Patrons in Poetry: Saint Brigid by Michael Walsh

I can think of no better illustration of Brigid the saint of agricultural life than this poem by Michael Walsh (1897-1938), the 'poet of the Ben of Fore' in County Westmeath.

St. Brigid

Thou art the saint of Eire's farms and hills,

Her hawthorn fields, her lanes of singing birds -

The saint who tended Spring's green growing things,

The heavenly sheperdress of flocks and herds.

I think of thee as one with quiet scenes

Of rock and stream, of marshes white with flower,

Of children at an open cottage door,

Of rosary-voices in the evening hour.

I link thy name with homely craft and trade,

The wheel that spins, the loom, the milk-maid's pail;

The very memory like a sweetness dwells

Around the hearth and homestead of the Gael!

Michael Walsh, 'Walls in the Grass' in Michael Walsh - Collected Poems, (Dublin 1996), p.110

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