give protection from the threefold death
described in early Irish literature. The Descent of Bride
The genealogy of the
holy maiden Bride, Brigit: Virgin, Mother, Spinster, Lesbian
Although the
goddess Brigit is, as we have seen, a mother
goddess, in the life of the saint she is
decidedly single and her virginal state is
stressed, particularly in the life by Cogitosus.
Christianity, while restricting and degrading of
women in many respects (there was a debate in
Macon in 900 as to whether women had souls or
were like animals and the single vote which
tipped the outcome in women’s favour was said to
have been cast by the Celtic bishops) did give
them an alternative to having to undergo the
rigours of childbirth and the rearing of many
children. Brigit’s stepbrother remarked to her
one day that “ill-used was her eye” that it
would not lie next to a man on the pillow. Her
father decided to marry her to a man she did not
like and rather than do so she plucked her eye
out so that it hung on her cheek. Her father and
brothers were horrified and declared that she
would never have to marry anyone she didn’t want
to, whereupon she put her eye back in its socket
and it was healed. This story illustrates that
Brigit was her own woman, not willing to submit
to marriage and the dominance of a husband.
...she sent for
Conleth, a famous man and a hermit endowed with
every good disposition through whom God wrought
many miracles, and calling him from the
wilderness and his life of solitude, she set out
to meet him, in order that he might govern the
Church with her in the office of bishop and that
her Churches might lack nothing as regards
priestly orders. Thus, from then on the anointed
head and primate of all the bishops and the most
blessed chief abbess of the virgin governed
their primatial Church by means of a mutually
happy alliance and by the rudder of all the
virtues. By the merits of both, their episcopal
and conventual see spread on all sides like a
fruitful vine with its growing branches and
struck root in the whole island of Ireland. It
has always been ruled over in happy succession
according to a perpetual rite by the archbishop
of the bishops of Ireland and the abbess whom
all the abbesses of the Irish revere. There is also speculation that she had a lesbian relationship since she was said to have shared her bed with a pupil of hers called Darlugdach. Peter Berresford Ellis, in his book Celtic Women, asserts that she showed intense jealousy towards her in that when Darlugdacha became attracted to a young warrior, she punished her by making her walk in shoes filled with burning coals. Ellis does not cite his source for this and in trying to track it down I have not been able so far to find a published translation of a Life in which the story appears, but the incident is referred to by R.A.S. Macalister, translator of the Book of Invasions of Ireland, in an article in Man 63 (August 1919). His version is this: Brigid had a pupil, Dar-Lugdach by name, who used to sleep with her. The eyes of Dar-Lugdach chanced one day to fall on a certain man, for whom she was smitten with unholy love. Waiting till her superior was asleep, she rose to join him; but she was suddenly oppressed with a great perturbation of mind, between love and fear. In her distress she prayed, and an angel came down with the following counsel, which she followed: To fill two shoes with hot coals, and to walk shod therewith. So the fire extinguished the fire of her ardour, and the pain conquered her pain; and she returned to her couch. On the morrow Brigid commended her, promised her exemption for the future from the fire of desire in this world and the fire of hell in the next; then she blessed her feet, and the burns were healed leaving no trace. In this version, whatever the truth about their relationship, Brigit is cleared of forcing Darlugdach to walk with coals in her shoe as a punishment. I wonder if Ellis actually found this story in Mary Condren's The Serpent and the Goddess, which he does cite, and misinterpreted her when she said "...Darlugdacha was said to be 'Brigit's pupil, who used to sleep with her' and who committed the great sin of looking at a soldier. As penance she filled her shoes with hot coals..." Condren here gives Macalister as her source so presumably she does not intend to mean that Brigit imposed this penance, the 'she' she refers to being Darlugdacha herself. Whatever the truth
may have been about Brigit's private life, what is interesting
here is her universality and the way that people
are moved to speculate about her and, perhaps,
to read into the stories things about her with
which they may identify. In this way she is
brought closer to us, and is able to serve in
many respects as a role-model. A lover of women,
a strong single woman, a woman in happy and
fruitful relationship with a man - she becomes
all things to all women.
Even though a
virgin saint, she still manages to take on the
attributes of a mother. There are stories of her
being the fostermother of Jesus: in Scottish
tradition she is said to have been present at
his birth and to have blessed him with three
drops of water on his brow. The fosterparent was
very important in Celtic society, almost more
important than the actual parents, and commanded
obligations and duties. No wonder it was said
that whatever St Brigit asked for from God was
granted! In another story it is said that in
order to divert Herod’s men away from him so
that he could make his escape to Egypt with his
mother, Mary, she put a crown of candles on her
head and dancing away, led them in another
direction. The motif of this story does not
appear elsewhere in folklore and appears to have
been told to explain why her festival on
February 1st comes before Mary’s on February
2nd. However, the poem Brigit Be Bithmaith
already mentioned actually calls her the mother
of Jesus:- In this perhaps can be seen the influence of Brigit as a mother goddess of the Gaels, finding her way back into the Christian Life of the saint through the words of the poet. Back to top Brigit in the Kitchen and Commanding Kings In keeping with her motherly attributes as nurturer and provider for her people, the stories of the saint show her at homely tasks such as the provision of food and give us as a backdrop not only churches and the land, but also the kitchen. One poem in the Book of Lismore gives Brigit’s request for God to bless the kitchen:
'Mo
cule-se
My kitchen!A kitchen of fair God. We see again in the life of the saint associations with the figure of Brigit as a Celtic goddess of the land, able to grant kingship. Even though this emphasis may have been a cynical and political invention to gain power for the sept, it made sure that echoes of the goddess endured. In one story, Brigit goes to Aillil, the King of Leinster to ask for the sword of Dubthach, her father, and the freedom of a slave. In return she promises him excellent children, the kingship for his sons and heaven for himself. He is not satisfied with that, and asks instead for length of life in his realm and victory in his conflict with the northern half of Ireland. This Brigit grants. When she wants stakes and wattles to build her house at Kildare she sends her maidens to ask Aillil for them. On his refusal she strikes down his horses, takes the stakes and does not release the horses until Aillil agrees to give her a hundred horseloads to build her house. He also fed the builders who built her great house and paid them their wages. In return, Brigit left as a blessing that the kingship of Leinster should be till doomsday from Aillil. This last story is interesting because it typifies Brigit as a strong character who does not tolerate not getting her own way even when dealing with the high king. Her actions are of a goddess dealing with lesser mortals, confident in her superior powers and then generous with her supernatural gifts when she has what she wants. It contradicts what the author of the Life in the Book of Lismore says about her later on: “Now there has never been anyone more bashful or more modest, or more gentle, or more humble, or sager or more harmonious than Brigit. She never washed her hands or her feet or her head among men. She never looked at the face of a man. She never would speak without blushing...” There are other female saints who command because they assume the authority of God, but it is tempting here to see the Christian idea of the perfect woman overlaying the pre-Christian figure of the powerful goddess. Back to top Although some of the stories, like that of her encounters with Ailill, depict her as a goddess-like figure able to grant victory in battle there are others where a different ethos seems to be at work, one in which the avoidance of conflict and war are seen as virtues. Possibly this reflects a moving away from the earlier values of a warrior society into the Christian era. She often appears as a mediator and in one story in the Liber Hymnorum, when two brothers in conflict ask her for her help in battle, she puts a film over their eyes so that they are unable to recognise eachother and thus conflict is avoided. In this depiction she is on the side of peace and promises her protection, not in battle this time, but if weapons of war are abandoned. The 8th century Bretha Crólige (19) (a collection of legal material relating to medical provision) gives a list of 12 women whom the rule of nursing in Irish law excludes (they are instead compensated by a fee being paid to their kin). One category is 'a woman who turns back the streams of war' and a gloss on this states 'such as the abbess of Kildare or the female aí bell teoir, one who turns back the manifold sins of war through her prayers.' Whether or not this duty was ordained in Brigit's time we cannot know, but it was obviously one of the functions of the abbess of Kildare during the years when the sacred flame was tended there. Back to top Brigit's function as a goddess of healing is also documented in the Lives. The blood from a gash on her head heals two dumb women, she brings a stillborn baby back to life by breathing on him. In one rather controversial story in the early life by Cogitosus she helps a young nun who has become pregnant by restoring her to her former state. She restores lepers to health - in one story she sends a leper to bring her some rushes and from the place where he has taken them a well appears; he bathes his face in the water and is cured. There are several connections of Brigit with water and healing, not only in the holy wells as we have seen but also the river she falls into which is stained red with her blood has the power to heal. The water she has bathed in has a similar healing power . It is not uncommon for the Celtic saints to be associated with healing wells (wells are also liminal places where the water appears out of the earth) but unique to Brigit, and reminiscent of Brigit the goddess, is that she had a magical girdle which could heal, and this she gave to a poor woman who came to beg from her so that thereafter the woman was able to make her living from it. This girdle reappears in the folklore connected with Saint Brigit. The Crios Bríde was woven from straw at Imbolc and men and women would step through it three times, kissing it and stepping through it right foot first, as a symbolic act of rebirth in order to ensure health and protection for the year ahead. While doing so they recited the following:
Crios, Crios Bríde
mo chrios,
The Girdle, the girdle
of Brigit, my Girdle, Brigit Associated with the Number 8 Brigit is associated with the number eight in her life in the Book of Lismore. The author emphasises that “On the eighth of the month Brigit was born, on a Thursday especially: on the eighteenth she took the veil: in the eighty-eighth (year of her age) she went to heaven. With eight virgins was Brigit consecrated, according to the number of the eight beatitudes of the Gospel which she fulfilled, and it was the beatitude of mercy that Brigit chose.” Exactly what the significance of the number eight was is hard to say. It may have been simply that it was the number of the beatitude of mercy. Eight is not normally a particularly significant number in Celtic religion. We do find it, however, in the Eight Parts of Man, medieval texts found in Irish and Welsh, which assert that man is made from the elements of the sun, the sea, stone, earth, clouds, wind, the Holy Spirit and Christ, thus signifying human wholeness. It was the eight sons of Míl who invaded Ireland and the ancient Irish and Welsh board games are thought to have had eight opposing pieces on either side. These again convey a sense of eight being a complete and forceful number. Rees and Rees point out that eighteen seems to be a completion of seventeen (a significant number itself, connected with times of transition and division of land) and note that Fergus uprooted the forked tree at his eighteenth attempt and that Maeldúin himself made up eighteen on his Voyage. In Europe of the Middle Ages eight is given as the number of return, soul and body, or reincarnation and we might note that the ability to return seems to be an attribute of Brigit. In our time numerology assigns eight as the number of completion. It is sometimes said to represent the two spheres, heaven and earth, joined and touching, which is reminiscent of the flame seen to come from the house where the child Brigit was sleeping, which joined heaven and earth - an illustration of the liminal imagery connected with Brigit. Back to top In fact there are many associations of Brigit with liminality, with being on the threshold between two places or times. This was a powerful concept in the Celtic imagination since the places and times between the worlds are full of potential, of magic, of power - they are not limited or restricted since they are neither one thing nor the other but are connected to dynamic states of transition. The keywords connected with liminality are, in fact, transition, interconnection, power and dynamism. We might consider nuclear physics when thinking about liminality. Subatomic particles have a dual nature - they may be particles or waves; they exist in a state of dynamic potential, of probability, not certainty. Moreover, to quote Fritjof Capra, “Quantum theory has shown that subatomic particles are not isolated grains of matter but are probability patterns, interconnections in an inseparable cosmic web that includes the human observer and her consciousness.” And again - the properties of matter’s basic patterns, the subatomic particles, “can be understood only in a dynamic context, in terms of movement, interaction and transformation.”(21) We could say, therefore, that in liminal times and states matter is fluid and its shape and form may be influenced by those who observe them. Liminality occurs as I have said, where two times or places or things meet, such as sunset and sunrise, the turn of the seasons, the turn of the century, the millennium. Liminal places are the shore which is neither land nor sea, boats which are neither land nor sea, bridges which are neither one place nor the other - or of course the threshold, which is neither in the house nor outside the house. Stories, an important part of Celtic oral culture, may cast a liminal spell since the characters, events and places in them exist and yet do not exist. Adolescence and the menopause are liminal states, times of transition when one is neither child nor adult, neither mother nor crone. In these states, at these times, in these places one is powerful, unstable and therefore fluid, sensitive to the call of the Otherworld. At Samhain, the meeting of autumn and winter, the veil between the worlds is thin and the dead step through. So at Brigit’s festival of Imbolc, the meeting place of winter and spring, the veil is thin and perhaps the spirits of those yet to be born step through, as the seeds start to germinate in the still hard earth. Brigit is born at sunrise as her mother is stepping onto the threshold carrying a bucket of milk and she is bathed in the milk. She is an intermediary between the king and someone he is about to punish with death in two of the stories. Being unable to eat the druid’s food, she is fed on the milk of a red-eared cow - in other words, an Otherworldly cow. She is the child of a king and a slavewoman; her stepfather is a druid but she becomes Christian. And thus she is between the world of the two religions and becomes a powerful link between them. Back to top
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