Saint Brigid: 'Steadfastly Worshipped in the Heart'

 

We close the series of posts in honour of Saint Brigid based on the work of Alice Curtayne with the author's own conclusions about the relationship of our patroness with her people. It is one which she sees as having been carried in the heart and best expressed in the humble historic settings of the mud cabin, the Mass-rock or by those on the run from persecution, rather than in grand cathedrals. It is interesting to see that despite associating Saint Brigid with feminism and modernity, Alice Curtayne returns to traditional tropes in the final chapter of her book St. Brigid of Ireland :

It will be conceded that we cannot in Ireland worship the earthly remains of Brigid in any worthy fashion. One may state, without fear of giving offence, that no monument to her in this country expresses in any fitting manner her vast and enduring significance to the Irish race. But in direct contrast to the paucity of her relics, to the silence concerning her in stone, is the profusion of her traditions and the ardent, vehement devotion to her that is being forever proclaimed by the Irish people. The blank absence of the one is as chilling, as the emphatic presence of the other is warm. If her people have not painted and carved and wrought and built in her honour, yet neither most assuredly have they forgotten. And in this respect the cult of Saint Brigid of Ireland is the most sublime offering ever laid at the feet of mortal woman, because with so little material aid or external symbol of any kind, it has burned with such ardour through fifteen hundred years, fed by the spirit only.  

Saint Brigid has never been worshipped in her own land under the loftv dome of splendid cathedrals. Her people’s conception of her has not yet been expressed in marble for the niches of palace walls: nor traced in delicate mosaics; nor painted in glowing frescoes; nor even enshrined in a literature through which genius might exalt her. It is in mud cabins of the rudest description, or beside the Mass-rock in some wind-swept glen, by fugitives in concealment and in flight, in underground caves, or emigrant ships, in the slave-gangs of the Barbadoes, in the basement kitchens of Pagan cities, that she has been steadfastly worshipped in the heart.

 Alice Curtayne, St. Brigid of Ireland, (Dublin 1933). 

 We conclude with a prayer appended to Alice Curtayne's pamphlet St Brigid- The Mary of Ireland:

PRAYER TO ST. BRIGID

Dear Saint Brigid, brilliant star of sanctity in the early days of our Irish faith and love for the omnipotent God who has never forsaken us, we look up to you now in earnest, hopeful prayer. By your glorious sacrifice of earthly riches, joys, and affections, obtain for us grace to "seek first the Kingdom of God and His justice" with constant trust in His fatherly care. By your life of laborious charity to the poor, the sick, the many seekers for light and comfort, obtain for us grace to be God's helpers to the utmost of our power during our stay on earth, looking forward, as you did, to our life with Him during eternity.

By the sanctified peace of your death-bed, obtain for us that we may receive the fullness of pardon and peace when the hour comes that will summon us to the judgement seat of our just and most merciful Lord. Amen.

 

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Saint Brigid: 'Supremely the Saint of Pastoral Life'

 

Over the last week we have seen how Alice Curtayne's book on Saint Brigid has examined our national patroness as a uniquely important figure in early Irish history. But we are going to turn now to the last of the author's three works, a pamphlet called Saint Brigid - The Mary of  Ireland.  The Australian Catholic Truth Society's edition was published in 1936, and reissued in 1960. The text is available to read online here. I have a copy of my own published in Dublin in 1933. The main text is the same but there are some charmingly naive illustrations in the Anthonian Press edition and some extra prayers appended. I will share some of those tomorrow, but today I want to turn to Alice Curtayne's treatment of Saint Brigid as the supreme saint of agricultural life. The author has presented Saint Brigid as a unique personality in early Irish history with unbounded energy, organizational genius and leadership qualities. But her hagiography is also filled with episodes relating to the provision of food. Popular culture, where her feast day was a significant date on the agricultural calendar, has always included a strong acknowledgment of the saint's patronage of agriculture, reflected in traditional iconography which depicts a cow at her feet. Alice Curtayne has little difficulty in reconciling all of the various aspects of Saint Brigid's life from the nun to the farmer. The provision of hospitality was a duty laid upon those in the monastic life and a common trope in hagiography:

 Everyone who came to her doors was entertained. In this lavish dispensing she was frequently disturbed by misgivings of an insufficient supply. Would the butter last out? Or would the beer go round? were the anxieties known to Brigid the hostess. But all earthy feasts come to an end. This great-souled woman always thought the backs of departing guests a sad sight. Did they have enough? And would they be fed tomorrow? were her recurrent troubles. There is an Irish poem ascribed to her in which she is supposed to envisage heaven as a stupendous feast, shared by countless guests and going on forever, replenished from inexhaustible supplies; even a 'lake of ale is mentioned. Though the authenticity of the poem is dubious, the idea is just. It is strictly true of Brigid that her heaven would be a state in which she could have all the pleasures of hospitality without its solicitudes.

Although modern scholars have confirmed that this poem was written some centuries after the time of Saint Brigid, Curtayne goes on to say:

Her visions were as characteristic of her as that notion of heaven. Professor Gardner, extending a thought of Shelley, has remarked somewhere that "the mystic's representation, the language that he uses, must all be coloured by his previous education and mental equipment". It is, indeed, highly interesting to observe that when the saints attempt to describe their visions they invariably end by describing some daily scene, but to which they attach an allegorical meaning...How characteristic in this respect were the visions of Brigid. In that one described in the Lebar Brecc, she "saw" ploughmen and sowers, clear shining streams, oats springing up, a furrowed field, all farm animals: sheep, swine, dogs. These are the things on which Brigid's eyes rested every day.

For Saint Brigid is supremely the saint of pastoral life. She is the genius of our Irish homesteads, and every farm is in a sense her shrine. She is the tutelar spirit of our meadows and gardens. But within the iron gates of industrial cities, she is a stranger. All her legends are about farm life, milking cows, making firkins of butter, calling home the sheep in the rain. She was at home in a dairy. The legends evoke discomfitures that are very familiar: the dairymaid's confusion when a superior worker sneers at her butter, as insufficient in quantity or indifferent in quality. Brigid was a notable butter and cheese maker, and her home-brewed ale was famous throughout the land. After her profession, even when she was Mother Abbess of thirteen thousand nuns, she still spent part of each day at those rural occupations. We read of her coming in from shepherding, her garments saturated with rain; or supervising the reapers from dawn to sunset in the harvest fields about her convent settlement; or contentedly busy over her stores of honey and wholesome brews...

Alice Curtayne, St. Brigid - The Mary of Ireland, (Dublin 1933), 18-19.  

 

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Brigid and the Bishops II

St Brigid Feeding the Poor by Imogen Stuart

 

We are continuing today with the relationship between Saint Brigid and the Irish bishops. Yesterday we saw that Alice Curtayne believed the relationship was one of equals, and noted the lack of tension between the saint and those in episcopal authority. She then goes on to recount some instances of miracles worked by Saint Brigid which involved bishops. The opening episode is particularly interesting as its shows her unafraid to speak her mind in the presence of senior male clerics:

Brigid is credited with an epigrammatic mode of speech and a certain imperiousness of manner, even with bishops. Once a bishop, with some companions, came to  her convent to deliver a sermon. They had come a long journey and greeted her with the news that they were hungry.“So are we hungry—for instruction,” she answered. “Go into church and speak first, and then you shall eat.”

Other miracles offer more standard hagiographical fare. The miraculous provision of plenty is one of the most common tropes found in the lives of medieval saints. These miracles testify to the faith of the saints, to their trust in God's providence and to their status as God's favoured servants. Saint Brigid's reputation in hagiography is one of generosity, as the following episode recounted by Alice Curtayne testifies:

Once seven bishops together went to visit her, and they have gone down into fame as the Seven Bishops of Cabinteely. Do you suppose that Brigid was disturbed by this invasion of the episcopacy? It would not appear so. She sent one sister to the cows that had already been milked twice that day; and another sister to a larder that was as deplenished as Mother Hubbard’s; and another sister to an ale-vat that was drained dry. Yet the bishops feasted adequately, for food was a commodity Brigid never failed to find for her guests.

 The monastic virtue of hospitality is also on display in this miracle involving Bishop Bron of Killaspugbrone, County Sligo. 

There is a charming story told of one Bishop Bron, who, journeying to Brigid with some companions, lost his way. Finding themselves stranded in a wilderness at nightfall, they were forced to sleep in the open. Then all were comforted by the same dream. They thought (as they drowsed in exhausted and chill discomfort) that through the darkness and wild weather they beheld the lights of Brigid's settlement and that, stumbling to it, they saw her come smiling to the cashel gates to lavish upon them the hospitality for which she was famous. First the feet of the footsore guests were washed and then, installed in repose, warmth, security, they were given good food in that delightful atmosphere of solicitude that was peculiarly Brigid’s. So restful was this dream, the pilgrims suffered not in the least from their night’s exposure. They were even refreshed, and with daylight they hopefully resumed their trudge. And lo! at a turn of the road, their hearts soared to see the familiar figure in white driving towards them. Brigid, having been supernaturally warned, had come out to rescue them from their plight.

 Bishop Bron featured in another miracle involving Saint Brigid, which Alice Curtayne does not recount in her book, but which you can find on the blog here.  

Alice Curtayne ends her chapter on Brigid and the Bishops with this tribute: 

Brigid’s achievements and power, when contrasted with her total lack of training, stand out most singularly. In this display of creative genius, she had plainly divine gifts.The bishops did not wait for a decree of canonisation to acclaim what was so manifest to all men. But when it was discovered that she possessed, too, a genuine discernment of souls, people began to flock to her from all sides. Not the bishops only, but all the great in the land, pagans and Christians, and the humble, too, sought her out.

Alice Curtayne, St. Brigid of Ireland (Dublin, 1933). 

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Brigid and the Bishops

 

First Edition of St Brigid of Ireland by Alice Curtayne

'Brigid and the Bishops' is the title of Chapter IV of Alice Curtayne's biography St Brigid of Ireland.  In recent years much has been made by the supporters of women's ordination of the episode in her hagiography where, receiving her profession as a nun, the bishop accidentally read the office of episcopal consecration over her. In 1934 an Australian reviewer of St Brigid of Ireland wrote 

This study of Saint Brigid is written in the new method of hagiography of which the author is one of the pioneers among the English-reading public. 

and so, I was interested to see how Alice Curtayne approached the idea of 'Brigid the Bishop'. She begins her chapter by noting:

 It was the practice of Celtic Christianity that a bishop only could receive the vows of nuns. When Brigid became a nun, then, there began her first friendship with bishops, which was to develop later into a kind of fellowship with the episcopacy—one of the most curious features of her life. Ten or twelve years before her birth, Saint Patrick had already established the Irish Hierarchy under the primacy of Armagh. That hierarchy appears to have immediately discerned Brigid and received her, without hesitation, on terms of equality. Of struggles with ecclesiastical authority— sorrowful commonplace in the lives of later saints —there is no trace in Brigid’s career...

 ... Although Patrick himself is not to be counted among the bishop preceptors, counsellors and friends who thronged about Brigid, let it be remembered that these included the Apostle’s closest friends. Brigid was intimate with Patrick's intimates, so that even though she was not personally acquainted with him, the statements in the old “Lives” representing them as of one mind and heart, still remain strictly true.

After recounting Saint Brigid's close friendship with Bishop Erc of Slane, depicted in hagiography as one of Saint Patrick's earliest and most important converts, and noting that 'a great many of Brigid's chariot journeys were undertaken under Erc's direction', Curtayne then grasps the nettle of Brigid's own status:

 The importance assumed by Brigid in the eyes of the episcopacy has given rise to at least one absurd legend, which must be dismissed. It is sometimes said that Brigid “appointed” Conlaeth to Kildare, almost as though she had conferred episcopal jurisdiction upon him. Worse, it is even stated in one Irish “Life” that Brigid herself was a bishop, the anomaly being explained by the fact that at her profession the rite of episcopal consecration was read over her in mistake; it is added with circumstantial detail that Maccaille protested to Mel, saying a bishop’s order should not be conferred on a woman, and that Mel answered it was clearly the work of God in this case and should stand! 

It is true that Brigid’s chief foundation, Kildare, preserved for many centuries a double line of succession of abbesses and bishops; and it is equally true that for long the nomination of the Bishop of Kildare appeared to be subject to some extent to the Abbess’s approval. But of course Brigid was not a bishop, nor was it in her power to confer episcopal jurisdiction. What emerges from this legend is what gave rise to it: her strong-mindedness, and the deference ungrudgingly accorded her by the episcopacy. She was the admired friend and the counsellor of bishops. What more natural than that the old Irish writer should assume that she was even a bishop herself, although it happened by accident!  

Now, of course modern scholars would offer a fuller analysis of the governance of Kildare and set the story of Brigid's own episcopal claims in the context of later historical developments, such as the struggle between Kildare and Armagh for primacy in the Irish church. But Alice Curtayne was right to point out that hagiography depicts Saint Brigid as having enjoyed a friendship of equals with the bishops, even though there is no evidence that she or any other woman actually exercised the office of bishop.

 

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"What is Brigid to us, or we to Brigid, that we should seek to know her?"

 

St Brigid by Leo Whelan

Yesterday, Alice Curtayne left us with the question "What is Brigid to us, or we to Brigid, that we should seek to know her?"  It was one she posed in the 1930s but one which remains current in the 2020s and below is her answer:

But there is a whole series of surprises - so great as to be akin to shocks - awaiting those who set out on a determined rediscovery of Brigid. The first shock is suffered in finding out her triumphant, her everlasting, her placid modernity. She presents an eternal example of feminine achievement, such as to astonish the most extreme of our modern feminists. We have never approached it. For she asserted herself against a set of circumstances so formidably adverse to self-expression that the present times can provide no parallel to them. The clearer grows Brigid's story, the more splendid becomes her effort. We find that, after all, we have nothing to add to her accomplishment in the domain of human endeavour and that - in the best sense - she can still lead womankind, as she led it fifteen hundred years ago. 

 Isn't it interesting to see Saint Brigid associated with feminism and modernity in 1935? Alice Curtayne affirms here her view of the uniqueness of Saint Brigid, the woman and of her achievement. And she is not done yet:

When Brigid had overcome the adverse circumstances which would have confined her, she used her freedom in a way that will greatly surprise every student of the present day who seeks to piece together her story. Already, in that remote fifth century, we find her doing all those things which the world shouts in our ears as the discovery and boast of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With independence of mind and energy, Brigid undertook the organisation and the defence of women, and thus became the saviour of the feminine ascetic movement in Ireland. But she was much more than a mere organiser. She was a literary and a cultural inspiration. Foundress of the famous school of Kildare, she was a promotor of craftsmanship. There were artists turning out croziers, chalices and shrines, and illuminating manuscripts because of Brigid's self-emancipation. She had a circle of friends who represented that which Christian history calls a school of mystics, and which the modern world might describe as a salon. But with all this activity, she remains the patron of agricultural life, for throughout her whole career she was never disassociated from cows and sheep and the labour of the fields. In all those spheres of action where we are gropingly trying to reconstruct at the the present day, Brigid was a pioneer. 

Alice Curtayne, 'The Rediscovery of Saint Brigid', The Irish Monthly, Vol. 63, No. 745 (Jul., 1935), pp. 412-420. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20513775  

Whilst one could certainly argue that there is a hyperbolic element in Alice Curtayne's record of Saint Brigid's achievements, nevertheless it remains quite a tribute to a woman, written by a woman in the 1930s. As a male contemporary reviewer, Aodh de Blacam, noted "Miss Curtayne's Brigid is a great nun - great in soul, great in labour, great in her achievement and influence." For me she is a much more compelling figure than the feminist goddess of our own times. 

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Rediscovering Saint Brigid

St Brigid by P.J. Tuohy 1924-25

 

I am staying today with Alice Curtayne's 1935 article on 'Rediscovering Saint Brigid'. I find this paper particularly intriguing as I struggled to appreciate her perception that the memory of Saint Brigid had faded. Saint Brigid was very much a part of the nineteenth/early twentieth century Celtic Revival's rediscovery of the Irish saints as a whole. Canon O'Hanlon, for example, had published a substantial biography of her in 1877 under the title Life of St. Brigid, Virgin: First abbess of Kildare, Special Patroness of Kildare Diocese, and General Patroness of Ireland. Thirty years later Augustinian Father J.A. Knowles published his Saint Brigid, a work running to almost 300 pages. In addition, Cardinal Moran, who had obtained a relic of Saint Brigid's tooth from Cologne for the Brigidine sisters in the 1880s, included her in a series of pamphlets on all three of the Irish patrons published by the Australian Catholic Truth Society in 1905. There are many other examples of poems, articles and stories from the popular religious and secular press which might also be cited. So, I think it is fair to say that in the fifty years before Alice Curtayne's article appeared Saint Brigid had not been overlooked or forgotten. Now in fairness, as we saw in yesterday's extract, she begins by saying 'I do not say that Ireland had forgotten her, but we were very ignorant of her, and very unconcerned about our ignorance'. She goes on to say:

Saint Brigid! To the majority of our people she is still only a name: a beautiful name, because it is musical and has antiquity.There is a vague notion current that it connotes strength of some kind, so it is cheerfully passed on to children and the donors are content. To others, that name resounding like a knell from our remotest past, is backed by some vague abstraction suggested by the artist: Saint Brigid is a shadowy personage (garbed in red Tuohy supposed!), grasping a crozier, or holding a miniature model of a church, and gazing serenely into vacancy....

 As Curtayne sees it, the deficiencies in iconography are only a part of the problem:

The person of Saint Brigid is still obscured from view in the mists of ancient history, and it is really only by an extreme effort of mind that people can believe there is reality behind that name: that Brigid really "lived, moved and had her being," that she had a distinctive personality with which it is highly important we should restore communion. It is important to us a nation. Sometimes it seems that our only way of survival lies through this restoration of the Celtic Christian mind.

They err who imagine that this personage of our early history cannot bring us any enlightenment in our modern complexities. It is supposed that, whatever her reality may have been, she is now too remote from us, too severed by the gulf of centuries and the vicissitudes of history, to hold any practical guidance for us in our present welter. The general attitude, never expressed - naturally- but quite clearly implied, is: "What is Brigid to us, or we to Brigid, that we should seek to know her?"  

 Alice Curtayne, 'The Rediscovery of Saint Brigid', The Irish Monthly, Vol. 63, No. 745 (Jul., 1935), pp. 412-420. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20513775 

So, it seems that for Alice Curtayne it was not that the name of Saint Brigid had been forgotten, rather it was the reality behind that name. In tomorrow's posting we will look at some of the answers the writer offered to the questions she has posed here.

  

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Saint Brigid's Day Holiday

 

Today in Ireland is the official Saint Brigid's Day holiday as former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was only too pleased to remind us in a tweet made here on January 30, 2026:

I signed the order establishing this new public holiday. It clearly states that it is both St Brigid's Day and Imbolc venerating both an Irish christian saint and our own ancient new year when we had our own gods and godesses (sic). National identity doesn't have to be monotone or singular. It can be multi-layered and pluralistic. In fact, that's more authentic to who we are and who she was as a saint godess (sic). Éire ildaite.

 This extraordinary statement perfectly illustrates the culture war around Saint Brigid which seems to have taken on a sharper edge this year. I first started blogging back in 2009 and am conscious of a real sea-change of late. Back then the notion that Saint Brigid was really a Celtic goddess whom the Church had hijacked was confidently asserted as established and unquestioned fact. It wasn't until I started to investigate the evidence on which these claims rested for myself that I realised just how dubious the foundations actually were. I have been aware over the last few years that female academics have begun to challenge the goddess, I even heard one say in a radio interview that we had been 'sold a pup' about Saint Brigid's supposed identification with a goddess. Yet Mr Varadkar seems to be totally unaware of the recent advances made in the understanding of early medieval Christianity and of the re-examination of the historical saint Brigid, instead claiming that the 'saint goddess' is the more authentic. I find it interesting that 'progressive' people, supposedly wanting female voices to be heard and taken seriously, prefer to ignore the scholarship of modern Irish women academics and instead cling to discredited Victorian thinking about goddesses.  

The idea though that Saint Brigid deserved a public holiday in her honour predates our modern culture wars. Indeed, it was something writer Alice Curtayne was aware of in the early 1930s. In her article 'The Rediscovery of Saint Brigid', published in the Irish Monthly she wrote of the various ways in which interest in our national patroness had been reawakened:

..in recent years there has been a curiously spontaneous revival of the cult of Saint Brigid. I do not say that Ireland had forgotten her, but we were very ignorant of her and very unconcerned about out ignorance. Then it was as though our national consciousness became suddenly uneasy. Articles, poems, plays and even books about Brigid began to blossom out here and there.She was painted by two of our artists  and their different conceptions provoked a welcome discussion. Her relic was solemnly brought back from Portugal and enshrined in a church dedicated to her near the capital city. The demand arose on all sides to have her feast-day declared a national holiday, like that of Saint Patrick. 

Alice Curtayne, 'The Rediscovery of Saint Brigid', The Irish Monthly, Vol. 63, No. 745 (Jul., 1935), pp. 412-420. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20513775

How sad to see that now that this demand has finally been met, it is to honour a quite different 'Brigid'  than the historical saint, loved and venerated by the Irish people over many centuries. 

 

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Saint Brigid of Ireland: "She stood in splendid isolation, without prototype, without peer."

 I am marking Lá Fhéile Bríde, the feast day of Saint Brigid, in 2026 with a wonderful tribute by writer Alice Curtayne from her 1934 study Saint Brigid of Ireland. In the extract below, taken from the opening chapter, the writer emphasizes both Saint Brigid's presence in the Irish landscape and the uniqueness of her presence in early Irish Christianity as a whole. The majority of our early medieval Irish female saints are shadowy, elusive figures, but not Brigid. Wishing everyone the blessings of the feast! 

Saint Brigid, one of the Great Three, standing between Patrick and Columcille, arose in that period where certainty first begins in Irish record. She is at that boundary on which abut all our history, literature, art, architecture and topography. The strength of Irish devotion to her is known if only because our Kilbrides, Tubberbrides and Kilbreedys so insistently speak of it. Not even the unbeliever who has the smallest acquaintance with Ireland can miss it, so enormously is that name written across the landscape. The ancients affixed it to permanent things like running water, townlands, capes, that should witness to her forever. It was as though her contemporaries re-named every landmark,re-cast the whole description of the island in order to commemorate her. That devotion is distinguished too by a certain freshness of enthusiasm. There is still preserved in its texture an element of surprise, a delight, such as men might experience on beholding dawn for the first time. Her name has never become an ordinary name, but still vibrates in the ear like the blast of a trumpet. All this is universally known but it is not in the least understood. It is not understood because with the passage of time we have lost sight of the shining singularity of Brigid. It would not be exaggeration to say that her appearance was like a new revelation of Christianity..... 

The great fact to bear in mind about Brigid and the women of 450 is her difference from them. She stood in splendid isolation, without prototype, without peer. When she arose it was as though with a decisive movement she pulled back a heavy curtain shrouding the sordid scene. And at that gesture all the other actors on the stage spring to their feet to gaze, transfigured, at a dazzling landscape where they beheld for the first time Freedom and, beyond it, Vision.

 

Alice Curtayne,  Saint Brigid of Ireland, (Dublin, 1934). 

 

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Alice Curtayne and Saint Brigid

As we approach the feast of Saint Brigid, 2026, I have been re-reading the work of Irish Catholic writer Alice Curtayne, born in County Kerry on November 6, the Feast of All the Saints of Ireland, 1901. She died on August 9, 1981, in Saint Brigid's own county of Kildare. Over the course of her eighty years Alice Curtayne produced a number of books on the Irish saints, including individual titles on all three of our Irish patrons plus two volumes on Irish saints for children. I intend over the coming days to share extracts from three of her writings on Saint Brigid, all published in the 1930s:

 (1) Saint Brigid of Ireland - a 1934 book on Saint Brigid's life and cultus 

(2) The Rediscovery of Saint Brigid - a 1935 article published in The Irish Monthly 

 (3) Saint Brigid- The Mary of Ireland - a 1936 pamphlet published by the Australian Catholic Truth Society. 

 Ninety years on I find her work charming, still fresh and often thought-provoking. As Ireland in 2026 appears to find the unattested claims of a fictional flame-haired feminist goddess more compelling than the documented cultus of our national patroness, I am cheering on Alice Curtayne as she writes: 

It is easy to point to the affinity between certain of the heathen legends and episodes in the life of Brigid, but that affinity does not alone suffice to destroy Brigid’s historical truth. As a matter of fact the vitality of the Christian saint annihilates the dim concept of the pagan divinity. The abstraction fades before the brightness of the concrete. The warm humanity of Brigid that shines through the gossiping legends, that flaming humanity, alternately vehement, angry, tolerant, benign, completes before the eye of the mind a living personality that is the direct antithesis of the druids’ cold and unconsoling myth.

Alice Curtayne, St Brigid of Ireland (revised edition, Dublin, 1955), 104. 

I am sure she would have been heartened to know that the current generation of scholars have comprehensively undermined the foundations on which the claims of Brigid the goddess rest, even if popular enthusiasm for the pagan divinity remains unaffected. I look forward to sharing some more of Alice Curtayne's reflections on Brigid the saint each day until the octave of her feast. 

 

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Saint Brigid: Greatest of Irishwomen

We conclude the series of posts in honour of the feast of Saint Brigid with an account from the Catholic Press in Sydney of the translation of her skull relic from Lumiar in Portugal to Killester in County Dublin. Canon O'Hanlon's full account of the history of this relic can be read at the blog here. In the 1929 newspaper account below, which seems to be based on the sermon preached on the occasion by the Very Rev. E. Cullen, C.M., D.D., President of St. Patrick's Training College, Drumcondra, we have a sketch of the history of the Killester area and its elusive former nunnery. We see the saint placed in the context of her patronage of Leinster but also as one of the three national patrons, indeed as 'the central figure in Ireland's wonder-working triad'. There were some very lofty hopes expressed on the occasion of this translation in 1929, looking back almost one hundred years later I am not sure we can say that they were ever realized.

THE MARY OF THE GAEL.

SAINT BRIGID. 

GREATEST OF IRISHWOMEN!

All the roads of Leinster led to Howth road, Clontarf, on Sunday, January 27, when his Grace Most Rev. Dr. Byrne, Archbishop of Dublin, performed the ceremony of enshrining a relic of St. Brigid in, the beautiful new church at Killester, dedicated to the Patroness of Ireland. There was High Mass at noon, at which the Archbishop presided, and the Very Rev. E. Cullen, C.M., D.D., President of St. Patrick's Training College, Drumcondra, preached. 

A Golden Link.

This in an epoch-marking event, and one that is likely to stand out in our ecclesiastical history through the ages to come. It is, indeed, an event to stir the hearts of Irish Catholics the world over — a landmark in the annals of the Faith in Ireland, said Dr. Cullen. The sacred relic — a bone of St. Brigid 's head from her famous shrine at Lumiar, in Portugal — spans the wide gulf of fourteen hundred years to form a precious link between our age and the Golden Age of our country's history, when Christianity in Ireland was nearing its full meridian splendour. 

A Proud Distinction. 

And what Cill-dara of St. Brigid was to our forefathers for nearly half a thousand years after Brigid's death, while it still held her holy relics — a place of national pilgrimage — St. Brigid's Church, Killester, should in time become. Of all the churches in Ireland to-day it alone possesses an actual fragment of the sacred body of our beloved Patroness, our own Brigid, the Mary of the Gael. What a singular privilege, not alone for Killester and the parish of Coolock, but for the Archdiocese of Dublin. 

Killester's Tradition. 

This new church of St. Brigid is but carrying on a particular veneration of the national Patroness, for which the neighbourhood of Killester was noted in earlier times. Far back in the ages of the Faith there was a church of St. Brigid adjoining the narrow by-road, known now as Killester Lane, the fragmentary ruins of which may still be seen in the old graveyard lying between the Malahide and Howth roads. 

Beyond the facts that it was an appendage to Christ Church Cathedral in the days of St. Laurence O'Toole, and passed at length into Protestant hands — like the ancient St. Bride's in Dublin city — little is known of its story. 

Brigidine Nunnery. 

That there was also a convent here in the distant past, probably a pre-Reformation nunnery under the rule and patronage of St. Brigid (as there was in the neighbouring parish of Swords), may be inferred from a name, 'The Nuns' Walk,' by which a secluded path near the old church Is still known. Though D"Alton who wrote his history of County Dublin ninety years ago, says nothing on the subject of a convent at Killester, the Ordnance maps mark a building 'Convent in ruins' in the immediate neighbourhood. 

Claimed by Leinster. 

Although born within the ancient division of Ulster, and regarded as a national figure even while she lived, Brigid has always been claimed by the people of Leinster as peculiarly their own. Thus in a very ancient Gaelic poem she is addressed as the 'princess of the men of Leinster,' while the hymn composed in her honour by St. Columcille alludes to her as the 'dear saint of Lagenia.' St. Ultan of Ardbrechan, who also sang her praises in elegant verse, leaves no doubt as to his own belief that there were special grounds for the claim when he exclaims: 'I shall be saved in all things by my Leinster saint.' Later writers have found a cause for this claim in the theory that Brigid's father was a chieftain of Leinster, whose principal fort was in Kildare, and that the birth of the saint took place at Faughart, north of Dundalk, during a visit of the family to that district. 

The Three Patrons. 

Be this as it may, the fact remains that Brigid is primarily a national saint, the central figure in Ireland's wonder-working triad — Patrick, Brigid, and Columcille. Patrick, the Apostle had planted the standard of the Faith in every part of the island when Brigid entered on her career, and to her as Abbess of Kildare he entrusted the duty of consolidating the marvellous victory over pagan error he himself had lived to achieve. When Brigid, in turn, was called to heaven, the entire land (which up to the coming of Patrick had been the 'Insula Sacra' of Druid worship) had been won for the Risen Christ; and Columcille was already a stripling of fair promise. 

Beloved by All.

Unlike the two others, Brigid lived her entire life in the island of the Gael. Her missionary labours brought her into every province and into close association with the mightiest as well as the lowliest in the land. In her cell of the Oak, the Kildare of our days, she was consulted by bishops and visited by kings, and yet was so. sympathetic and accessible that hunted slaves threw themselves into her arms for protection, while the simple poor ran to her for counsel and comfort in their everyday troubles Little wonder she was so personally beloved in her own time, or that the generations have crowned her spiritual queen of the Irish race, the Mary of Ireland. 

Her Name Cherished. 

Not alone did the fraternity of the olden poet-saints of Ireland — Fiaac, Nathfriach, and Ultan; Columcille, Brendan, and Brogen Cloen; Ninnidh and Kilian of Inisceltra — write each a metrical life of the Patroness, or compose a hymn in her honour, but local rulers assumed her name. Under the pious title of O'Maoilbrighde the 'majestic chiefs of Bredagh' in the West figure in song and story. This name, .according to Dr. O 'Donovan, was in later times shortened to O'Mulbride, and finally anglicised MacBride. 

Others linked her name to their own, and had their children christened Giollabrighde, signifying the Servant of Brigid; while priests and monks took the name in religion of Brigidianus or Calvus Brigitae, the Shaveling or Tonsured of Brigid. Thus, and in a hundred other ways, has the memory of the great St. Brigid survived as an intimate and tender part of the lives of her people down to our own times.

The shrine in which the relic of St. Brigid will repose in Killester Church is modelled on the exquisite shrine for St. Patrick's Bell, was designed by Mr. Robinson, the architect of St. Brigid's, and made by Messrs. Gunning.

Catholic Press, Thursday 21 March 1929, page 10.

 

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Saint Brigid, Prototype of Religious Life

 

We continue the series of posts in honour of Saint Brigid with a late nineteenth-century article which reminds us that Saint Brigid was first and foremost a nun. I am not sure of the identity of the person behind the pseudonym 'Iota', but s/he has used episodes from hagiography and the lessons from the Roman Breviary to present a picture of Saint Brigid as a consecrated virgin who embodies the monastic virtues of humility and chastity. This piece reminds us too of the days when there were so many vocations to the religious life in Ireland that Irish nuns were to be found serving missions all over the world. The final paragraph sees the writer defending the religious life to those 'who look upon it with eyes other than the eyes of faith' (perhaps a reminder that this piece was written in predominantly Protestant Australia), and asserts the value of those who are dedicated to a life of prayer in averting the wrath of God:

ST. BRIGID.
By Iota.

She once was a lady of honour and wealth,
Bright glow'd on her features the roses of health ;
Her vesture was "blended of silk and of gold,
And her motion shook perfume from every fold.

Behold her ye worldly! behold her ye vain!
Who shrink from the pathway of virtue and pain
Who yield up to pleasure your nights and your days,
Forgetful of service, forgetful of praise;
Ye lazy philosophers, self-seeking men,
Ye fire-side philanthropists, great at the pen;
How stands in the balance your eloquence weigh'd,
With the life and the deeds of that high born maid ?

Gerald Griffin's, Sister of Charity.

Last week, and the week before we were occupied in reflecting upon the life of St. Patrick. Now these reflections on St. Patrick would be incomplete were we not to say some thing about two Saints who were intimately connected with him — St Brigid and St. Columba of Iona. This week then we shall treat of the life of St. Brigid, or, as our fathers loved to call her, the Mary of Ireland. At some other time we shall treat of the life of St. Columba.

From the days of St. Brigid there has streamed out upon Ireland such a radiance of chastity as alone would be argument sufficient of the sanctity of Saint Patrick's teaching. The innumerable number of nuns, who through the length and breadth of Ireland, devote themselves to the service of God, and to the service of God's poor aye, the innumerable numbers of young virgins who devote themselves to God, who quit their homes, their kith and kin, that, in far foreign lands they' may minister to the poor, and the lowly, the sick, and the infirm, the widow and the orphan — all, all those faithful daughters of Innisfail, look back to St. Brigid as to their model, their patron, their example, their guide, their mother.

Who, then, was this glorious St. Brigid? She was lineally descended from Eocad, brother to Con of the hundred battles, monarch of Ireland. She was born at Fochard, near Dundalk, about the year 453. When St. Brigid was a mere child, her father beheld men, dressed in white, pouring oil upon her head. This was considered a foresign of her future sanctity. In her youth she selected Jesus Christ, her heavenly spouse, as her portion. Consequently when on account of her extreme beauty and comeliness she was anxiously sought after in marriage, we need not wonder that she asked Almighty God to take away from her that beauty which caused her so much annoyance and perplexity. Her prayer was heard, and, as we read in the Roman Breviary, suddenly one of her eyes becomes inflamed, and all her beauty and comeliness forsook her. The result of this miraculous change was that the heralds of the prince who sought the hand of our saint left in disgust.

 

Although St. Brigid was intimately acquainted with St. Patrick, it was not from him she received the religious veil. St. Maccaille gave it to her in one of the earliest established convents in Ireland. She travelled into every portion of Ireland, founding religious houses as she passed, and doing good unto all. In 480 she founded her greatest house, at Kildare, or, as it is called, the Church of the Oaks. This became the largest and most celebrated convent that ever existed in Ireland. So large, so extensive was it that a holy ancorite named Conlath was consecrated Bishop to perform the pontifical duties which became necessary in it. The countless numbers of young girls and young widows who thronged around St. Brigid for admission to her convent proclaims trumpet-tongued the perfect conversion of Ireland to Catholicity.

St. Brigid's most distinguishing virtue was her excessive humility —the foundation of all other virtues. We have it related that she not unfrequently fed with her own hand the convent cattle. The habit of her order was white, and for centuries after her time her rule was the only one observed in the convents of Ireland.

Almost innumerable were the miracles performed by St. Brigid during her lifetime. At the time of her religious profession she touched with her hand the wooden altar step, and forthwith it that was arid and dry became green and fresh, and with the miraculous revival of the wood was restored to St. Brigid all her former beauty and comeliness. During her lifetime she cleansed the lepers, restored health to the sick, sight to the blind, and perhaps the most extraordinary miracle of her life was one performed in favour of a Bishop. A certain woman accused Broonus, a Bishop, of being the father of her illegitimate child. St. Brigid made the sign of the Cross on the lips of the infant, and forthwith the babe spoke and declared, who was its father. Thus, through St. Brigid, was the good name of a holy Bishop restored. St. Bridgid, too, was endowed with the gift of prophecy, she even foretold the time of the death of St. Patrick, whom she reverently called the father of her soul.

There is a dispute regarding the time of the death of St. Brigid, as well as regarding the place of her burial. The annals of the four masters say she died in 525. This is the most probable date. Some authors contend that her remains were buried on one side of the altar in the Cathedral church of Kildare, while others hold that her ashes commingle with those of St. Patrick at Dourepatrick [Downpatrick]. We do not desire to enter upon this controversy, yet we hold with the Roman Breviary that she and our glorious Apostle, St. Patrick, or rather their ashes, rest awaiting a glorious resurrection in the same tomb at Downpatrick.

Many writers who look only at the severe side of conventual life, and who look upon it with eyes other than the eyes of faith, consider it excessive and unnecessary. I differ very widely from these writers. The religious life, the conventual life, if you will, isolates the individual professing it from all others. By their vows they break the ties that bind them to the world. Friendship and family disappear as far as they are opposed to the object of religious life, namely, union with God. The religious is a person who, though dwelling upon earth, is entirely consecrated to the things of heaven. Property, that powerful link which unites individuals and families, and makes them cling to a fixed place as trees cling to the earth from which they receive life, does not exist for a religious. Yes, the religious, for the love of Jesus, renounces everything. Yes, the religious is, by the vow of poverty, freely made, condemned to possess nothing. The vow of chastity deprives the religious of family. The vow of obedience does not permit the religious to select one place of abode in preference to another. The religious is an exception to all others in everything save the love of God. The life of a religious is wholly absorbed in God, and when as in the time of Noe, God seeing that the wickedness of men was great on the earth, and when God feels inclined to say as he said then in the day of his wrath that it repented Him that He had made man, when he feels inclined to say again, I will destroy man whom I have created, what is it that restrains His hand? It is the prayers of the holy monks or the prayers of the holy nuns who, like unto their prototype, St. Brigid, pour forth acts of adoration, love and reparation, to the throne of the most high God, before Jesus, ever present in the Adorable Sacrament of the Altar.

IOTA.

Perth, July 14, 1896.


"ST. BRIGID." The W.A. Record, 18 July 1896.

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Sweet Saint Bride

 

We continue the series of posts with a Scottish view of Saint Brigid, or Saint Bride as she is called here, from 1905. I am struck by how the author (despite her archetypal Scottish name) includes a distinctly English perspective and compares Saint Brigid with the great northern English female saint, Hilda of Whitby. By making a clear distinction between 'Hilda the Teuton' and 'Bride the Gael' the writer reflects racial stereotypes of hard-headed, practical Saxons and dreamy, otherworldly Celts common at this time. The Celtic twilight fantasies of 'Fiona Macleod' also make an appearance. Since the posts in this series have all been drawn from the archives of the Australian and New Zealand press, I am surprised by the claim that Saint Brigid's Day is 'a holy day to few or none outside her own country'. On the contrary, these newspaper accounts testify to the feast of the Irish patroness being very much alive on the other side of the world:

SWEET SAINT BRIDE
By Jessie Mackay
 

Paul said, and Peter said. 

And every saint in heaven said 

That none had a fairer face 

Than sweet Saint Bride.

Thus, or all but thus, runs the legend beneath a late Academy picture in London; a picture of Saint Bridget, who was also the adored Saint Bride of Scotland, and the Isles, Saint Bride of Bothwell,  patroness of the wild Douglases: Saint Brigid or Brigitta, venerated at many shrines both in France and Germany. So much is attested by place, name, and by chronicle; and in the luxuriant maze of old Celtic tradition, Saint Bride bore higher titles yet, being called by her own people, "Mary of the Gael,'' or "Mary of Ireland"; while in medieval French  books of church service she was styled without limitation, '"Altera Maria,"' the Other Madonna. 

 Under the immense mass of legendary miracle attached to the name of St .Bridget, there lies undoubtedly the reality of a life renowned, devoted, and pure; a life which, judging by its lingering impress on time, has been called the very female flower of Celtic Christianity. It is impossible to think of her thus without a curious pathetic linking of her name with that of the later-born Hilda of Whitby, who bore the same high relation to the Teutonic Christianity of Britain. Types of race they were, in their lives of like aim, but unlike result. It is beyond doubt that Bride the Gael was the greater in her lifetime, the more widely known and revered; but it is the work of Hilda the Teuton that has come down in a clearer light of history to us. A hundred bards tuned their lyres to the lays of heaven at the voice of Bride; far and wide they bore the new songs of peace in that wild age; but they long since passed to their own, leaving but echoes melting in the nameless sea-winds of the west; whereas the one home-abiding English singer, reared in the house of the home-abiding Hilda, has made Whitby immortal; after 14 hundred years, the name of Caedmon is yet green. Loving, high-souled, mystical, the spirit of the Celt dispersed itself, not vainly, but intangibly, amid the western sea winds; the spirit of the Teuton remains, the emblem of possession.

Certain facts, however, seem authenticated in the life of this remarkable woman. She was born, it appears, about the year 453, very shortly after the landing of the English in Kent. Her father was one of the petty princes of Ulster. During that century, Ireland was converted to Christianity by the preaching of the Scottish-born Patrick, who requited a youth of slavery in pagan Ireland by a life of strenuous mission work in that country. In the transition time Bride was born, and as a child threw her whole heart into the new faith; it is said she was but 14 when she took the monastic vow — for already the corrosion of asceticism was eating into Continental Christianity, and was borrowed into the Celtic faith. Yet one cannot imagine that it was by austerity and seclusion that the girl won so complete an ascendancy over her own people, and moreover made her name a lamp of light throughout Western Europe. "Bridget" means, it will be remembered, the Bright Shining One. Rather let us suppose Bride a winsome leader, a tireless toiler in the vineyard, replete with all that unaging charm that still renders the women of her country the most enduringly fascinating women on earth. That fervent oratory, that winning address, that personal magnetism must have been hers in fullest measure, backed up by a power of organisation at least as great as that of Hilda of Whit by. No less than four religious houses for women were founded by her, the earliest of these, the famous Kil-Dara, or Kildare, being the first of its kind in Ireland. Here, as in the others, Bride must have wrought hard as teacher, leader, expounder of all good and gentle crafts and manners of living. Well did she succeed among the wild clan-folk, for in succeeding years, when Ireland, uplifted, among nations in her golden age of fervid faith and peaceful learning, was the Insula Sacra of the west, Bride was counted, with; Patrick and Columba, one of the three supreme saints of the Sacred Isle. Moreover, if Bride visited a little of the shrines called by her name in England, Scotland, and the Continent, she must have been a famous traveller. Unfortunately, her most famous English shrine, St. Bride's Well, of Fleet street, was degraded into a women's prison during Tudor times; hence "bridewell," a female reformatory. In Galloway her name remained long as the adopted saint of the fierce Douglases, kings of Galloway. One of the small islands of the Hebrides was called Brigidiani after her, and she had yet another famous shrine at Abernethi, said to be the old Pictish capital of the Highlands. Here relics of her were displayed after her death; Ireland was not permitted to retain the ashes of this her most famous daughter; the head of Saint Bride was said to be kept in the chapel of the Jesuits at Lisbon. Giraldus Gambriensis asserts, however, that up to 1185 her body lay in a vault at Dourepatrick, also the last resting place of Saint Patrick himself. Her death, after about 70 years of strenuous labour, took place in 523, about the time when Arthur was fighting his 12 battles.

The miracles attributed to her made her special shrine of Kildare famous for many centuries; there also burned her sacred fire, which was only put out so late as 1220. These signs, however, are now known to be the transferred remains of the heathen cult of Ceredwen, the Celtic Ceres, whose shrine was at Kildare. Moreover, Fiona Macleod infers, doubtless on authority, that there may have been some confusion between the attributes of Bridget and those of Brighid, a kind of Gaelic muse invoked in Druidic times.

In view of the strenuous, noble, selfless life which alone could have left such lasting and apostolic; warfare against heathenism, it is difficult to listen with patience to the puerilities manufactured about her by priestly miracle-mongers in after days. One homely tradition, indeed, gives her the very earthly credit, of obtaining from Saint Patrick, on behalf of her sex, the privilege of proposing in Leap Year! Nor does it neglect to add that she followed up the concession by an immediate offer of her own hand, which Patrick dutifully declined.

But the love of the Celtic heart, and fertility of the Celtic imagination invested Bride of Kildare with every grace and power of supreme sainthood, and did not hesitate to sweep away the bonds of time and space to hail her as the foster mother of Christ in Bethlehem. Some 10 years ago Fiona Macleod embodied these floating myths in a strange fantasy, dreamy, quaint, and tender, called "Mary of the Gael."' In it she tells how Brighid, herself a creature of miraculous and holy birth, was reared by her reputed father in exile at Iona, than a Druid sanctuary, and how she beheld beforehand in a crystal pool the figure of the Virgin Mary. As in a kaleidoscope, the scene shifts and shimmers, now in Scotland, now in Palestine; and so it chances that Brighid, alone of humankind, succours the wandering Joseph and Mary, and takes in her aims the new-born King, wrapped in her own mantle; which action gave her one of her Scottish titles, Brighid of the Mantle. In that supreme hour the old Druidic High Priest of Iona was granted sight of the new-born Saviour in the arms of Brighid, and fell dead in an ecstacy, calling to his acolytes, 

Bridget Bride upon her knee, 

The king of the elements asleep upon her breast!

These legends might be multiplied ad infinitum; but enough has been said to show the real ascendancy of Bride of Kildare in the Irish Golden Age, itself one of the veritable romances of history. And if her own appointed festival, the first of February, is now a holy day to few or none outside her own country, we Scottish Gaels do not well utterly to forget a woman of our race whose life was undoubtedly a beacon lamp in a dark and stormy world.

SWEET SAINT BRIDE Otago Witness, Issue 2662, 22 March 1905.

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Saint Brigid, 'type, ideal, and model of Irish maidens'

In 2024 Saint Brigid has been reinvented as a feminist icon, champion of the struggle against the patriarchy. One hundred years ago Saint Brigid's meaning for women was very different, at least in the view of the anonymous author below in this piece from 1921, published in The New Zealand Tablet. The press in countries with large Irish immigrant populations often syndicated articles like this, so I would be interested to know who wrote this particular one and when and where it was first published.  The writer sees Saint Brigid as being uniquely placed, thanks to the providence of God,  to bring 'the faith of Saint Patrick' to the women of Ireland. Whilst we find the usual racially-based speculations on the 'Celtic' mind, soul and personality, it is the significance of Saint Brigid for women which is this author's main concern. And as the concluding paragraph shows, our patroness upholds the traditional nurturing role of women within the domestic sphere for she 'was home-loving and home-like', 'the type, ideal, and model of Irish maidens and of Irish mothers. She is the queen of the Irish home'. I do though appreciate the author's contention that part of the attraction of Saint Brigid (or Bridh as she is called here) is the homely quality which makes her accessible and approachable. 'She was, a saint who is still all the more a saint because ever and always she is one of ourselves'.

ST. BRIGID

In carrying out His wise Providence in the world, God chooses fit instruments for His work. Hence, in order to plant the faith of St. Patrick deep in the hearts of the woman of Ireland, and in order through them to make it live with perennial bloom and sweet fruitfulness within our Irish homes, God raised up a saint whose special natural and supernatural characteristics gave her a special power to charm the Celtic mind and to fascinate the Celtic soul. We may pause for some short moments to contemplate what these characteristics were.

First of all, she was a great saint, and, therefore, her holy soul was in immediate, intense, and constant union with God. But this union had special personal aspects of its own. The Four Masters write of her: "Brigid was she who never turned her mind or attention from the Lord for the space of one hour, but was constantly meditating and thinking of Him in her heart and mind."

On her long and frequent journeys, in all her work, whether in her convent home or in the fields or forests or amongst friends or strangers, amidst the many, various and incessant occupations which seemed to absorb all her hours by day and often even by night, the conscious sense of the Great Presence never left her. God was ever and always visible to her soul. God spoke to her not only through the mysterious splendour and spiritual loveliness of Revelation, but, as to the great St. Francis of Assisi, so also through the sights and sounds of Nature, through its melodious messages and speaking images, through its meaning and its music, did the Divine Spirit, in a simple, yet mysterious way, appeal to the soul of St. Bride.

The mountains, the meadows, the forests, the fields, the song of the rippling river, or the chorus of the foaming cataract —the hymns of the birds or the prayerfulness of the pine woods, the rising or the setting sun, the moon, the stars—all Nature taught her lessons, and lifted up her love to God. To her music was in a strange, true, real sense a Divine language. Thus, one day, when many friends and strangers, chiefs and nobles, men and women, priests and nuns were gathered together, in the great hall of a king, wishing to express in a language understood by all the holy thoughts and sacred emotions which she would impart to all, she bade some young men in the company to take the harps that hung around the walls and play. Whereat the young men answered that they were quite ignorant of the art. Thereupon St. Bridh with her finger-tips touched their fingers, and again bade them play. As their hands, miraculously guided, swept across the strings such rapturous strains woke the enchanted air that all were hushed in awe and in delight, for it seemed to all that the gates of Paradise had been flung open to let flood forth the Divine music of the angels. She said herself that she could follow the Masses celebrated in far-off lands, and that the song and music of distant churches was often wafted by Divine power to vibrate within her ear and elevate her soul to loving rapture.

Another characteristic of St. Bridh was her bright and radiant joyfulness. The joy of the Holy Spirit which dwelt within her soul lighted up her countenance with holy attractiveness and gave to her every word of charm that won persuasion and a power that infused its own clearness and its own vigor into the listener's mind. In her very presence there was a simple yet queen-like winningness which charmed while it commanded reverence, and the calm, sweet dignity of her manner brought a smile to the face, conviction to the mind, and devotedness to the heart. Thus was she well fitted to secure the loyalty of a race which has always been fiercely impatient of force or frown, but which by reason of natural gladness, wit, and humor sparkling within its natural temperament may easily be controlled by a frank smile, disarmed by a kind word and conquered by the proffered hand of true friendship.

To this last characteristic we must add another. It is her homeliness. She is no stern ascetic, before whom we bow indeed in wondering worship, but from whom we instinctively feel that we are. all the more far apart. Nor is she like some great lady, who may be herself a great saint, prayerful, mortified, zealous, detached, but who is always so great as to seem to have but little human sympathy, and with whom we could never really feel at home. No! no! St. Bridh is our own sweet Bridh. In all her ways and works she was home-loving and home-like. She was, a saint who is still all the more a saint because ever and always she is one of ourselves.

She loved the poor, the sad, and the suffering. While she did great work, her greatest work was in the homes of the people. Let me give one instance. A farmer came to her in great distress. His wife, his sons and daughters were all sick unto death. He was himself barely able to speak. His farm was quite neglected, and he could find no help. At once our own Bridh called some of her nuns and went straight to the man's home. They nursed the sick, who were soon miraculously restored to robust health. They tidied the house and looked after the housekeeping. They tended the flocks in the pasture land. They toiled in the tillage field; and they milked the cows. "Who shall find a valiant woman? She hath looked well to the paths of her house." St. Bridh is the type, ideal, and model of Irish maidens and of Irish mothers. She is the queen of the Irish home. Can any woman have a nobler part in life to aim at or to accomplish than to be like St. Bridh, "the Mary of the Gael"?

ST. BRIGID,New Zealand Tablet, 10 March 1921

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Great Life Work of Saint Brigid

A handsome tribute to the legacy of Saint Brigid and to her famous foundation at Kildare from the pen of Bishop Thomas Joseph Shahan, rector of the Catholic University of America. Bishop Shahan was born in 1857 to a family who had emigrated to America from Killarney in the late 1840s. It is obvious from his article, syndicated in the New Zealand press, that he retained a deep awareness of his Irish roots and he takes a high view not only of Ireland's most famous female saint but of Irish womanhood in general. We also see the influence of racial theories which ascribed 'a natural racial mysticism' to the Gael. This piece was published in 1917 when such views were commonplace, but the idea of the dreamy, innately spiritual Gael, who has a special awareness of the thin barrier separating this world and the next, never did go away completely and resurfaced in the "Celtic Christianity" movement of recent decades:

“After St. Patrick,” says Bishop Shahan, of the Catholic University, “it is a woman, St. Brigid, who has done more than any one else to fashion the life of medieval Ireland. Throughout all the Middle Ages, the Abbess of Kildare is one of the great powers of Ireland, for she represents Brigid, just as the Archbishop of Armagh represents St. Patrick. The art of Ireland is largely an outgrowth from Kildare, and that glorious old abbey was for ages a centre of humanity and charity, as well as a refuge of virtue and genius. There was no more awful public crime than the violation of this national sanctuary, more venerable than ever were Dodona and Ephesus, and it may be said without fear of contradiction that this old monastery of Kildare, which was already venerable when Charlemagne began to reign, has done more for the elevation of women and the formation of a Christian public opinion in her regard than any other similar institution of the Middle Ages. So great was the medieval Irish veneration for this holy place that when the bishops of Ireland assembled in council they placed the Abbess of Kildare on a throne higher than their own, as a token of respect for Brigid, who had been the counsellor of the bishops of Ireland while she lived. 

Across the pages of all the Irish annals, from St. Patrick to the Reformation, there moves a long procession of grave and virtuous daughters of Erin, and we feel instinctively that they were the salt of the earth and the light thereof in many a century of blind and endless warfare, and we cease to wonder at the millions of pure and lovely women whom Ireland has bestowed with generous hand upon the peoples of the New World, to be the mothers of a spiritually minded race, and to preserve forever that lovely Christian idea of the highest womanhood, in which innocence and beauty are only the visible workings of refined religious hearts, and in which a natural racial mysticism blossoms out into the purest love of, God and the most intense personal relationship with that other world which is above and beyond coarse, perishable matter, and in which the Gael has never ceased to live, by his imagination and his desires.

”GREAT LIFE WORK OF ST. BRIGID, New Zealand Tablet, 27 September 1917

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Saint Brigid, Fair Jewel of Erin

We continue the series of posts in honour of the feast of Saint Brigid with another gem from Down Under. Signed W.W. of Sydney, this poem celebrates all of the traditional Christian virtues of Saint Brigid. Verse three emphasizes Saint Brigid as an exemplar of purity for Irish women, a message no longer in fashion in contemporary presentations of our patroness. This 1922 poem thus illustrates how differently Saint Brigid was perceived one hundred years ago:

SAINT BRIGID.
(February 1.)

Blessed Saint Brigid, fair jewel of Erin,
Perfect exemplar to shield us from
wrong;
Ardent to-day is the love of thy people,
Hallowed thy name through the centuries
long!

 

Forth from Kildare spread the fame of thy
virtue,
Reaching through Ireland from shore
unto shore,
Breathing a message of hope to the hope
less,
Spurring the fervent to love God the
more.

 

Bright is the light thou hast shed down
the ages,
Burning white splendour of purity's ray,
Pointing the path for the daughters of
Erin;
Brigid, oh, help their descendants to-day!

Sundered by sorrow, thy people have wandered,
Finding in Austral a refuge, a home
Bringing the light of the faith that they
cherished,
Teaching thy glory wherever they roam!
 

Dear to thy heart were those children of
Erin, 

Grant us a share in thy love, too, we
pray;
Swift in our veins runs the blood of our forebears;
Brigid, protect us and guide us alway!

 

W.W.

Sydney.

 

'SAINT BRIGID.', The Catholic Press, Thursday, 2 February, 1922, p. 18. 

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Brigid's Grave

 

Although I have a number of posts relating to the burial-place of Saint Patrick at this blog I have never explored the grave of Saint Brigid to this same extent, probably because we are told in the Life by Cogitosus that she was buried at the side of the High Altar at Kildare, where her tomb drew huge crowds of pilgrims. This is exactly the setting in which one would expect to find the remains of an important monastic founder saint, but a later tradition claims that Saint Brigid's remains had to be moved following the Viking raids on Kildare which began in the early ninth century. In the late twelfth-century Bishop Malachy III claimed to have had a dream or vision in which he was led to discover the bodies of the three patrons of Ireland - Saints Patrick, Brigid and Colm Cille - at Downpatrick, County Down, much to the delight of the self-styled Prince of Ulster, Norman conqueror John de Courcy. Thus in 1186 Saint Brigid found herself resting in Downpatrick Cathedral in the company of her fellow-patrons, at least according to this later tradition. Now why Kildare would have permitted its beloved founding saint to be taken north is usually explained by the need to protect her from those marauding Vikings. But if this is so then it would seem to have been a case of out of the frying pan into the fire, since Downpatrick itself was attacked in 825. Such are the two traditions about Saint Brigid's grave with which I am familiar, but below is a 1929 newspaper report which raises yet another possibility - that Saint Brigid's body had been taken to Brittany. I will try to follow up on this story to see if I can find out any further details: 

Brigid's Grave.

CONTROVERSY CONTINUES OVER BURIAL.

It is not easy to conjecture, writes a correspondent, as to how the bodies of Patrick, Brigid and Columcille, which historical belief has it were revealed to St. Malachy in the 11th century to have lain in a grave in Ireland, could have come at about the same date to have had the record of having rested for some centuries in a grave in Brittany. Nevertheless, the evidence extant as to the latter would seem sufficiently conclusive to cast reasonable doubt upon, at least, the tradition that the body of St. Brigid rests in the Downpatrick grave. 

In the year 1626 Herbert, Archbishop of Bourges, had the Brittany coffin opened. Two skeletons only were found, and the skull of one was missing. The skeletons were then at the Abbey of Notre Dame du Chateau, on the Theels River, in the episcopal jurisdiction of Bourges. They were examined again and re-attested by the diocesan authorities there about 35 years ago, declared, of course, as the bodies of the Irish saints. 

It is, however, curious 'to observe that, though only two skeletons are actually on evidence, the official attestation cites explicitly: 'Corpora Sanctae Brigidae, Sancti Columbae, et Sancti Patricii.' St. Brigid, it will be noted, is first mentioned. But the official document is merely a Latin translation, made by a priest, of the statement written by a pious merchant, Francois Lege, who had saved the sacred treasures of the abbey from spoliation during the Revolution. Possibly the body of St. Patrick is alone interred at Downpatrick.

Freeman's Journal, Thursday 25 April 1929, page 46.

 

Content Copyright © Trias Thaumaturga 2012-2024. All rights reserved.

Saint Brigid 'Heroine of the Golden Age'

Today is the Feast of Saint Brigid and so I offer my annual antidote to the new Brigid for a new Ireland with an account from the Australian press published ninety years ago which sees her as the 'Heroine of the Golden Age'. It begins by depicting Saint Brigid primarily as the 'patron saint and protector of all young and tender growing things' but without the neo-pagan overtones of today's nature-worshipping goddess. Particularly striking to me was the analysis of the secret of Brigid's greatness, where the anonymous author struggles to reconcile our saint's gentle womanly side with her abilities as a missioner and her 'extraordinary versatility', despite describing her later on as 'preaching and teaching better and harder than ten men'. There is an interesting section on Saint Brigid's connection with bells plus a wonderful presentation of the 'pastoral republic of Kildare' as a 'lost Utopia'. As an offering for Saint Brigid's feast day, this article brings together all of the traditional information the Irish expatriate in Australia would need. I wish everyone in every part of the world celebrating Saint Brigid's Day, the blessings of the feast!

St. Brigid

February is the month of, St Brigid, and today February 1, her feast is kept. She is the patron saint and protector of all young and tender growing things, babies, lamb and flowers. She spreads her cloak against the, harsh east wind to give shelter to precocious nature.

Friend of the Lambs. —They say that when the young lambs cry out in the night on the hillsides, they are calling to Brigid to bring the shepherds to them. Others say that that she brings the lambs down to the shepherds herself, carrying them under her kindly cloak. She is often represented with a lamb in her arms. She loved animals, and gave to them pity and mercy, and all living things loved her. The shyest of the wild birds flew to her as they did to St. Francis.

Her Greatness.—The modern mind may find it difficult to associate this gentle mother with one of the greatest organisers and missioners that Ireland has ever known. Yet Brigid was, in her own way, as great a missioner as St. Patrick. And she was the greatest of all Irish women. In her were united two qualities that are so often incompatible, greatness and goodness, and when they meet a miracle happens and a saint is born.

Brigid's legend is packed with anecdotes illustrating the many sides of her extraordinary versatility.The legend is a safe guide, as it is the evidence of contemporary opinion. For Brigid to have impressed herself so indelibly on her generation, and on the generations that followed, means that she-must have been truly remarkable. We must only guess at her greatness.

She was the spiritual link between Patrick and Columkille. She was born about 450 A.D., while Patrick was still preaching. She died in 525 A.D., four years after Columkille was born. The legends about her beginning in her early years. She worked on the farm, in the fields, and in the Druid's dairy. On the farm she befriended all the animals, and in the dairy she was one of the best butter-makers. The old tales say that although she gave away an undue proportion of butter and milk to every poor person who passed the door, yet she always had enough over and to spare. Brigid's generosity brought upon her the anger of her master; but when he discovered the daily miracle of the butter and milk he recanted, and offered her the whole lot. Her fame began to spread, and people began to take notice of her. She got many good offers of marriage, but her vocation was clear. She became a nun and seven other virgins followed her example. Each of them chose a Beatitude, and Brigid chose "Blessed are  the merciful for they shall obtain mercy."

Brigid of the Bells.—Not for her the peaceful cloister, yet. She travelled throughout Connaught, preaching and teaching better and harder than ten men. When her fame was growing, the King of Leinster offered her land to build a monastery, and on it she founded the abbey and school which were to be for centuries the most famous in the land.

She built her first oratory under an oak tree on the banks of the Liffey—the tree survived down to the tenth century—and there established her Cill, afterwards famous as Cill Dara (Kildara), the Church of the Oak. The abbey and school became, great centres of religion and learning, and from all over Ireland the pilgrims and scholars came, seeking faith or learning. She was joined by her kinsman, Conleath, a hermit and a skilled craftsman in metals. He became Bishop of this growing Community, but, even when he was Bishop Conleath, continued his bellmaking. Under his inspiration and Brigid's, a decorative metal school was developed in Kildare, and they turned out bells, croziers, shrines, and other articles for churches far and near. Brigid's name became associated with bells, and bells were christened after her. St. Bride's, in Fleet-street, London, was one of the churches under her patronage.

The Pastoral Republic.—The Kildare settlement prospered and expanded. They had their Abbey, their school, their culture, their crafts, and arts, their farms and herds and dairying. It is hard to visualise, in this tormented age, the sweet contentment of that happy colony on that pleasant plain. We can only regard it as a dream of some lost Utopia. Surrounded now by all the sounds she loved best, the church bells ringing, the lowing of the cows in milk, the swish of the plough; the musical din of the anvil, Brigid was a busy woman. In spite of her teaching and her training of the young nuns she found time to "keep up" old occupations and accomplishments. She worked on the farms, and herded sheep on the Curragh. Lambing found her out looking after the ewes. She tended the sick and set up a special house for them; she organised what we now call "rest-homes," and hospitals. She was centuries ahead of her time, and a tireless innovator. She taught the people to be kind to animals.

Life's Close.—As her world acclaimed her greater, she became more humble and more beloved. Kindness was never subordinated to efficiency. She never went beyond the spiritual and physical reach of her people. She found time to travel to various parts of the country, converting pagans, counselling her own, spreading light and grace. The spark in Kildare glowed and spread and became a flame of Christianity from sea to sea. They called her "Prophetess of Christ, the Queen of the South, the Mary of the Gael." 

Her life went down in serenity to its close. Her work in Kildare was done; the foundations were securely laid. Thus died Brigid, heroine of the Golden Age.

Advocate, 1 February 1934, p. 12.

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