BRIGIT IN CELTIC MYTHOLOGY

Brigit (Bride, Brigid, Brighid, Brid, Bridget, Briid) Irish goddess. 

There are two important figures of this name: Brigit the goddess, and Brigit of Kildare, an early Christian saint who died ca. 525 C.E. Whether the latter is a Christianized version of the former is the subject of some contention, although even the most devout admit the accretion of implausible legends around a woman of dubious historicity. While there is all likelihood that a brilliant abbess who bore the name of a Celtic goddess lived in Kildare, it is not likely that she time-traveled back to Bethlehem to serve as midwife at the birth of Jesus, nor that she pulled out her eyes to avoid marriage and then replaced them with no damage to her sight, nor that she used sunbeams to hang up her wet mantle. Accidentally made a bishop by a god-intoxicated cleric, Brigit the saint has much of the power and magic of the earlier goddess.

As goddess, Brigit is a rarity among the Celts: a divinity who appears in many sites. Her name has numerous variants (Brig, Bride, Brixia, Brigindo). As Celtic divinities tended to be intensely place-bound, the apparently pan-Celtic nature of this figure is remarkable — sufficiently so that some argue that the variants of the name refer to the same figure. The Irish Brigit ruled transformation of all sorts: through POETRY, through smithcraft, through HEALING. Associated with FIRE and CATTLE, she was the daughter of the god of fertility, the DAGDA; as mother of RUADÁN, she invented KEENING when he was killed. Some texts call Brigit a triple goddess or say that there were THREE goddesses with the same name, who ruled smithcraft, healing, and poetry, respectively. This triplication, a frequent occurrence among the Celts, typically emphasized or intensified a figure’s divine power.

It is not clear whether the Brigit mentioned in the great compilation of ancient Irish law called the SENCHAS MÓR as Brigh Ambui was the goddess; parallel male figures in that section of the text such as CAI and NIALL are mythological or quasi-historical. From Brigh Ambui, “female author of the men of Ireland,” the renowned BREHON or judge Briathra Brighi got her name; the text implies that it was common for women judges to be called Brigit. The question of women’s rights in the law and as lawyers is unsettled; however, Brigh Ambui is mentioned third in the Senchas Mór’s list of important fig-ures in the lineage of Irish law.

Many scholars hypothesize an all-female priesthood of Brigit, even suggesting that men were excluded from her sanctuary. She may have been seen as a bringer of civilization, rather like other Indo-European hearth goddesses (Vesta, Hestia) who ruled the social contract from their position in the heart and hearth of each home. In Ireland the mythological Brigit was not imag-ined to be virginal; indeed, she was the consort of one of the prominent early kings of Ireland, the unfortunate BRES mac Elatha, and bore him a son, Ruadán.

Brigit’s feast day was IMBOLC, February 1, still celebrated in Ireland today. Her special region was the southeast corner of Ireland, LEINSTER, also the historical home of the saint who bears her name. St. Brigit is still honored in KILDARE, ancient seat of her abbey. Little can be verified about her life, but legend has filled in the blanks. Brigit is said to have been born of a Christian slave mother and a pagan Celtic king, at dawn as her mother stood on the threshold of their home; miracles attended upon her birth, with light pouring from the child, who was named by the DRUIDS of the court after the pan-Celtic goddess described above. When grown, she refused marriage, pulling her eyes from their sockets to make herself so ugly no one would have her; but then she healed herself and set out in search of a place for her convent. Tricking a local king out of land, she established one of ancient Ireland’s great religious centers at Kildare, whose name includes both kil-(church) and dar-(OAK, sacred to the druids), signifiers of two spiritual traditions of Ireland. There she was both abbess and bishop, for she was made a priest when St. Mel, overcome with the excitement of blessing the abbess, acciden-tally conferred holy orders on her.

The historian Giraldus Cambrensis reported in 1184 that nuns had for five hundred years kept an undying flame burning to St. Brigit, a tradition that recalls the fire rituals of SUL and BATH and may have had a basis in Celtic religion. The miraculous flame, which never produced any ash, was doused not long after Giraldus wrote, and the nuns dispersed; but in 1994, the Brigidine sisters returned to Kildare and relit Brigit’s flame. An annual gathering on Imbolc brings pilgrims from around the world to see the fire returned to the ancient fire-temple, discov-ered on the grounds of the Protestant cathedral during restoration in the 1980s. Vigils at the WELL dedicated to Brigit and other ceremonial, artistic, and social-justice events make up the remainder of the celebration of Lá Féile Bhride, the feast of Bridget, in Kildare today.

The Irish conflation of goddess and saint seems even stronger outside Kildare, where vari-ous traditions of greeting the rising spring at Imbolc were sustained through the late years of the 20th century. February 1, ancient festival of Brigit the goddess, continues even today to be celebrated as the feast of Brigit the saint. Old folkways, some with clear pre-Christian roots, have died away in most lands, although only within recent memory. However, some tradi-tions, like the BIDDY Boy processions in Co. Kerry and the crios bridghe (“Brigit girdle”) in Co. Galway, have been recently revived. Workshops are now offered in many places in constructing the four-armed rush Brigit cross and the rush poppet called the BRÍDEÓG (little Brigit). Meanwhile, around the world, neopagans and Christians alike bring honor to Brigit in various ways, including on-line societies of Brigit.

By Patricia Monagham in "The Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology and Folklore", Facts On File, Inc.,New York, 2004, excerpts pp.59-60. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

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