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Brigit: Goddess, Saint, 'Holy Woman', and Bone of

Contention

Article · January 2007

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Carole Cusack
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Brigit: Goddess, Saint, ‘Holy Woman’, and Bone of
Contention
Carole M Cusack

Introduction

The vitae of Brigit of Kildare have received considerable scholarly

attention. However, tension exists between purely textual studies,
which concentrate on demonstrating the Christian orthodoxy of the
material in the vitae and the ways in which these texts contribute to
knowledge of the early Irish Church, and the folkloric/comparative
studies which indicate close ties with pre-Christian Irish religion and
the transformation of Brigit from pagan goddess to Christian saint.
This tension recently led Séamas Ó Catháin to suggest the term ‘Holy
Woman’ for Brigit, which avoids favouring either pagan or Christian
interpretations, side-stepping the otherwise inevitable ‘bone of
contention’. This paper examines these two areas of ‘Brigit studies’,
questioning the methodological assumptions underlying the rigid
sequestration of textual studies from other forms of evidence. It is
demonstrated that insistence on the Christian orthodoxy of Brigit and
of early medieval Irish Christianity is misleading and can only be
maintained through this sequestration. Once all the evidence is
presented, it is clear that the figure of Brigit, and the traditions
surrounding it, have pagan origins; this indicates the syncretic nature
of early Irish Christianity. Finally, Ó Catháin’s descriptor, ‘Holy
Woman’ to define Brigit is endorsed.

Brigit1 and Patrick, two saints from the beginnings of Christianity in

Ireland in the fifth century CE , retain their popularity with Catholic
Christians to this day. Questions about the historical verifiability of
saints, common since the Counter-Reformation, intensified in the
1960s and resulted in Vatican II striking many saints from the

1
Throughout this article the name of the goddess and saint is spelled ‘Brigit’; where
it is spelled differently in the works of other scholars that spelling is preserved when
direct quotations are included.
75
On a Panegyrical Note

ecclesiastical calendar. So far, however, Brigit and Patrick have been

left untouched. Their feast days, 1 February and 17 March, are
celebrated in Ireland and the Catholic world, especially wherever the
Irish have a presence. This is despite assertions by scholars ‘that the
Christian Brigid is the personification of the Celtic goddess’2 and
despite historical research that ‘yields, not one, but two Saint
Patricks’.3 There is, however, a qualitative difference between Brigit
and Patrick.

Patrick is a historical figure who left writings, the Confessio and the
Letter to Coroticus. These gave his seventh century hagiographers
Muirchú and Tírechán some reliable material on which to base their
accounts.4 From these texts we can see that Patrick was vitally
concerned with the celibate religious life and that he had considerable
knowledge of the Bible.5 No such texts existed for Brigit’s
hagiographers, Cogitosus of Kildare and the anonymous authors of
the Vita Prima and Bethu Brigte. Of all the early Irish saints
celebrated in hagiography and cult, Brigit is the most difficult to link
to a historical figure. Indeed, establishing such a link would appear to
be impossible.

Yet there is significant resistance among certain scholars to the

suggestion that the ‘historical Brigit’ did not exist and that Saint
Brigit is a euhemerised pagan goddess. This paper examines the
literary sources for Brigit and attempts to place them within two
contexts, that of seventh and eighth century Ireland in which they
were produced and that of contemporary scholarship. It is argued that
resistance to the claim that Brigit is a euhemerised deity is
problematic; no evidence can be gleaned to link her to any figure
from the historical record. Demonstrating that the vitae of Brigit are
2
D Ó Cathasaigh, ‘The Cult of Brigid: A Study of Pagan-Christian Syncretism in
Ireland’ in J J Preston (ed) Mother Worship: Themes and Variations (Chapel Hill,
1982) 75-94, 75.
3
Ibid.
4
R Sharpe, Medieval Irish Saints’ Lives (Oxford, 1991) 9.
5
M Herren, ‘Mission and Monasticism in the Confessio of Patrick’ in D Ó Corráin, L
Breatnach and K McCone (eds) Sages, Saints and Storytellers: Studies in Honour of
Professor James Carney (Maynooth, 1989) 76-85.
76
Carole M Cusack

Christian documents, documents that nonetheless preserve authentic

pre-Christian Irish (or pagan) material, is a daunting task. However,
this interpretation is supported by cumulative findings from fields as
diverse as text-editing, medieval history, religion studies, folklore
analysis and anthropology.

Nativists and Anti-Nativists

To defend this stance on Brigit necessitates engagement with

methodological issues in the study of early Irish texts, chiefly with
the ‘nativist’ versus ‘anti-nativist’ controversy. This concerns the
extent to which pre-Christian Irish traditions were preserved within
Christian-authored early medieval texts. This controversy is not new;
it derives initially from James Carney’s 1955 Studies in Irish
Literature and History, which first articulated the anti-nativist
position.6 However, in the past fifteen years or so, anti-nativism has
been reshaped by a new generation, including Kim McCone and
others, and acquired a larger following, while itself being the target of
new criticisms by a revitalized nativist scholarship.7

In summary, nativist scholars, such as Kenneth Jackson, Myles Dillon

and Proinsias MacCana, interpret Irish texts from after the conversion
period as preserving aspects of the culture of Ireland prior to its
becoming Christian. Certain scholarly disciplines are employed in
support of this position, which focus chiefly on the processes
involved in the transition from an oral to a written culture, and use
comparative Indo-European mythological and ritual material to
elucidate obscure and tantalising elements in the Irish sources.8 The
detection of such pre-Christian material has led to several hypotheses:

6
J Carney, Studies in Irish Literature and History (Dublin, 1955).
7
For example, K McCone, Pagan Past and Christian Present (Maynooth, 1991). A
vitriolic review of this volume by David Dumville in Peritia 10, 389-398 exposed
contradictions in McCone’s understanding and rejection of ‘nativism’. Recent
‘middle way’ nativist contributions include J Carey, A Single Ray of the Sun:
Religious Speculation in Early Ireland (Andover and Aberystwyth, 1999) and F Di
Lauro, ‘Through Christian Hands: Evidence for Elements of Pre-Christian Tradition
in the Mongán Myths’, Australian Celtic Journal, 7, 2000-1, 38-47.
8
McCone, op cit, 2-5.
77
On a Panegyrical Note

that the Irish monasteries demonstrated an attitude of tolerance

towards paganism that was unique among early medieval clergy; that
the filid (poets) continued their traditional role in society and accrued
certain of the functions of the druids; and that a clear distinction can
be drawn between secular and ecclesiastical literary genres.

In contrast, the anti-nativist position argues that very little can be

known of the earlier oral tradition of the Irish, since all that remains
are Christian texts written by Christian clergy; that these clergy were
not sympathetic to, but critical of, paganism; that the most
appropriate models for these literary texts are found in the Bible and
other Christian writings; that there is no hard and fast distinction
between secular and ecclesiastical literary genres; and that the texts
provide scholars with material about ecclesiastical matters of
importance at the time of their production, first and foremost.9
Extreme versions of this position are sceptical of pre-Christian
religion or ‘paganism’, because all the texts are Christian and, as
Christians, their authors knew nothing of paganism.10 With its
emphasis on the finality of the text, there are aspects of anti-nativism
that are compatible with some forms of postmodernism.

Until Carney’s 1955 salvo, nativism had been the scholarly

orthodoxy; anti-nativism has since gained ground to become at least
as successful. Certain texts and subject matter remain sites of fierce
contention between the two groups, often with irreconcilable
positions being espoused in relation to them. Research on Brigit has
not been drawn into the centre of the maelstrom, though the materials
available to study her qualities and cult are fairly extensive and are

9
Ibid, Chapters 1-3 et passim.
10
This is now being argued more aggressively in the field of early medieval
Germanic studies. Examples include: I N Wood, ‘Some Historical Re-Identifications
and the Christianization of Kent’ in G Armstrong and I N Wood (eds) Christianizing
Peoples and Converting Individuals (Turnhout, 2000) 27-35 and H Janson, ‘Adam of
Bremen and the Conversion of Scandinavia’ in Armstrong and Wood, op cit, 83-88.
Both these papers argue that ‘paganism’ (Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian
respectively) is derived from Christian/Biblical models and bears no relation to any
actually existing phenomenon.
78
Carole M Cusack

ideally suited to the controversy, being situated intriguingly at the

boundaries of Christianity and paganism.11

Arguably, at the centre of the debate between nativists and anti-

nativists is a text called the Cín Dromma Snechtai (the Book of
Druimm Snechtai), a book that does not survive to the present and
was last heard of in the seventeenth century. References to it enable
the reconstruction of its contents with some certainty. In 1912 Rudolf
Thurneysen suggested that the contents consisted of fourteen items:

Ten … are shared by the manuscripts London, British Library MS Egerton

88 and Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 23.N.10: Audacht Morainn, Baile
Chuinn Chétchathaig, Compert Chon Chulainn, Compert Mongáin,
Echtrae Chonlai, Forfess Fer Fálchae, Immram Brain, Scél Mongáin,
Togail Bruide Uí Derga, Verba Scáthaige … Thurneysen proposed
adding the poem ‘Fil and grian Glinne Aí’, not found in 23.N.10 but
ascribed to CDS in Egerton 88; the stories Scél asa mberar combad hé
Find mac Cumaill Mongán and Tucait Baile Mongáin, lacking in 23.N.10
but present in Egerton 88, and grouped together with Compert Mongáin
and Scél Mongáin in three other manuscripts; and Echtrae Macha. He …
noted that … Tochmarc Étaíne cites CDS, indicating that some version of
that story was also present there.12

Later Thurneysen, Mac Cana and Vernam Hull suggested that the
following be added to the list of putative Cín Dromma Snechtai
contents: Compert Chonchobuir, Immacallam Choluim Chille 7 ind
Óclaig, and Immacallam in Druad Brain 7 inna Banfátho Febuil.13

This collection of tales has a pronounced ‘pagan’ flavour, with many

involving an encounter between a human and an otherworldly
representative. Anti-nativists argue that in these texts ‘paganism’ is
being co-opted by Christians to present Christian doctrines ‘by
parable’, to quote Carney. Carney argued that the woman who draws

11
See A Trindade, ‘Death and Gender: Some Reflections on Aided Medbe’,
Australian Celtic Journal 7, 2000-1, 25-36, especially 33 fn 5.
12
J Carey, ‘On the Interrelationship of Some Cín Dromma Snechtai Texts’, Eriu xlvi,
1995, 71-92, 71-72.
13
Ibid, 72.
79
On a Panegyrical Note

Conlae away in Echtrae Chonlai represents the Church, and that the
sections foretelling the coming of the semi-divine hero Mongan in
Immram Brain are attempts to ‘explain the Incarnation by parable’.14
More recently, John Carey has argued that Cín Dromma Snechtai was
the work of a single author, editor or redactor in the first half of the
eighth century, who assembled ‘texts relating to the origins of Lough
Foyle (Immacallam Choluim Chille and Immacallam in Druad) and a
dossier of materials written late in the reign of Fínnechta Fledach
(Baile Chuinn, Echtrae Chonlai, Audacht Morainn, Togail Bruidne
Uí Derga), and then used these as the basis for compositions of his
own (Immram Brain, the Mongan tales, the CDS Etain stories)’.15
The texts this redactor assembled were all seventh-century
compositions.

Carey asserts that the motivations of these authors were far less
Christian than Carney claimed and that the texts surviving from Cín
Dromma Snechtai are evidence of a unique attitude characterising
Irish Christianity. Euhemerism and demonisation, ‘two Christianising
devices of unimpeachable orthodoxy which were disseminated
throughout Europe’,16 were not employed until the tenth century. This
was not due to ignorance; Irish clergy were aware that other Christian
writers, such as Isidore of Seville, used these techniques. Instead,
there developed the doctrine that the old gods, the Tuatha dé Dannan,
were ‘half-fallen angels’ or ‘a branch of the human race which
somehow escaped the contagion of the Fall’.17 This is clearly
radically syncretic, and not merely an illustrative use of pre-Christian
material, as proposed by Carney and others. The conclusions of
Carey, a cautious scholar, are supported by other reputable research.18

These preliminary considerations contextualise the Brigit texts, the

earliest of which is virtually contemporaneous with the seventh-

14
Carney, op cit, 288.
15
Carey, ‘Interrelationship’, 91.
16
Carey, Single Ray, 20.
17
Ibid, 31.
18
See C D Wright, The Irish Tradition in Old English Literature (Cambridge, 1993)
and Dumville, op cit.
80
Carole M Cusack

century Cín Dromma Snechtai core and the two vitae of Patrick by
Muirchú and Tírechán, mentioned above.

Saint Brigit in the Ecclesiastical Textual Tradition

The Annals of Ulster give the date 452 for Brigit’s birth and her death
‘is variously recorded as 524, 526 and 528. Tradition has it that she
was seventy years old when she died’.19 As it cannot be proven that
she existed, these dates merely locate the perception of her as a
younger contemporary of Patrick. More importantly, there are five
Latin vitae of Brigit edited by the Bollandists in the seventeenth
century Acta Sanctorum. The three that garner the most attention are
Vita Prima (so-called because it appears first in the Acta, not because
of textual primacy) and Cogitosus’ Life of Brigit, which are both in
Latin, and the Bethu Brigte, a text that is one-quarter in Latin and
three-quarters in Irish. While Mario Esposito and Richard Sharpe
have argued for Vita Prima being the earliest,20 there now seems to be
evidence that Cogitosus’ Life is the earliest of the surviving
accounts.21 Other seventh century accounts were used by Cogitosus in
compiling his Life, but have not survived.22

Evidence establishing Cogitosus as the earliest author includes the

fact that Muirchú, hagiographer of Patrick and himself datable to the
last quarter of the seventh century, refers to Cogitosus as ‘my father’.

19
S Connolly, ‘Vita Prima Sanctae Brigitae: Background and Historical Value’,
Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 119, 1989, 5-49, 5.
20
M Esposito, ‘On the Early Latin Lives of Saint Brigid’, Hermathena 24, 1935,
120-165; R Sharpe, ‘Vita S. Brigidae: The Oldest Texts’, Peritia 1, 1982, 81-106.
21
Another very interesting text, here neglected because of its later date and
geographical remoteness from Ireland, is the Vita Metrica Sanctae Brigidae of
Donatus, Bishop of Fiesole from 829-876. It is of approximately two thousand lines,
incomplete, and constitutes the ‘longest poem of any Scottus on the Continent’. S
Young, ‘Donatus, Bishop of Fiesole 829-876 and the Cult of St Brigit in Italy’,
Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 35, 1998, 13-26, 16. An edition is available: D N
Kissane, ‘Vita Metrica Sanctae Brigidae: A Critical Edition with Introduction,
Commentary and Indexes’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 77, Sect. C,
1977, 57-192.
22
K McCone, ‘Brigit in the Seventh Century: A Saint with Three Lives?’ Peritia 1,
1982, 107-145, 115.
81
On a Panegyrical Note

This may mean ‘predecessor’ or ‘spiritual elder’, but definitely

suggests a generation between their respective floruits, placing
Cogitosus in the third quarter of the seventh century or possibly
slightly earlier.23 More compelling evidence for the primacy of
Cogitosus’ text is the fact that Cogitosus does not refer to meetings
between Brigit and Patrick, while Vita Prima (eighth century) and
Bethu Brigte (ninth century) do.24

The meetings between Brigit and Patrick in Vita Prima and Bethu
Brigte are vital clues to the purpose of the hagiographical texts under
examination. Kathleen Hughes has noted that ‘hagiography is not
history’, in that the author’s purpose in writing about a saint may
involve manipulation of the material to achieve certain ends.25 The
purpose of hagiography is ‘an integrated narrative of the saint’s
career’,26 but, in constructing this narrative, other claims may be
advanced. Cogitosus describes Kildare, the site of Brigit’s
foundation, as a ‘great metropolitan city’. Knowledge of the absence
of cities in any recognizable sense in seventh century Ireland alerts
the reader that he is claiming a grand status for the church at Kildare,
‘at the least that she was the chief church in the province of Leinster,
and probably that she claimed lordship over churches of other
provinces’, according to Hughes.27

Patrick’s seventh century hagiographers were also engaged in

establishing a tradition of ecclesiastical authority for Armagh, the
diocese with which he was traditionally associated. A text called the
Liber Angeli, included in the Book of Armagh (folios 20v-22r),
intimates the existence of a ‘pact’ between Kildare and Armagh with
regard to the sharing of ecclesiastical authority or paruchia. It says:

23
McCone, ‘Brigit’, 108-109.
24
L Maney, ‘When Brigit Met Patrick’, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic
Colloquium XIV, 1994, 175-194, 175-177.
25
K Hughes, Early Christian Ireland: An Introduction to the Sources (Cambridge,
1977) 219.
26
D A Bray, A List of Motifs in the Lives of Early Irish Saints (Helsinki, 1992) 11.
27
K Hughes, The Church in Early Irish Society (London, 1980) 84.
82
Carole M Cusack
Between S. Patrick and Brigit, the pillars of the Irish, such friendship of
charity dwelt that they had one heart and one mind. Christ performed many
miracles through him and her.

The holy man therefore said to the Christian virgin: ‘O my Brigit, your
paruchia in your province will be reckoned unto you for your monarchy
but in the eastern and western part it will be in my domination’.28

McCone’s analysis of the Brigit texts and other material relevant to

the historical period suggests that this agreement between Armagh
and Kildare dates from the mid-eighth century (and probably not
prior to the composition of Vita Prima) and is the reason for the
strangely powerful meetings between Brigit and Patrick and their
coded conversations, which appear in Vita Prima and Bethu Brigte.29

Cogitosus’ Life, written long before the Armagh/Kildare pact, lacks

the meetings between Brigit and Patrick. Cogitosus does not need
them, as his sole purpose is the exaltation of Brigit and her church at
Kildare. So he has Brigit receiving the veil from Mac Caille, whereas
the other Lives have Bishop Mel, Patrick’s disciple, performing this
important act (and so establishing her subordination to Patrick).30
This interpretation of the interrelationship of the three texts also
explains geographical biases within the narratives: Cogitosus keeps
Brigit close to Kildare, whereas in the other two texts she ventures
into other regions, chiefly further north into the area controlled by the
Uí Néill dynasty.31

To exalt Brigit, Cogitosus constructs a narrative falling into four

sections or parts: a prologue and an epilogue, framing two sets of
miracle stories, thirty set during Brigit’s lifetime and four after her
death.32 Scholars have commented variously on these miracles:
Hughes regards some of them as ‘puerile and repetitive’;33 Wendy
Davies has studied the healing miracles, noting that the percentage
28
Hughes, Early Irish Society, 113.
29
McCone, ‘Brigit’, 133.
30
Connolly, op cit, 7.
31
Ibid.
32
McCone, ‘Brigit’, 109.
33
Hughes, Early Irish Society, 147.
83
On a Panegyrical Note

overall is small and suggesting that ‘Irish clerical writers did not
initially see healing as an appropriate manifestation of saintly
power’;34 and Connolly has argued convincingly that there is a
theological agenda underlying the selection of miraculous events,
employing the ‘two theological virtues of faith and charity’,
interwoven with the two monastic virtues of virginity and
obedience.35 The later Vita Prima and Bethu Brigte also contain
numerous miracles and some elements that romanticise Brigit, the
significance of which will be discussed in the following section.

Miracles were popular with the readers and hearers of saints’ lives
and the attractiveness of the whimsical image of Brigit hanging her
cloak on a sunbeam (in Cogitosus, Chapter 6.3)36 is undeniable.
Miracles also fitted into a Christian schema, in that Jesus in the New
Testament is presented as a healer and miracle-worker. However, the
miracles in the Brigit texts have attracted the attention of nativist
scholars, who see in some of them the fragmentary recollection of the
powers of the great pan-Celtic goddess Brigit,37 who shares a name
with the saint and may indeed be her source. The miracles in the
Brigit Lives employ imagery such as fire and light, fertility and
feasting; these qualities are all connected with the goddess. Another
indication of identity is that Saint Brigit’s feast day, 1 February, is the
day of Imbolc, a pagan festival of spring and fertility, associated with
the goddess.38

34
W Davies, ‘The Place of Healing in Early Irish Society’ in O Corrain et al, op cit,
43-55, 51.
35
S Connolly, ‘Cogitosus’ Life of St Brigit: Content and Value’, Journal of the
Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 117, 1987, 5-27, 7.
36
Ibid, 15.
37
Brigit is also known as ‘Brigantia’ in some Celtic regions and gave her name to the
British tribes of the Brigantes. Padraig Ó Riain, ‘Sainte Brigitte: paradigme de
l’abbesse celtique?’ in M Rouche and J Heuclin (eds) La femme au moyen-age
(Maubeuge, 1990) 27-31, suggests that the high status accorded to Saint Brigit may
reflect the tradition of female chieftainship among the Brigantes, 30-31.
38
P Berger, The Goddess Obscured: Transformation of the Grain Protectress from
Goddess into Saint (Boston, 1985) 70 and Hughes, Early Christian Ireland, 229.
84
Carole M Cusack

Brigit the Goddess in the Ecclesiastical Textual Tradition

Two texts provide the starting point for investigating the survival of
Brigit the goddess in post-conversion Ireland. These are the entry in
Cormac mac Cuillenáin’s tenth century Glossary, and the twelfth
century account by Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales)
describing the perpetual fire at the convent of Kildare. Cormac’s text
is as follows:

Brigit, i.e. a learned woman, daughter of the Dagda. That is Brigit woman
of learning i.e. a goddess whom filid worshipped. For her protecting care
was very great and very wonderful. So they called her goddess of poets.
Her sisters were Brigit woman of healing and Brigit woman of smith-work,
daughters of the Dagda from whose names all the Irish goddesses used to
be called Brigit.39

This passage indicates that ‘Brigit’ was a name by which all

goddesses were known in pagan Ireland, that Brigit was the daughter
of the Dagda, one of the great gods of the Tuatha de Danaan; and that
she possessed a ‘triple’ form, being the patroness of poetry and
learning, smithcraft and healing. Nativist commentators note that
these qualities and areas of interest are duplicated in the lives of
‘Saint’ Brigit. Even the anti-nativist McCone has noted that there is
‘an intimate ideological connection, apparently with pagan roots,
between fire and the tripartite arts of medicine, craftsmanship and
learned insight’40 and that there is a proliferation of Saint Brigits (‘ten
different St Brigits and fourteen St Brigs alias Brigits. The problem of
one or two St Patricks pales by comparison’).41 He fails to draw the
inference that this multitude may result from the fact that ‘Brigit’ was
a name by which goddesses were generally known.

Giraldus Cambrensis’ text offers a fascinating insight into the Kildare

community in the later twelfth century. He toured Ireland as part of

39
J F Kenney, Sources for the Early History of Ireland: An Introduction and Guide
(Dublin, 1979) 14.
40
McCone, Pagan Past, 165.
41
McCone, ‘Brigit’, 131, citing the 1912 text ‘Comainmnigud nóem nÉrend’, edited
by Brosnan.
85
On a Panegyrical Note

the English court party which was engaged in the conquest of the
Irish and was in the personal employ of the Angevin King Henry II.
He describes the fire as follows:

It is not that it is strictly speaking inextinguishable, but that the nuns and
holy women have so carefully and diligently kept and fed it with enough
material, that through all the years from the time of the virgin saint until
now it has never been extinguished ... Although in the time of Brigit there
were twenty servants of the Lord here, Brigit herself being the twentieth,
only nineteen have ever been here after her death ... They all, however,
take their turns, one each night, in guarding the fire. When the twentieth
night comes, the nineteenth nun puts the logs beside the fire and says,
‘Brigit, guard your fire. This is your night’. And in this way the fire is left
there, and in the morning the wood, as usual, has been burnt and the fire is
still alight.42

At least one other perpetual fire is known from early medieval

Ireland, in a church dedicated to Saint Molaise. However, the most
fascinating elements of Giraldus’ description are those dealing with
the resemblance between this fire, tended by professed virgins, and
that of the Vestals in ancient Rome.

McCone’s analysis of the role of the aés dáno (men of arts) in Celtic
society draws out the connections between the figure of Brigit in the
hagiographies and the poets (filid) and hospitallers (briugu) of the
sagas. McCone notes that the three significant males in Brigit’s Lives
represent the three main aés dáno, poet, craftsman and leech, all of
whom are connected with fire.43 His anti-nativist stance appears to
have been forgotten; the material momentarily escapes the
methodology. So too in Dorothy Bray’s assessment of the role of fire
in the cult of Brigit: she explicitly acknowledges McCone and
constantly cautions that ‘the transformation from goddess to saint
involves several factors and is a far from simple process’. But it is
difficult to accept her fence-sitting conclusion that, while Saint Brigit
looks like the goddess, there are just as many biblical referents used
in relation to her and therefore that ‘Brigit the saint, the unknown and
42
Giraldus Cambrensis, Topographica Hibernica, cited by M Low, Celtic
Christianity and Nature (Edinburgh, 1996) 157.
43
McCone, Pagan Past, 165.
86
Carole M Cusack

unknowable historical figure, revived memories of Brigit the goddess

through the medium of the Christian myth of Mary’.44

The importance of Kildare waned in the mid-twelfth century. After

the rape of the abbess by the king of Leinster and her replacement
with one of his relatives in 1135, the Council of Kells (1152) decreed
that the abbess would no longer take precedence over the bishops in
public assemblies.45 The Archbishop of Dublin, Henry de Loundres,
ordered the extinguishing of the perpetual fire in 1220. There were
local protests, but it was never revived.

Before discussing folkloric survivals of devotion to the goddess

Brigit, it remains to note that certain miracles featured in the
hagiographical texts exhibit resemblances to so-called pagan sources.
For example, in Cogitosus (Chapter 26, 2-3) Brigit stays under the
roof of a poor woman, who slaughters her only calf and chops up the
wood of her loom in order to cook it, so that the saint will receive an
appropriate welcome. The next morning she ‘found with her cow
another calf of the same kind, which she loved as much as the
previous one and she beheld the wood of the loom which had
likewise been restored to her in place of the other’.46 This miracle
teaches the audience that no loss is sustained because the saint can
restore all and that the provision of such hospitality is godly. Feasting
is a common motif in accounts of the Celts from the Classical
ethnographies onwards. The Norse mythological sources list two
types of animals that can be slaughtered, cooked and eaten, only to
resurrect the following morning: the goats that draw Thor’s chariot
and the boar on which warriors feast in Valhalla.47

Earlier it was mentioned that there are elements of the post-Cogitosus

hagiographies that romanticise Brigit. This observation relates to the

44
D A Bray, ‘Saint Brigit and the Fire from Heaven’, Etudes Celtiques XXIX, 1992,
105-113.
45
John of Salisbury, Historia Pontificalis, quoted in Dianne Hall, Women and the
Church in Medieval Ireland c.1140-1540 (Dublin, 2003) 65.
46
Connolly, ‘Cogitosus’, 22.
47
The Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, ed and trans J I Young (Berkeley, 1964).
87
On a Panegyrical Note

contention between nativists and anti-nativists as to whether there is a

perceptible distinction between ecclesiastical and secular literary
genres in early medieval Ireland. The nativists believe there is; the
anti-nativists do not. In Cogitosus’ narrative, the names of Brigit’s
parents, Dubthach and Broicsech, are given with little detail as to
their relationship. The later Vita Prima posits that Brigit’s mother
was a bondmaid and that Dubthach had a wife who was deeply
jealous of her mother. Anti-nativists (McCone, Bray) have argued
that the origin of this change is the Biblical rivalry of Sarah,
Abraham’s wife, and his concubine Hagar.48 However, this parallel is
not exact, as Brigit (the concubine’s child) is prophesied to rise above
the children of Dubthach’s legitimate wife, whereas in the Bible
Hagar’s son Ishmael is less favoured than Sarah’s legitimate son
Isaac. What is important in this change, from Cogitosus’ plainer
narrative to the more embroidered version of the Vita Prima and
Bethu Brigte, is that the conditions of Brigit’s birth and early life in
the later texts bring her closer to the accounts of the birth of Celtic
heroes in the ‘secular’ sagas.

Alwyn and Brinley Rees provide a table of nine ‘striking features’ in

the birth of a hero in Celtic mythology.49 Brigit’s birth, as recounted
in Vita Prima Sanctae Brigitae, can be seen to include at least six of
these nine features. The conventions which this birth narrative fulfils
are: 1) the future greatness of the child is foretold; 2) her advent is
destined to bring misfortune to a presiding power; 3) her father is not
a normal man (that is, he is a chieftain); 4) an auspicious time is
announced for the birth; 5) certain animals are associated with the
child’s birth and upbringing (cows and milk); and 6) in her youth she
displays qualities that reveal her extraordinary nature. The fact that
Brigit does not fulfil all nine of the Rees brothers’ conventions does
not exclude her from the normal saga pattern; Cúchulainn in the Táin
bó Cúailnge similarly conforms to only six.

For example, Cúchulainn and Brigit are alike in that both are born to
parents who (in some sources) are not married, the implication being
48
Bray, ‘Saint Brigit’, 108-9.
49
A and B Rees, Celtic Heritage (London, 1961).
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Carole M Cusack

that there may be supernatural involvement in the conception. In Vita

Prima 15.2 Brigit is hailed as ‘the Mary of the Gael’ and her cult is
closely associated with that of the Virgin Mary;50 Mary, like Jesus,
was said to be born without sin. Vita Prima 6.4 tells of Brigit’s birth:
‘That is how the prophet said this bondmaid would give birth, neither
in the house nor outside the house, and the infant’s body was washed
with the warm milk which she was carrying’.51 While this does not
seem particularly relevant from a Christian point of view, thresholds
and places and times that were liminal (like dawn and dusk) were
regarded as powerful in pagan Celtic belief.52 Similarly, in the sagas
there are examples of the alteration of time: these include the Dagda,
who makes a year seem like a day; Nera, who ventures into a síd
(fairy mound) for three days and three nights and finds on return that
only a few minutes have passed; and the ultimate example of Oisin,
son of Finn, who emerges from the Land of Youth to find that three
hundred years have passed in the real world. The same theme occurs
four times in the Vita Prima. Here, one example will suffice: when
Brigit and Patrick meet, ‘they did not stop talking for three days and
nights nor did the sun go down on them. On the contrary they all
thought it was the one hour’.53 Therefore, I would argue that the
‘romantic’ elements that have been added to the life of Brigit are
more likely to be from the indigenous tradition and indicate the
creation of a compatibility between the saints’ lives and the heroic
stories.54 This assertion is supported by the Vita Prima 88.6, which
shows Brigit going into battle to support the cause of the king of
Laigin, ‘with her staff in her right hand and a column of fire …
blazing skywards from her head’, granting him victory like the
goddesses of Celtic paganism.55

50
Connolly, ‘Vita Prima’, 17.
51
Ibid, 15.
52
Rees and Rees, op cit, passim.
53
Connolly, ‘Vita Prima’, 31.
54
For example, The Tain, ed and trans T Kinsella (Oxford, 1970) chronicles the
exploits of the miraculously conceived Cuchulainn.
55
Connolly, ‘Vita Prima’, 41. For goddesses and victory in battle see ‘The Second
Battle of Mag Tured’ in T P Cross and C H Slover, Ancient Irish Tales (New York,
1969) 28-48.
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On a Panegyrical Note

There is further evidence to support the identification of the saint and

the goddess. The name ‘Kildare’ was derived from cill dara, the
‘church of the oak’.56 Oak trees were particularly associated with
druids and pre-Christian Celtic religion.57 The ecclesiastical centre of
Kildare was located a mere five miles from the village of Knockaulin,
a former pagan sanctuary.58 In addition to this is Brigit’s association
with ale, feasting and the multiplication of food, all activities that
were part of the warrior lifestyle of the pre-Christian Celts. In Vita
Prima 42 Brigit multiplies food to feed Patrick’s entourage when he
visits the monastery of Saint Laisre and in 52 she magnifies the
contents of the granary of Bishop Ibor of Mag Geiselle.59 Her
resurrection of the poor woman’s calf is mentioned above. In a poem
or hymn possibly composed in the eleventh century and attributed to
Brigit,60 is a vision of ‘Paradise in the form of a festival, a festival of
beer, which is attended by the “king of kings” (the Lord) and all his
entourage’.61 This is a suggestive image, harking back to the
otherworld feasts described in the Ulster Cycle and other heroic saga
texts. The image is reinforced by the later medieval quatrain recited
on 1 February, St Brigit’s Day, ‘Tasting every food in order/This is
what behoves at Imbolc/Washing of hand and foot and head/It is thus
I say’.62

56
Sharpe, ‘Vita’, 105-106.
57
A Watson, ‘The King, the Poet, and the Sacred Tree’, Études Celtiques XVIII,
1981, 165-180.
58
Ó Cathasaigh, op cit, 82.
59
Connolly, ‘Vita Prima’, 31.
60
D Greene, ‘St. Brigid’s Alefeast’, Celtica II, 1954, 150-53.
61
Ó Riain, op cit, 27.
62
K Meyer, Hibernica Minora (Oxford, 1894) 49. Claire Stancliffe is persuaded that
‘stories and attributes of the pagan goddess Brigit were transformed to her Christian
namesake’. C Stancliffe, ‘The Miracle Stories in Seventh-Century Irish Saints’
Lives’ in Jacques Fontaine and J N Hillgarth (eds) The Seventh Century: Change and
Continuity (London, 1992) 87-115, 94.
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Carole M Cusack

Folkloric Evidence for the Continuation of Pre-Christian

Devotion to Brigit

It is possible to sustain a purely anti-nativist orientation regarding

pre-Christian Irish religion only by restricting attention to the texts. It
is indisputable that these are monastic products and, although it has
been demonstrated here that narrow anti-nativist readings of necessity
explain away or suppress elements of the texts that fail to fit the
paradigm, such readings are not untenable per se. However, once
evidence from folklore and anthropology is admitted to build up the
picture of the goddess Brigit and the survival of devotions to her in
the modern era, it becomes nearly impossible to deny the identity of
the Christian saint and the Celtic goddess, along with the pre-
Christian origins of many of the devotional practices associated with
them.
This folkloric evidence principally concerns those devotions of Irish
Catholics that retain pre-Christian elements. These practices are of
two kinds: those connected to the saint’s day celebrations and those
that can be performed at any time. Many of the second type take
place at holy wells. Ireland is dotted with such water sources; water
was inevitably twinned with generative and healing power in the pre-
Christian world and usually with the female divine. The two most
frequent dedications of Irish holy wells are to Brigit and to the Virgin
Mary.63 A recent study of Ireland’s holy wells by Walter and Mary
Brenneman stresses the ‘loric’ nature of well-devotions; that is, they
are occasions for the transmission of lore, community knowledge
very different from the official doctrines of the Church. Just outside
Kildare there is a ‘Brigit’s well’, of which the Brennemans observe:

There are several unique features of this well which link St. Bridget to the
goddess Brigid and thus to the place and the power of the loric. Near the
spring itself, which is located on the edge of a field, is a stone tablet
standing upright. On one side is incised a St. Bridget’s cross, whose
swastika form symbolizes the fiery sun and maintains continuity with the
goddess’s association with the sacred smith and his fire. On the other side
is incised a Christian cross, bringing together or syncretizing the loric and

63
Brigit’s identification as ‘the Mary of the Gael’ has already been mentioned.
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On a Panegyrical Note
the sacred. But there is another stone image that seems forcefully to stress
the loric roots of Brigid in the earth and especially in fertility as manifest
through cows. As the water flows from the spring towards the glass-
enclosed statue of the saint, it passes into and through two stone tubes and
out their other ends. The tubes bring to mind the breasts of a woman, and
the water flows through them as milk passes through the nipples of the
Great Goddess to her children. There is nothing Christian to mollify this
symbolism. In field interviews we were told that the stone tubes are called
variously the ‘shoes’ or ‘cows’ of the saint.64

The vitae refer to Brigit’s cows and to her general ability to provide
food and all forms of sustenance to people. The imagery of this well
also raises the issue that the pagan Brigit has to be desexualised
before she can be incorporated into the Christian company of saints.
Other sexual aspects of Brigit surviving in folklore are noted below.

The association of Brigit with fertility has been discussed with

reference to the wells. Much of the ritual engaged in on St Brigit’s
Day and on its eve concerned agricultural, pastoral and human sexual
fertility. On the eve of 1 February, households prepared for Brigit to
visit their homes. This tradition is attested in Scottish sources,
including the Carmina Gadelica,65 and in the archival sources of the
Irish Folklore Collection (IFC). All accounts mention an effigy of
Brigit, made from a sheaf of oats or a bundle of green rushes; J G
Frazer notes that in the Highlands of Scotland the effigy was dressed
and laid in a basket to sleep the night, whereas on the Isle of Man the
custom was to stand ‘with them [the bundle of rushes] in the hand on
the threshold of the door, to invite the holy Saint Brigit to come and
lodge with them that night’.66 Frazer’s research is dated and his
methods are questionable by modern standards, but it has generally
been acknowledged that the problems lie in his interpretations rather
than in the material he collected.

64
W L Jr and M Brenneman, Crossing the Circle at the Holy Wells of Ireland
(Charlottesville and London, 1995) 99.
65
A Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica (Edinburgh and London, 1928).
66
J G Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (London, 1949)
134-135.
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Carole M Cusack

However, folkloric research into Brigit was brought up to date in a

most impressive fashion in the 1990s in the publications of Séamas Ó
Catháin. Taking his lead from Máire Mac Neill’s The Festival of
Lughnasa,67 a groundbreaking study of Irish customs concerning the
feastday sacred to the god Lugh, 1 August, Ó Catháin painstakingly
assembled materials from the IFC attesting to customs celebrating
Brigit on or around 1 February. In these archives are recorded
traditions that are now dying or have died out. These include Brigit’s
role in enhancing the milk supply:

It is still said here that the milk has gone up into the cows’ horns from
Christmas until after the Feast of St Brigid. This means that there is a
scarcity of milk during this time. Usually milk is very scarce in January but
the old people used to say during the month when they heard anyone
complaining of the scarcity of milk – ‘It won’t be scarce very long now as
St. Brigid and her white cow will be coming round soon’. I heard that some
of the older women of the Parish take a Blessed candle to the cow’s stall on
Brigit’s Eve and singe the long hair on the upper part of the cow’s udder so
as to bring a blessing on her milk.68

Ó Catháin, convinced of the pre-Christian nature of Brigit but

knowing her significance for Irish Christians, has proposed calling
her a ‘Holy Woman’, so as to avoid the pitfalls of both ‘goddess’ and
‘saint’.

In other investigations, Ó Catháin examines the symbolism of the

Brigit’s crosses that were woven during the festival and the sexual
nature of some of the activities, especially those involving churning
milk into butter. In an earlier article, he explores Brigit’s connections
with bees and honeymaking, and with bears and fertility, and adduces
useful evidence for similar traditions in the Scandinavian regions.
The net effect of his research is to strengthen the connection of Brigit
to fertility and to pre-Christian traditions that had survived as folk
practices, where higher-order textual sources manifest no signs of

67
M Mac Neill, The Festival of Lughnasa: a Study of the Survival of the Celtic
Festival of the Beginning of Harvest (Oxford, 1962).
68
S Ó Catháin, ‘The Festival of Brigit the Holy Woman’, Celtica XXIII, 1999, 231-
260, 238-239.
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On a Panegyrical Note

such syncretism.69 This pattern of retention of older beliefs and

practices, and their syncretism with the incoming religion of
conversion, is observable the world over, as peoples convert to
evangelistic new religions.70 The argument for such syncretism is
more logical and realistic than a strong anti-nativism which claims
that the Christian texts can tell us very little about the old religion.

The suggestion that there was a period of overlap between ‘pagan’

and ‘Christian’ Ireland, resulting in a mixed culture, is also supported
by recent research into the coming of literacy to Ireland. If, prior to
the arrival of missionaries in the fifth century, literacy was unknown
in Ireland and if, as is the case with many other European peoples,
literacy was exclusively associated with Christianity, the anti-nativist
position would be easier to hold; it could be claimed that texts were
only able to issue from ecclesiastical institutions. Research by Jane
Stevenson, however, suggests that the adoption of literacy in Ireland
was far more complex than this. Stevenson’s argument is detailed; it
is sufficient to cite her conclusions here:

The true explanation for the state of literate culture in sixth-and seventh-
century Ireland, which had reached such a state of sophistication that it had
developed a standard literary vernacular by the later sixth century, is that
the Irish discovered literacy, like their Continental cousins, by contact with
Rome. Similarly, they developed their own sense of what it was and was
not good for … This knowledge of writing and its uses seems to have
developed such a degree of self-confidence in them that even the impact of
the fifth-century post-Roman Britons and their culture failed to unseat the
native aes dana (‘men of art’). Ireland is, in this reading, not only one of
the first Western cultures to show a medieval type of Christian literacy but
also the last witness to the effect of the Roman Empire on the less
developed and less technologically complex culture on its fringes.71

69
S Ó Catháin, ‘Hearth-Prayers and Other Traditions of Brigit: Celtic Goddess and
Holy Woman’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 122, 1992, 12-
34.
70
C M Cusack, Conversion Among the Germanic Peoples (London, 1998) Chapter 1.
71
J Stevenson, ‘The Beginnings of Literacy in Ireland’, Proceedings of the Royal
Irish Academy 89:6, Sect. C, 1989, 127-165, 129-130.
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Carole M Cusack

Stevenson, a student of Carney, has produced a picture of Ireland that

renders the hardline anti-nativist position absurd. Literacy was
available to Irish who did not accept Christianity, which means that
pre-Christian traditions could be committed to writing and enter into
dialogue with Christian textual products, creating exactly the sort of
radically syncretic ideas that Carey has discovered in the surviving
material.

This evidence makes rather more explicable and much less

astonishing the remarkable status of Brigit, who is equated with
Mary. It also explains the remarkable status of the abbess of the
foundation at Kildare, who from ‘the start of the tenth century …
seems to have been more honoured than the abbot of Kildare, and, in
Ireland at this period, this signified that she was at a rank comparable
with that of a bishop’.72 The goddess was retained in a Christian
form. This was a lengthy and complicated transformation, which took
place over several centuries. During those centuries Christianity was
becoming enmeshed in the fabric of Irish society; older models of
conversion, positing erasure of the old religion and an uncomplicated
acceptance of the new, are simply not credible.

Conclusion

It has been demonstrated that anti-nativist scepticism concerning

paganism and syncretic Christianity is not sustainable, nor is the
preference for a severely restricted approach to the study of the early
medieval Irish texts, an approach that yields only Christianity.73 It has
not been the intention in this article to probe the underlying reasons
for advocating the strong anti-nativist position; suffice to say that it
appears politically naïve or worse when the evidence from modern
72
Ó Riain, op cit, 30. The original text is: ‘Puis à partir du Xe siècle, l’abbesse
semble avoir été plus honorée que l’abbé a Kildare, et, dans l’Irlande de cette
période, ceci signifierait qu’elle joussait d’un rang comparable à celui de l’évèque’.
This translation is by Dr Christopher Hartney of the University of Sydney. My thanks
are due to him.
73
The clearest and most sober exposition of the difficulties of maintaining this
position is: J P Mackey, ‘Christian Past and Primal Present’, Etudes Celtiques XXIX,
1992, 285-297.
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On a Panegyrical Note

colonial encounters is considered. The Irish were not conquered

violently, but their culture underwent a seismic shift when it
encountered the Christian religion. Their worldview became unviable
as their microcosm encountered the Christian macrocosm, the fifth
century equivalent of a global culture. Insightful theorists of
conversion note that the encounter of the microcosm with the
macrocosm, and of polytheism with universalist monotheism, results
in cultural and religious change, usually in the form of cultural
adaptations to facilitate the survival of identity in the newly
‘globalised’ world.74 To examine texts and discover only Christianity,
to question the existence of paganism, is to ratify the result of
colonialism while ignoring the process by which it is reached.

Brigit’s vitae were all written substantially later than her alleged
lifetime and the intervening years are when the crucial negotiation
and accommodation between the old and the new took place. Other
historical evidence supports the existence of the syncretic,
adventurous theology celebrated by Carey. Irish clergy throughout
the early medieval period were known for their irregular views;
rumours of Pelagianism abounded75 and accusations of heresy were
made against Irishmen throughout Europe (for example, Virgil of
Salzburg, denounced as a heretic ‘for his views concerning the
existence of the Antipodes’).76

Brigit was part of the old Irish religion that continued into the new
Christian culture. Her name, generic for ‘goddess’, became one of the
most popular Christian names in Ireland. Her role in the lives of the

74
For example, Robin Horton’s thesis, exemplified in ‘African Conversion’, is that
three factors facilitate conversion from local, indigenous traditions to globalizing
monotheism: the intellectual background of the indigenous religion, which creates a
bridge to the new religion; an exposure to the global macrocosm, which leads the
tribal culture to conclude that local deities and spirits are inadequate and that a
universal deity is superior; and lastly, the prompt conversion of the major
stakeholders (including rulers and priests) to preserve their status in the new world
order. See the summary in Cusack, op cit, Chapter 1.
75
Michael Herren and Shirley Ann Brown, Christ in Celtic Christianity: Britain and
Ireland from the Fifth to the Tenth Century (Woodbridge, 2002).
76
Wright, op cit, 41.
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Carole M Cusack

pious was generally concerned with the matters of daily life, food,
sexuality, health and domesticity, rather than the more doctrinal and
intellectual preoccupations evidenced in the vitae of the historical
Patrick. Intriguingly, Maney has recently suggested that, when he
places Patrick in Mide, Tírechán ‘seems to be suggesting that the
Christian Brigit was already established there prior to Patrick’s
arrival’ and that this affected the way Patrick conducted himself,
including his performance of marvels at wells.77 This is fascinating,
although it is more likely that it was the pre-Christian Brigit that
Patrick was following, since the arrival of Patrick himself marks the
start of ‘Christian Ireland’. It also confirms the claim that, while
saints’ vitae do tell us about ecclesiastical tensions from the time of
composition, this focus is not exclusive. Other information (at least as
important to ecclesiastics) might be included, such as details of the
old religion, albeit in a disguised fashion.

Brigit was remade in Christian form and occupies a space between

myth and history, pagan and Christian, oral and written, vernacular
and Latin, folkloric and ecclesiastical. She may be contextualised
either way, to be purely a Celtic goddess or purely a Christian saint.
Yet both these versions of her are incomplete, mutilations of the
complex and multifaceted reality. Thus, Ó Catháin’s suggestion that
she be designated the ‘Holy Woman’ is an excellent one since,
whether pagan or Christian, Brigit is always distinguished by her
holiness and her femaleness.

77
Maney, op cit, 183.
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