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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An Almost Forgotten Shrine of Saint Columba

 

June 9 is the feast day of Saint Colum Cille/Columba of Iona, tertiary patron of Ireland. This year I  have decided to spare us yet another account of his career by a Victorian worthy but instead to look at one of the Scottish island sites associated with Columba. The article below was syndicated in the New Zealand press in 1910 and describes a visit made to Eileach an Naoimh the Island of the Saints, linked to Saint Columba, yet overlooked by pilgrims and travellers. The writer, Thomas Hannan, argues that this island, claimed to be the burial place of Saint Columba's mother, Eithne, is the elusive island of Hinba known from Saint Adomnán's Vita Columbae. There it was described as a dependency of Iona which Columba visited and sometimes stayed in. We also learn from the Life that two of Columba's most important disciples, Baithéne, his successor and Ernán, his uncle, are named as abbots of Hinba's monastery. The exact location of this island continues to be debated. At the time this article was written Eileach an Naoimh was widely identified as Hinba, but although there is still no modern scholarly consensus, a number of more recent writers have argued for the claims of the island of Oronsay. They include Richard Sharpe, translator of the Vita Columbae for the Penguin Classics series, who asked:

On the island of Oronsay is a medieval priory; does this perhaps continue the site of the Columban foundation?

R. Sharpe, ed. and trans. Adomnán of Iona - Life of St Columba (Penguin Books, 1995), n. 194, p. 308.   

Whatever the truth, our writer from 1910 has at least made us consider that Iona, whilst it may be in the words of Saint Adomnán 'our principal island' (1:1), is not the only island with which Saint Columba is associated. And I remain fascinated by the link between Eileach an Naoimh and Eithne, the mother of Saint Colum Cille. May I wish everyone the blessings of the feast of her famous son and close with a prayer from the Office appointed for the Feast of Saint Columba in the Aberdeen Breviary:

Inspire the desire of heavenly glory in our hearts, we pray, O Lord, and grant that we may carry sheaves of righteousness thither in our right hands, where the golden star, the holy abbot Columba, shines with Thee. Through our Lord, etc.

 

 AN ALMOST FORGOTTEN SHRINE.

Multitudes of men and women make their summer and autumn holiday the occasion of a visit to the great shrine of St. Columba at Iona. It is certainly a fully remembered shrine. And yet the pilgrim to Iona, probably looks upon nothing which the saint saw except the natural scenery. But if the pilgrim only knew it, he is not very far from a hallowed spot where he might stand within the very walls which St. Columba raised; and it is of this almost forgotten shrine that the writer fain would tell. 

To the west of the peninsula of Cantyre and stretching from south-west to northeast, lie in a line the islands of Isla, Jura, Scarba, Luing, and Seil. Almost due west of Luing is the large and picturesque Isle of Mull; and between the two is a line of islets known as the Garvelloch Isles, or the Isles of the Sea. Extending from south-west to north-east, their names in order are Eileach an Naoimh, A’Chuli, Garbh Eileach, and Dunchonill. It is on Eileach an Naoimh—pronounced I-le-ach an Na-ov—that the "almost forgotten shrine" is to be found. This is the island referred to by Adamnan as "Insula Hinba," and its Gaelic name is generally interpreted "Isle of the Saints," although a Gaelic scholar informs the writer that the name may be somewhat equivalent to "the Training-place of the Saints.” The general character of the islets is forbidding. They rise abruptly from the sea, presenting sides that look like walls; and on the west they are exposed to the unbroken force of the winds and waves of the Atlantic. Eileach an Naoimh is about one mile in length, and its greatest width does not exceed a quarter of a mile. It partakes in a superlative degree of the stern and wild characteristics of the group, and possesses only one landing-place, which it is possible to make in nothing but the most favourable weather. The writer has spent four somewhat long summer holidays in succession at a point on the shores of Mull, not very far from Iona, whence he could view the Isles of the Sea; each year he has made arrangements to visit the shrine in a fisherman's boat, when weather should be favourable for sailing, but not too rough for landing; and yet it was only a few days ago that the wish was accomplished, a friend of like tastes having brought round his little sailing yacht for the attempt. 

At close quarters the island is more awe-inspiring than at a distance. To effect a landing it is necessary to round the southern end of the island. This end is guarded by three huge jagged rocks which stand high and black out of the water. Passing the three, we swung round the third, and anchored on the inner side of it, finding ourselves in a natural harbour with bad anchorage and little protection from wind and wave. We got out the dinghy, and made for the "Port," which looks like a hole in the wall of rock. When we reached it, we found it about the width of the doorway of a house, with a turn to the left after entering. At high water this would have brought us to a shelving beach; but as it was only half-tide we had to do some goat-climbing. The first thing which we observed, at the head of the "Port," and only about a dozen feet above sea-level, was a spring of water, —"Tober Chalhim-chille," Columba's Well. As faithful pilgrims, we drank at the well from which the holy man had often drunk; and at once proceeded to the interior, which consists of of grassy hollows in the rock.

The principal hollow presents a most interesting view of several remains. In the foreground is an enclosed space, now almost overgrown with grass and bracken, which was the old burial-ground. Looking towards the north-east, there is seen behind the burial-ground a small square on the east of which are the remains of domestic buildings. Beyond this, and still in the same line, stands the church, roofless, but with the walls almost entire. These walls are beautifully built of slabs of slate, without mortar. Absolutely primitive in structure, the slabs are yet laid in tiers, or courses, with great regularity. The church is correctly oriented, and the east wall contains one small window, from the lower part of which extends to the south wall a slab of slate which a visitor of half a century ago conjectured to be the remains of an altar. This slab stands about five feet above the present level of the ground. At the west end of the south wall, outside, is lying a beautifully-carved stone, in two pieces, but the nature of the carving is indecipherable. It is evidently a stone centuries later than the building. To the right, at a distance, is a small ruined building which we did not examine - it is only a photograph which reveals it to be a building  instead of a mass of broken rock: and to the left, also at a distance, is what seems to be a chapel, although it may be identical with what the late Dr Skene described as a kiln. As there is no trace of either bricks or mortar, it is difficult to account for a kiln. The building is approximately oriented, with an apse. 

Away from this hollow, on a slope descending to the sea, are two "beehive cells." These are of remarkable interest, built of stones without mortar. The part facing the sea is greatly broken down, and shows no trace of an entrance. On the opposite side the wall stands probably 10 feet high, and gives the impression that the two cells were under one roof. A photograph reveals markings suggesting that the entrance was on this side. On another part of the island, at the summit of a ridge, is the grave of Eithne, the mother of Columba, marked by a rough stone with a plain cross rudely engraved upon it, but with no inscription. 

There is no very deep, mystery surrounding the history of the buildings which have thus been described —they are very early, and they are Celtic. Thus they are centuries older than any building at present existing upon Iona. The oldest building in Iona is not the Cathedral, but St Oran's Chapel, which is not earlier than 1070, and not much later. It is practically identical in style and date with St. Margaret's Chapel in Edinburgh Castle, and it is therefore mediaeval in date and Roman in ecclesiastical influence. The island of the saints has not been occupied since the monks left it. There is only one inhabited house in the whole group, and that is on Garbh Eileach. Dr Skene described the remains as "ecclesiastical buildings which we can identify with Columba's monastery, the first which he founded after Iona, and which, fortunately for us, owing to the islands being uninhabited, not very accessible, and little visited, have not disappeared before the improving hand of man."

 Columba, known to the Celts as "Challum Chille''—Columba of the churches—is said to have made his first landing at Knapdale in Cantyre, after which he proceeded to the island of Oronsay, and thence to Iona. St. Brendan is said to have founded a monastery on Eileach an Naoimh about 545; but this was destroyed in 560. Columba is said to have re-founded it soon after his settlement of Iona, which is usually placed in the year 563. The buildings have absolutely nothing of what we generally understand by "architecture" about them; they are interesting purely from the fact that they project us further back into the Celtic Church than any others, probably to the very times of Challum Chille himself. The only element of doubt lies in the fact that the first Columban buildings on Iona were of wood and wattles; but wood and wattles would be difficult to find on Eileach an Naoimh, while stones are plentiful. It is not a vain imagining that the voice of Columba raised the Eucharistie Prayer and the Evening Psalm within the walls of that drystone church of which a portion of the altar yet remains. 

The existence of the remains is known to some learned men, and a few have written about them. Still fewer have seen them. Comparing an account of a visit made by an enthusiast in 1852 with what the writer has seen himself, it is plain that half a century has made some in roads. It is now an almost forgotten shrine: in time it seems likely to be completely forgotten. And yet it is the most real and the greatest shrine of Columba and the Celtic Church in Britain.

— Thomas Hannan, in the Spectator. 

Otago Witness, Issue 2957, 16 November 1910, Page 78. 

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St Patrick: Who he was and how he was Honoured

 

To mark the feast of Saint Patrick, below is an 1894 article syndicated in the Australian press looking at our national patron and the ways in which popular devotion to him was expressed. The writer begins by mentioning historical sources the Book of Armagh and the saint's Tripartite Life, translated in 1887 by scholar Whitley Stokes. He moves on however, to the Victorian preoccupation with 'pagan survivals' attributing the practices at holy wells and other pilgrimage sites to the continuation of pagan rituals. In his view paganism, which was a unified religion stretching from Europe to parts of Africa and Asia, was able to cling on in Ireland thanks to the strength of 'druidism',  plus Ireland's curious ability to make immigrants to its shores 'suffer themselves to become more Hibernian than the Irish'. The story of Victor, 'the angel of the Scotic race' is also dismissed as 'Odinic' in character because the author feels 'sure that there is a close affinity between these fables and Teutonic mythology.' In the concluding paragraphs the writer lists sites associated with Patrician pilgrimage and describes with particular fascination the traditions of Croagh Patrick. It's clear from the air of condescension that pervades this piece that the writer belongs to a different social class and background than the people to whom these traditions belonged. Victorian antiquarian journals are filled with such articles written by gentlemen who struggled to explain traditional religious practices. Influenced by contemporary theories on pagan survivals, coupled with racial theories on the superiority of the rational Anglo-Saxon and his reformed church, they dismissed traditional Irish Catholic devotion as peasant superstition of the worst kind. Indeed, some Catholic church leaders and the Catholic gentlemen who wrote articles for the journals of their local antiquarian society themselves often struggled to understand and explain folk religion. Others, however, such as Archbishop John Healy of Tuam (1841-1918) embraced and sought to integrate traditional devotion. Archbishop Healy not only contributed a weighty tome on Saint Patrick and his writings, but he restored the Croagh Patrick pilgimage, albeit he undertook it on horseback rather than barefoot. So this article provides a fascinating snapshot in time into Victorian attitudes towards our national patron and how he was honoured. Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh go léir!

 

SAINT PATRICK.

WHO HE WAS AND HOW HE WAS HONORED.

 

 

We take the following extracts from an interesting article which appeared in the Chronicle on Friday:— 

 

At Trinity College, Dublin, there exists a venerable and precious volume, the Book of Armagh —so venerable as to its date and its contents that, in the year 807. when it was transcribed in its present form, it was often obscure to the transcriber; so precious that it contains 'the oldest and most authentic notices’ of the national saint ' now in existence'—his title-deeds to credit, in fact, and the sources from which all other biographies, such as the 'Tripartite Life,’ recently translated by Dr Whitley Stokes, have been formed. In his critical preface to the latter, the last-named Irish scholar sums up what he regards as facts concerning Patrick. 

 

He was born in the latter half of the fourth century, and was reared a Christian. He had relatives in ‘the Britains’ (i.e. Great Britain) which he calls his patria. His father Calpornius, son of Potitus, was both a deacon and a decurio, and therefore belonged to a Roman colony. . . His father lived at Bannauem Taberniae, a place probably on the west coast of North Britain, and there, in his sixteenth year, Patrick was taken captive.. His captors, took him to Ireland. . where he was employed in herding sheep. . . . After six years he ran away from his master, . . . and after a three days’ voyage . .  journeyed home through a desert. A few years afterwards he dreamed that he was summoned to Ireland, and, giving up his home, his parents, and his status as a free born man, he went to preach the gospel to the Irish tribes. . . . Subsequently be travelled through ‘the Gauls,’ and Italy, and spent some time in the islands of the Tyrrhene Sea. . . . He was ordained a deacon, and, at sometime in his career, was a bishop. Almost worn out, we find him again in Ireland, travelling through the remotest parts of the country. ‘The Lord’s flock,’ he says, ‘was increasing rapidly,’ and he could not count the sons of the Scots, and the kinglet’s daughters who were becoming monks and virgins of Christ. He ordained clergy, and taught at least one priest from his infancy; but his success excited the jealousy of the rhetoricans of ‘the Gauls,’ in which country (France) he had brethren (fratres). 

 

Of the reality of the existence of this Patrick, son of Calporn, we feel not. the shadow of a doubt. But he was not the only Patrick, and, as time went on, traditions of one other Patrick at least came to be comingled with his own. We have before us the names of ten other contemporary Patricks, all ecclesiastics, and spread over Wales, Ireland, France, Spain, and Italy. The name appears to be that of a grade or order in the church, rather than a proper name in the usual sense. Thus Palladius is called also Patrick in the Book of Armagh, and the Patrick (whichever he may have been) is represented as styling Declan ‘the Patrick of the Desu,’ and Ailbhe ‘the Patrick of Munster.’ When Patrick sojourned in the cave in an island in the Tyrrhene Sea he found three other Patricks there. 

 

 The writer goes on to deal with ‘Pagan Patrick worship.’ In the name of the saint, from time immemorial, there has been a system of worship which, though accepted by Christians, was not of Christian origin. It was a part and parcel of a vast substratum of Paganism, once covering the face of Western Europe, and traceable also in the Mediterranean, in North Africa, and portions of Asia. 

 

The worship of wells with their sacred fishes; of lakes with their sunken cities, or their fabulous monsters dwelling in their depths, to which offerings of butter were made; the association of water with death and burial; the practice called the dessil or turas, of passing in circles, counted in odd numbers around a dolmen, or cairn, or a circular enclosure, the supposed bed or grave of a sacred ancestor, the crawling through cavities beneath magical rocks; the placing the hands or fingers in holes in pillar-stones and walls; the custom of offering shreds of cloth, or of hair, or of crooked pins, or of nails at some ‘blessed' spot; the turning a stone round the body for purposes of cursing or otherwise; the sacred seasons of the year; the midsummer fires; the preparations of November Eve for the visits of the dead;— all those, and countless other observances practised in the names of Patrick, or Bridget, or Declan, or some other saint, on their pattern or festival days, or at the shrines set apart for their cultus, were simply the relics of a pagan ritual, fulminated against with some effect by the edicts of kings and the Councils of the Church in Germany, France, and Spain, but with little or none in the ‘Sacred Island’ in the far north-west, where Druidism, in its most barbarous guise, held its ground secure from the onslaught of Roman legions, and where Christian missionaries, recognising, as it would seem, that assimilation of observances need not prejudice the doctrines of their faith, exercised toleration, and in common with all other immigrants to the inland shores suffered themselves to become more Hibernian than the Irish. 

 

Coming to the ‘Christian cult,’ we learn that the observances at Croagh Patrick on 15th August; at the wells of Struel, near Downpatrick, on St. John’s Eve; at Holy Island, on the Shannon, at Whitsuntide; and at Lough Derg in the late summer and autumn, are among those specially connected with Patrick. Of these the most ancient and famous pilgrimage was that to Croagh Patrick, the ‘Mecca of Ireland,' as O’Donovan called it. Hither, on the appointed day —Black Crom’s Friday—flocked devotees by thousands from all parts of the island. Previous to climbing the path loading to the apex, the pilgrims passed seven times round a pile of stones forming a rude altar, bearing the name of St. Benan. This done, they crawled to the centre, a distance of fifteen yards, on bare and bended knees, over heaps of sharp stones, blood flowing copiously the while; but here, as in all other trials, so intensely wrapt up were they in the enthusiasm which their task inspired, that all sense of pain or fatigue was deadened, even in the oldest and weakest. No cry or murmur ever escaped an Irish pilgrim’s lips. On the altar was a cross, having reached which, they hung strips of cloth to the transverse beam. On the stones, forming the altar, concentric circles arc sculptured, which, to judge from a passage in the Glossary of Cormac, were, we think, emblematical of the sun, in connection with the worship of which it would seem that the rotatory courses, or rounds, always made ‘sun-ways,’ were instituted. They next walked barefoot up the Casan Patruig, ‘over stones as sharp as oyster shells with their sharp edges upwards,’ says an eye-witness. Arrived at the summit they found themselves on the spot where, recording to the written legend, Patrick, surrounded by birds of sable hue, strove with the powers of darkness, until Victor, 'the angel of the Scotic race,’ came with his white birds to relieve and console him. In a truly Odinic passage (we feel sure that there is a close affinity between these fables and Teutonic mythology), we read that ‘it was in a bird’s shape that Victor was wont to come to Patrick,’ and that on the occasion of one visit to him near Mount Slemish, in Antrim, ‘ he left the impression of his feet’—bird’s claws, we suppose—‘in the rock.’ 

 

On the verge of the apex, the pilgrims first did honor to a stone, in which was a hollow supposed to have been made by Patrick’s knee, for, like Fin MacCumheil, whenever his knee or his hand or his crozier (with Fin it was his sword) touched a rock, the imprint of it remained in the surface. The practice was for the pilgrim to place in it his own knee, bleeding from the effect of the sharp stones over which he has crawled. Thence, once more on their knees, the devotees crawled for twenty yards to the rude stones which formed the altar of a little church called Teampull Patruig, and having paid their devotions there, walked fifteen times around it on a path which skirts the apex of the peak. Next they visited a small enclosed space resembling, a dried up well, called Patrick’s Bed, and if they had come there for a certain cure turned round seven times in it, and remained there all night. This done, the ceremony was completed by their descending the mountain by another precipitous path to a place called the Relic Mhuire, where there are three circles, each thirty yards in circumference, and going seven times in circuits round each of them, repeating at the same time, in obedience to a Christian injunction, seven aves, seven paters, and one creed, the like number of which they had repeated at each of the foregoing ‘stations,’ with the exception of that at the altar on the summit, where the number prescribed was fifteen paters, fifteen aves and one creed. Space only permits us to glance at other pilgrimages to spots connected with Patrick. At Struel, after first taking sod from Patrick’s grave at Downpatrick, on which ‘no weed would ever grow, but only grass and shamrock,’ the principal object of adoration was a well, which, precisely at 12 o’clock in the night of Midsummer Eve, poured forth a double volume of water, and was reputed to effect most miraculous cures. To climb a hill bare-kneed, and to be 'turned’ in a rude seat, formed of natural rocks, called ‘Patrick’s Chair,’ formed also a part of the observances at this latter place. The most remarkable, perhaps, of all the Irish pilgrimages was that to St. Declan’s, in the county Waterford, whence the penance consisted in crawling through a cavity beneath a rock on the seashore, said to have been wafted thither miraculously over the sea with the saint’s bell upon it.

 

Ballarat Star (Vic. : 1865 - 1924), Friday 23 March 1894, page 1

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'That Peerless Irishwoman: Mary of the Gael'

 

 

Last year to mark the feast of Saint Brigid I posted a 1929 account of a pilgrimage to the church of Killester, in Dublin, which had received a relic of the saint from Lumiar in Portugal. That occasion was an impressive one but five years later another pilgrimage, this time to the saint's reputed birthplace at Faughart, County Louth, surpassed it. The highest dignitaries from church and state joined thousands of pilgrims from all over Ireland in praise of of 'that peerless Irishwoman, Mary of the Gael'. I noted some charming details included in this newspaper report of the occasion. First, the six young girls, all called Brigid and all of whom live in the parish, who form the guard of honour around the reliquary of the saint. Then there was a reminder of the part once played by confraternities and sodalities in Irish Catholic life and the sound of the rosary echoing through the countryside. Whilst the hope was expressed in 1934 that Saint Brigid's Day would be 'raised to the dignity of a holy day', in 2025 it is now a public holiday, but in many places the gatherings are to celebrate a feminist goddess rather than the Mary of the Gael. One sign of hope, however, is that the same modern scholars who tell us that the association of Faughart with Saint Brigid is based on a confusion between the County Louth place and the Leinster people to whom she belonged, the Fothairt, have begun to question the goddess and to rediscover the Mary of the Gael. Wishing everyone the blessing of the Feast!

Adest dies leticie
quo sancta virgo Brigida
de tenebris miserie
transit ad regna lucida.

The day of rejoicing is come,

In which the holy virgin Brigid

From the shadows of misery

passes to the realms of light.

 

Sarum Office,  Hymn for the Feast of Saint Brigid.

MARY OF THE GAEL
Ireland's Homage,
HUGE NATIONAL PILGRIMAGE TO BIRTHPLACE.

Remarkable scenes of piety and devotion were witnessed at the Shrine of St. Brigid at Faughart, a few miles from Dundalk, on Sunday afternoon, July 1, when thousands of pilgrims from all parts of Ireland took part in the first national pilgrimage to the scene of the Saint's childhood days. Church and State took a prominent part in the magnificent scene of splendour, and the pilgrimage was generally regarded as one that from every aspect would be difficult to equal. 

His Eminence Cardinal MacRory, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, who took part in the ceremonies, was deeply affected by the intensity and beauty of the people's fervour. The Irish people are hopeful that the wonderful success attending the pilgrimage will be that St. Brigid's feast day will be raised to the dignity of a holy day. 

The people of Dundalk made special efforts to beautify their town in honour of the saint. Pilgrims passed through streets brightened by a display of Papal and Eucharistic Congress flag and bunting, reminiscent of Dublin in June, 1932. 

Special trains from Dublin, Belfast, Cavan, and a large number of omnibuses carried thousands to the town, and the five miles' route to Faughart presented a never-to-be-forgotten spectacle. 

Faughart lies to the north of Dundalk, and after leaving the main road a country lane runs for nearly three miles to the hillside where the Saint was born. The pilgrims, old and young, made light of the tiring conditions as they tramped in the warm sunshine through clouds of dust raised by passing 'buses and motor cars. They found shelter beside the simple shrine, for many towering trees cast welcome shade.

Reliquary of Saint.

The procession, which was of striking proportions, walked a mile and a half from Kilcurry. The place of honour in the procession was occupied by the gold casket, containing a Reliquary of the Saint, placed on a pure white lorry. Six girls, each bearing the Christian name Brigid, sat on the lorry and acted as a guard of honour. They live in the parish. 

President de Valera, who was accompanied by Mr. P. J. Little, T.D., his Parliamentary Secretary, and Mr. Sean T. O 'Kelly, with Mr. W. T. Cosgrave, T.D., leader of the Opposition, were in the procession, a feature of which was the particularly large number of children who took part. The United Confraternities in the robes of their Order showed their veneration for the saint by attending in their hundreds, while there was also a very strong representation of the men's and women's sodalities and boy scouts and girl guides, a very large number of whom were from Dublin. 

Members of the Dublin Corporation, headed by the Lord Mayor, Ald. Byrne, T.D., wearing their robes, made a striking picture, while there were also present members of the Louth County Council and Dundalk Urban Commissioners. Several bands from Dublin, Belfast, Dundalk, Carlingford and Drogheda played hymns on the way to the shrine. 

Mr. de Valera and the other members of the Dail occupied seats close to the shrine. After the reliquary had been placed in front of the shrine, Father Corey, C.C., Knockbridge, said the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin, and the huge throng assembled on the hillside made the countryside ring with the responses.

Ireland's Greatest Daughter. 

Father Antonine, O.F.M., Guardian, Franciscans, Waterford, in an oration, said it was a great gathering, but were it ten times greater, it would still be unworthy of that peerless Irishwoman, Mary of the Gael. 

Regretfully they must admit there were shrines in countries outside of Ireland where she was better known and received more homage from her devoted clients than in the land of her birth, her life-work, and her holy death. 

Almost l500 years had rolled by since that day when the greatest Irishwoman of all time saw the light of day amid those hills. Her father was the chieftain Dubthach, a pagan. His castle had disappeared. 

Born in Poverty. 

It was in no stately dwelling their saint was born, but in a poor hut of wattles and mud — poor as the cave that was tho first shelter of her Lord and only love. For though her father was noble, his wife was not her mother. That great honour belongs to Brocessa, a Christian, and a slave in the household of her father. Her poverty and her lowly state, which were such a stigma in the eyes of men, were no bar to the favours of heaven. 

At times the blood of princes which she inherited from her father would come uppermost. Her bearing was as regal as that of any princess, especially in her charity. An unheard of thing in any bondswoman she never refused an alms, especially if asked in the name of her God. Regally munificent also were her gifts — at times, it would be a sheep from the flock; at others food from her father's own larder. 

From Bondage to Liberty. 

Her charity and the implacable hatred of her father's wife were used by God as the means whereby she would receive her manumission. Goaded by these, her father decided to sell her as a slave to his overlord, the King of Leinster. When she stood before the latter her father dilated on her prodigal open-handedness, but the King was a Christian, and God gave him to understand that the child was favoured and forthwith gave her her liberty. 'Leave her alone,' he said to Dubthach, 'for her merit before God is greater than ours. And thus the slave girl passed from the galling ties of bondage to liberty. She returned with her father to his fortress in holy Faughart, no longer his slave but his daughter. 

Then came the great moment in her life— the choice between the world and the cloister. Long before, Brigid had given her heart to God, but she had not yet dedicated to Him her life in taking the veil. On her return to Faughart her father chose for her future husband a man of the high and honoured rank of tho Bards. 

Brigid's Prayer. 

Such a match would exalt his daughter and one-time slave, and at the same time strengthen his own position as chieftain. But Brigid thought otherwise; none less had she chosen for her spouse than the King of Heaven and Earth. She was beautiful—none so lovely as she in the whole of her father's territory— she had charm and grace. How [could she] resist the appeals of her father without at the same time offending him? 

She had recourse to her infallible remedy. Kneeling perhaps on that very spot on which some were standing that day, she besought God that he would take from her the beauty of her body in order that she might preserve unto Him the beauty f her soul. The miracle happened. Her lovely face lost its beauty and charm, and she became plain and homely to look upon. And when her prospective lover rode over with his retinue to her father's fortress, seeing her he felt repelled, and having upbraided her father for an intended imposture, he hastily turned his horses and rode straight away home again. 

Receives the Veil.

 Her great decision taken, Faughart knew her no more. If they desired to follow the course of her life they must seek her at Ushna, Westmeath. There she received the veil of her consecration from the hands of St Maccaille, at Ardagh, County Longford where she established her convent at the bidding of St. Mel; on the roads of Ulster. Leinster, Munster, Connaught and Meath, where, like her great co-Apostle St. Patrick, a great part of her life was spent in missionary labours, or in her opere magno, the great double monastery of Kildare, where she lived and died. 

In these places they saw in her maturity a sage, a counsellor to Bishops, Abbots and Princes, a worker of miracles, a saint hewing wood and performing menial services. 

Cloistered Life Instituted.

 In Kildare they saw her instituting the cloistered life for nuns— never thought to be possible before she came, and giving to the whole of Irish monasticism a completely new orientation— one of the greatest figures of Irish history, co-equal in that great trinity of Irish Apostles— Patrick, Columcille, and Bridget. 

 

His Eminence Cardinal MacRory afterwards presided at Solemn Benediction. His Eminence gave his blessing while the huge concourse knelt on the grassy slopes.

 Catholic Press, Thursday 30 August 1934, page 11.

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Prince, Poet, Priest and Saint

Marking the feast of Saint Colum Cille with an article published 120 years ago in the Australian Catholic newspaper, The Southern Cross. The writer 'J.B' of Sydney was a frequent contributor to the Australian religious press at this time. I find his articles solidly-based with a good use of hagiographical and liturgical sources. Here he looks at Saint Colum Cille in all his complexity as 'prince, poet, priest and saint' and concludes by inviting the reader to join in the collect for the saint's feast: 

Prince, Poet, Priest, and Saint.

The third great patron saint, of Ireland, the man who stands out almost as conspicuously as St, Patrick himself in the religious history of the Gael, the most renowned missionary, scribe, scholar, poet, statesman, anchorite, and school founder of the sixth century is St. Columcille. Everything about this remarkable man has conspired to fix upon him the imagination of the Irish race. He was not, like St. Patrick, of alien, nor like St. Brigid, of semi-servile birth, but was sprung from the highest and bluest blood of the Irish, being son of Felimidh, son of Fergus, son of Conall Gulban—renowned to this day in saga and romance—son of Niall of the nine hostages, that great monarch of Ireland who ravaged Britain and exacted tributes far and wide from his conquered enemies. He was born on the 7th of December, 523, twenty-nine years after the reputed death of St. Patrick, and four years before that of St. Brigid, at Gartan in Donegal, a wild but beautiful district, of which his father was the prince. The reigning monarch of Ireland was his half-uncle, while his mother, Ethne, was the direct descendant of the royal line of Cathoir (Cauheer) Mor, the regnant family of Leinster, and he himself would have had some chance of the reversion of the monarchy had he been minded to press his claims. 

Reared at Kilmacrenan, near Gartan, the place where the O'Donnells were afterwards inaugurated, he received his first teaching at the hands of St. Finnian in his famous school at Moville, for already since St. Patrick's death Ireland had become dotted with such small colleges. It was here that his schoolfellows christened him  Colum-Cille, or Calum of the Church, on account of the assiduity with which he sought the sacred temple. At this period the Christian clergy and the Catholic Order were the only two educational powers in Ireland, and after leaving Moville Columcille travelled south into Leinster to a bard called German, with whom he took lessons. From him he went to St. Finnian of Clonard, St. Ciaran (Keeran) was at this time a fellow student with him, and Finnian, says the Irish Life, saw one night a vision, "to wit, two moons arose from Clonard, a golden moon, and a silver moon. The golden moon went into the North of Ireland, and Ireland and Scotland gleamed under it. The silver moon went on until it stayed by the Shannon, and Ireland at her centre gleamed." The silver moon symbolised St. Ciaran, the golden moon represented St. Columcille. The saint was only twenty-five years of age when he founded Derry, his first religious institution, and like every man's firstling, it remained dear to him to the last. "Were the tribute of all Alba mine," said he, "from its centre to its border, I would prefer the site of one house in the middle of Derry. The reason I love Derry is for its quietness, for its purity, and for the crowds of white angels from the one end to the other. My Derry, my little oak grove, my dwelling, and my little cell, and Eternal God in heaven above, woe be to him who violates it." 

Columcille continued his labors in Ireland founding churches and monasteries and schools, until he was forty-two years of age. He was at this time at the height of his physical and mental powers, a man of masterful character, of fine physique, and enjoying a reputation second to that of none in Erin. The Commentator in the Feilire of Angus describes his appearance as that of "a man well formed, with powerful frame; his skin was white, his face was broad and fair and radiant, lit up with large, grey luminous eyes; his large and well-shaped head was crowned except where he wore his frontal tonsure, with close and curling hair. His voice was clear and resonant, so that he could be heard at the distance of fifteen hundred paces, yet sweet with more than the sweetness of the bards." His activity was incessant. "Not a single hour of the day," says Adamnan, "did he leave unoccupied, without engaging either in prayer, or in reading, or in writing, of in some other work," and he labored with his hands as well as with his head, cooking or looking after his ploughman, or engaged in ecclesiastical or secular matters. 

When St. Columcille left Ireland and settled in Iona. he was then in the prime of life. Twelve companions, amongst them two first cousins and his uncle, accompanied him in his voyage. For thirty-four years subsequently he was the legislator and captain of Christianity in those northern regions. The King of the Picts received baptism at his hands, the Kings of the Scottish colony, his kinsmen, received the crown from him on their accession, to the throne. The islet of Iona was presented to him by one of those princes. Here he and his companions built with their own hands their parent-house, and from this Hebridean rock in after times was shaped the spiritual and temporal destinies of many tribes and kingdoms. Formed by his teaching and example, there went out from it apostles to Iceland, to. the Orkneys, to Northumbria, to Man, and to South Britain. A hundred monasteries in Ireland (looked to him as their Patriarch. His rule of monastic life was sought for by chiefs, bards, and converted Druids. Clients seeking direction from his wisdom, or protection through his power, were constantly arriving and departing from his sacred isle. Before his death St. Columcille paid one visit to his beloved Ireland, and made a comparatively long stay. 

At length he returned to Iona, where, far into the evening of life, he waited for his summons to the beatific vision. His day of departure came in A.D. 596. Death found him at the ripe age of nearly eighty years, stylus in hand, toiling cheerfully over the vellum page. It was the last night of the week when the presentiment of his end came strongly upon him. "This day," he said to his disciple and successor, Dermid, "is called the day of rest, and such it will be for me, for it will finish my labors." Laying down the manuscript, he added, "Let Baithen finish the rest." Just after Matins on the Sunday morning he peacefully passed away from the midst of his brethren. Both education and nature had well fitted him for the great task of adding another realm to the domain of Christendom. His princely birth gave him power over his own proud kindred; his golden eloquence and glowing verse—the fragments of which still move and delight the Gaelic scholar—gave him fame and weight in the Christian schools, which had sprung up in every glen and island. As prince he stood on equal terms with princes; as poet he was affiliated to that all powerful bardic order, before whose awful anger kings trembled and warriors succumbed in superstitions dread. A spotless soul, a disciplined body, an indomitable energy, an industry that never wearied, a courage that never blanched, a sweetness and courtesy than won all hearts, a tenderness for others that contrasted strongly with his rigor towards himself, these were, in the words of McGee, the secrets of the success of this eminent missionary, these were the miracles by which be accomplished the conversion of so many barbarous tribes, and of so many pagan princes. His feast is celebrated on the 9th of June, and on that day the Church addresses to him the following prayer, in which she desires her children to join:—

"Let the intercession of the Blessed Abbot Columba, we beseech Thee, O Lord, commend us to Thee, that what by our own merits we are unworthy to receive, we may obtain by his patronage, through Christ our Lord. Amen."

Sydney. J. B.

"Prince, Poet, Priest, and Saint." Southern Cross, 19 February 1904.

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