The rest of the picture of Brigit is made up of the legends and stories about St Brigit in which it has been assumed that there are elements of an underlying pagan deity.
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.
Although there is some controversy about it, the Cogitosus life (7) is now thought to be about a century earlier than the so-called first life of Brigit, Vita Prima Sanctae Brigitae (Vita 1)(8). This makes it a very early text and it is distinguished by being the first hagiography (life of a saint) in Hiberno-Latin, although two lives of Patrick and one of Columbus also belong to the 7th c. Perhaps it was successful as a propaganda exercise and the lives of Patrick and Columbus were hurriedly composed to compete with it. So the early Christian church may have appropriated the goddess Brigit and dressed her in Christian clothes - although underneath, so to speak, she remained a pagan goddess - in order to win over the pagan Irish who loved Brigit so much. Certainly Cogitosus does not give an account of a real person although she had lived only a hundred years before. His Vita is made up of the many miracles she is said to have performed and stresses both her faith and her virginity. But it is also possible that she was a living person, a Christian woman called Brigit who was either a reincarnation of the goddess or was seen to be so by the Irish people.
We have seen little so far that depicts Brigit as a goddess of fire and the sun apart from the reference to ‘Caelestis Brigantia’, the folk etymology connecting Brigit with a fiery arrow, and her association with boars - all rather tenuous. In the lives of the saint, however, images of fire and sun abound. In Cogitosus’ Vita we hear the famous story of her hanging her cloak on a sunbeam, apparently a motif borrowed from an apocryphal Continental story about Christ as a child:
“As she was grazing her sheep in the course of her work as a shepherdess on a level grassy plain, she was drenched by very heavy downpour of rain and returned to the house with her clothes wet. There was a ray of sunshine coming into the house through an opening and, as a result, her eyes were dazzled and she took the sunbeam for a slanting tree growing there. So, she put her rainsoaked clothes on it and the clothes hung on the filmy sunbeam as if it were a solid tree.”
The sun and fire are particularly
stressed in the 8th c lives of the saint which were based on older
sources and may reflect lore relating to the goddess Brigit.
The life of St Brigid in the Book of
Lismore, which is generally the same as Colgan’s Tertia Vita and
the life in the Lebar Brecc
(9) connects her strongly with them
both. A wizard prophecies, on hearing the sound of Dubthach’s
chariot, that Dubthach’s bondmaid Broicsech will give birth to a
daughter “conspicuous, radiant, who will shine like a sun among
the stars of heaven.” Later a holy man sees a flame and a pillar
of fire coming from the house where Broicsech, pregnant with Brigit,
is sleeping, and after she is born, the child Brigit is asleep in the
house one day when her mother has gone milking and the neighbours
behold it ablaze “so that one flame was made thereof from earth
to heaven.” When they went to rescue her they found that nothing
was burnt.
Later, when Brigit is a young woman
and goes to take the veil from Bishop Mel, a fiery flame rises from
her head to the roof-ridge of the church “and it came to pass
that the form of ordination was read out over her.” Bishop
Mac-caille declared that a bishop’s order could not be conferred
on a woman but Bishop Mel replied that he had no power in the matter
“That dignity has been given by God to Brigit.” So Brigit
became an archbishop and appointed bishops herself. Her soul was said
to be “like a sun in the heavenly kingdom” and at Doomsday
she will rise “like a shining lamp in completeness of body and soul”.
The Life of Saint Brennain in The Book of Lismore asserts that Bríg (10) was his own sister and that her foster-father used to see her countenance “as it were the radiance of the summer sun”. The hymn ‘Brigit Be Bithmaith’ (11) begins with a powerful invocation which describes her as the sun-:
“Brigid, excellent woman,
Flame golden, sparkling,
May she bear us to the eternal kingdom,
(She), the sun, fiery, radiant!
Yet it must be said that it was common for saints to be associated with fire and sun imagery. The Life of Ciarán of Clonmacnois in the Book of Lismore also gives the story of a wizard who prophecies from hearing the noise of the chariot, “the noise of chariot under king,” that Ciarán, who is in the woman’s womb, will be a mighty king and “as the sun shineth among the stars of heaven, so will he shine on earth in miracles and marvels that cannot be told.” On the night of Brenainn’s birth the bishop Eirc saw a wood under one vast flame, and Patrick as a child was able to produce five sparks of fire from the five drops of water trickling from his fingers and thereby vanquish a flood and make the fire blaze once more. What we are seeing here is a general association between the sun, fire and beings of the Otherworld or of supernatural powers. This is in keeping with the observation that the word for 'god' in many Indo-European languages stemmed from IE deivos which is connected etymologically with the verb div, dyu,' to shine', indicating that early IE thought connected divinity with luminosity. However, this imagery is applied to varying degrees and Brigit does have it heaped upon her, so to speak, while Columbus, for instance, has almost none of it, at least in the Book of Lismore.
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.
“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.
Although in the time of Brigid there were twenty servants of the Lord here, Brigid herself being the twentieth, only nineteen have ever been here after her death until now, and the number has never increased. They all, however, take their turns, one each night, in guarding the fire. When the twentieth night comes, the nineteenth nun puts the logs beside the fire and says: “Brigid, guard your fire. This is your night.” And in this way the fire is left there, and in the morning the wood, as usual, has been burned and the fire is still lighting.
This fire is surrounded by a hedge which is circular and made of withies, and which no male may cross. And if by chance one does dare to enter (and some rash people have at times tried it) he does not escape the divine vengeance. Only women are allowed to blow the fire, and then not with the breath of their mouths, but only with the bellows, or winnowing forks....
At Kildare an archer of the household of earl Richard crossed over the hedge and blew upon Brigid’s fire. He jumped back immediately, and went mad. Whomsoever he met, he blew upon his face and said: “See! That is how I blew on Brigid’s fire.” And so he ran through all the houses of the whole town, and wherever he saw a fire he blew upon it using the same words. Eventually he was caught and bound by his companions, but asked to be brought to the nearest water. As soon as he was brought there his mouth was so parched that he drank so much that, while still in their hands, he burst in the middle and died. Another who, upon crossing over to the fire, had put one leg over the hedge, was hauled back and restrained by his companions. Nevertheless the leg that had crossed perished immediately with its foot. Ever afterwards (while he lived) as a consequence he was lame and an imbecile.” (12)
