St’ Brighid’s Day in Ireland now is truly an event that is beyond celebrating Brighid’s life and legacy. St. Brighid’s Day now beautifully aligns values that seem to have been championed by Brighid, through the stories told about her, and her life. The values of biodiversity protection, sustainability, social justice, education and communication through the arts are among what we may now also associate with Brighid.
Many women are guided through living that work through their own seemingly Brighid inspired inspirations.
I am skipping over ‘Discovering The Sidhe Through Water’ to write and post this Brighid edition to get to you before this January is done. During this Brighid’s time in Ireland, until well into February, the celebration this year is being called ‘Brigid 1500’. This title launched by the main Brighid festival event hosts at Kildare and Faughart. Some say Brighid died 523 AD, while others claim 524 AD, so 524 AD wins and this is 1500 years later.
Kildare, Cille Dara, has some adventurous events this year, Faughart is expanding what they normally do, and all around Ireland there are lovely events sharing the wonderful cultural legacy of what St. Brighid means to people.
At this time through to early February, many people share the now quite templated and very easy to understand Brighid stories, especially in Ireland.
What is usually told is that there are two Brighids, a Goddess Brighid and a Saint Brighid.
Through the ‘templated’ stories, what is told about Goddess Brighid is usually either minimal or vague and possibly confusing. Partially, this is due to the teller eager to tell the audience a story about St. Brighid and her life and deeds.
The bare bones of the commonly told St. Brighid stories is that she was born at what is Faughart, Co. Louth to a ‘druid’ father and ‘slave’ mother. As a teenager, Brighid gathered a group of 19 women who also wanted to follow a Christian way for women rather than a ‘slave’ way. Together they went off on adventures that are usually vaguely described, except maybe, the ‘accidental’ ordination of Brighid to become ‘Bishop’ by St. Mel of Ardagh, Co. Longford.
When the women arrived at what we know as Kildare, Cille Dara, Church Of The Oak, Brighid challenged the chieftain into donating land as big as her cloak she was wearing. The cloak stretched wide and covered more than enough land to create a monastery that established the teachings and crafts of St. Brighid.
The three most famous crafts being those of healing using plants, smithing with metals extracted from ore, and poetry that may have been composed by Brighid, but we are told that she carried a ‘belief’ that the actual scribing of poetry was the ‘deed’ of men only.
Add to that there are popular Brighid stories of high yield milking cattle, brewing and blessing ale, midwifery, brighid cross and doll making, visiting holy wells on Brighid’s Day, or another day close, and Brighid’s Hearth that was started by an Oak Tree, set alight by lightning. We hear of the Brighid name translating out to many people as ‘the flaming arrow’, as there was not a name for ‘lightning’ back then, apparently.
This year I would like to introduce what I feel is what I believe is a Sidhe origin to the Brighid story. Most folklorists would regard what I am about to say as being utter BS, that I have no right to share, and could corrupt the existing traditions. There is nothing that I know of in ancient scribed writings about this. So that is my ‘public folklore health warning’ before I continue.
You could call this a bit of ‘fan fiction’ but to me this is within what I share as ‘clairvoyance of the land and water’ during workshops and meet-ups. But personally, I feel that though the ancient scribing is remarkable, it was still done under direction of the elite people employing the scribes.
The first thing to point out is the naming of ‘Holy Wells’. We approach these wells and we know them by their names of St. Patrick, St. Brighid, St. Hugh, St. Molaise, St. Brendan, St. Attracta, St. Gobnait, St. Kevin, St. Columcille, wells and more.
What I ask, is what were these ‘wells’, ‘natural spring wells’, called before the saints showed up? These sacred springs have often been around 1000s to millions of years before the saints showed up. Were they not of healing benefit before the saints arrived?
In Ireland, through the UK, through Europe and beyond, probably throughout the earth, there has been belief in local deities present as places of natural healing water. Then Christianity came along and enchanted local people to believe in the healing and guiding power of their saints rather than the established folklore entities.
Christianity is not the only religion with saints. There are Islamic and Hindu saints too. Its seems that Islam was more ruthless at urging followers away from their ancient deities and believing in the saints. But it is from Hinduism we may have a clue or two about how ‘St. Brighid’ reverence happened.
Hindu Saints seemed to happen through the ‘will of the people’ rather than by ordered ordination and instruction by the church. The Hindu saints are popular gurus and yogis that have been elevated to sainthood through the popularity of the people.
Within Ireland, it seems that the ‘church’ only officially appointed Saints are male. But Brighid seems to have captured and inspired the hearts of many people, especially women … so it was the ‘people’ that called Brighid, ‘St. Brighid’, through their own choice. I believe similar happened with other women saints of Ireland such as Gobnait, Attracta, Lazier or Lasir, and others.
During the increasing popularity, or at least devotion, to the scriptures and Christianity, it looks like most women were not living much beyond complete servitude. It seems they were very much regarded with a similar value to a ‘spare rib’ from Adam’s side, than living as equal human beings.
I feel sure that the new culture of ‘saints’ conflicted strongly against entities that the women believed in, now of folklore, that seem to represent the feminine presence. These folklore female entities were from below the soil, within the earth, and in the darkness of wombs of all living feminine gender beings.
Many people talk of two goddesses of the year, one for summer and one for winter. The division of their time seems to be the cross quarter sidereal times of Bealtaine, and Samhain, but for popular understanding and gathering this has become May 1st and November 1st.
The Winter Goddess carries a few names in our stories, Cailleach, Hag, Wise Woman, and Morrigan, are some of them. The Summer Goddess names are also plentiful such as Anu, Danu, Grainne, Aine, and Bhride, Bride, Brideog and Brighid.
But if the Summer Goddess time is May 1st to November 1st, so why is Brighid’s day February 1st, in the middle of Winter Goddess Cailleach’s time? That’s quite a debate, and maybe for another time here.
I believe it is fulfilling enough to revere, a Goddess Bride to be the entity of bringing us life through water, igniting this water with fire, or the longer days of sun, so that a new season of conception, incubation, births, crops, and harvesting on farms and in the wild happens. There’s no need to be hanging on to a ‘precision’ of calendar or calculated dates.
To me, Bride or Brighid as a goddess is reverence for life emerging from its dark cold depths in the earth into an abundance to provide for us and protect us here on earth, in the increasing light we receive on earth through Spring and Summer.
Holding that reverence, to me, is our love, respect, balance, and inclusion of all life on earth, even if it may sting, bite, poison, or eat us.
These days we talk about biodiversity and sustainability when we talk of these things. And we now talk of these things in association with St. Brighid and following her teachings and examples.
Thinking of the initial trinity of Brighid’s talents …
Healing with plants I feel is an obvious one considering the abundance of plants born from the soil from what we mark as Brighid’s Day onwards
Smithing can seem strange, but it’s what we have done to create farming, brewing, and cooking tools, though some people symbolise Brighid’s smithing with swords ???.
Personally, I think we can expand ‘smithing’ into the creation of ‘bodies’ to carry life. Water creating all that we call ‘lifeforms’, through a constant forging of the elements to carry life.
Poetry then created to share the wisdom of everything, to teach, and archive some of it.
To me this all starts within the earth, where we and people of the past talk of goddesses living there, such as Bhride, also the Sidhe living there , and variations of fairy style entities.
At the time of St. Brighid it seems many people carried the names that people described them with, and not with names given to them at birth. I witnessed this living in rural Scotland, where people’s birth names were often the same. I remember a village in county Sutherland where almost every woman was ‘Mary McKay’.
So each woman was identified and named by local people either by the name of their croft or some trade or skill they worked, or maybe something unique. There was one lad near me called Alaister McDonald, another very common name. He was called ‘Professor’ locally because at school he would put his hand up after every question the teacher asked … even though he did not know the answers.
So I believe Brighid was named by the people because I believe they recognised her ‘mission’ as being to honour what was
believed of the life giving from their Bhride goddess.
This still seems to be so with communities of nuns. Though they go to mass etc. Their own lives as a community seems to be more about attending to their gardens, trees, maybe fields, brewing, natural remedies, caring for people, and consulting people, rather than having their heads glued into scripture books. Communities of nuns never seem to exist under servitude to men, then perhaps getting to mass with the priests once or twice a week.
St. Brighid today seems to be very much the story of women that women seek to live today, and for men who passionately engage in those values too.
I am going to publish a supplement to this edition in a day or two to share links to my past Brighid Story series of articles, plus links to some of the Brighid 1500 gatherings and events around Ireland.
The views of some Celtic-oriented neopagans is that Brigid is a pre-Christian goddess associated with fire, the sun and creative inspiration (among many other things), which may be where the connection with smithing and poetry came from...? And of course with sacred wells, which seems contradictory to fire but maybe, this association is more about the elemental energies of the goddess.
So glad to get your take on Brighid. It's interesting and often frustrating how, down through the ages, different folks and groups put their own spin on a particular story until it is so confused that we don't have any idea what the truth is.