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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