happy saint brigid's day

Most people mark St. Patrick's Day next month, but completely ignore today, which is St. Brigid's Day, which seems an oversight in my mind, as she's also one of Ireland's patron saints.
If you'd like to see Brigid of Kildare in art, you can go here. If you're interested, you can order this item. The artist, Patricia Banker, has also offered to donate a dollar in support of a website I also like, called Irish Culture and Customs. It's an interesting site with stories and recipes and all kinds of information on, well, Irish Culture and Customs. Just be sure to include the code word Irish when you order, so the nice people at Irish Culture and Customs will get the donation.
Anyway, back to St. Brigid. Truth be told, no one knows what's true about her and what's legend. I mean honestly, who's going to reconstruct the full and unvarnished truth when you're relying on the Irish to provide the narrative?
What has been more fully documented however, is that Brigid developed strong affinity for the teachings of St. Patrick. And guess what, St. Patrick was no dummy. Patrick understood a few things about Irish Celtic society. The first was that women held positions of prestige within the society, being able to both hold property and serve as founders of religious institutions. The advantages of reaching out to females then are obvious. Convert women, then watch christianity spread like wildfire -- as they marry and convert spouses and offspring, as they make financial gifts of their money and property to the church, and as they found religious orders which in turn recruit nuns and monks.
So, while Brigid pretty much led the life of a religious rock star in many regards, she fell squarely into this category. After she developed an appreciation for St. Patrick's message, she acquired the habit of distributing all her father's belongings to the poor, including a prized, jewel encrusted sword she gave to a leper. Not surpisingly, her father soon decided that her disposition was probably best suited to the convent. And that's where she came into her own. She's credited with founding convents in both County Offaly and in Kildare, which is the location she is best known for, sometime around 470. It was a co-ed institution and she was the Abbess with considerable power, legend even suggesting that an elderly bishop accidentaly consecrated her as a bishop during her blessing ceremony, something impossible to undo. Whether this is true or not, it stands that all the abbesses from Brigid on held the administrative authority equal to that of a Bishop until the Synod of Kells in 1152.
Impressed yet? Well, here's another wrinkle. There are actually two Brigids. The other was actually a pagan goddess. In her English translation of Irish myth, Lady Augusta Gregory (Gods and Fighting Men, 1904), describes Brigit as "a woman of poetry, and poets worshipped her, for her sway was very great and very noble. And she was a woman of healing along with that, and a woman of smith's work, and it was she first made the whistle for calling one to another through the night. And the one side of her face was ugly, but the other side was very comely. And the meaning of her name was Breo-saighit, a fiery arrow."
As it turns out, pagan Brigid is celebrated at the pagan festival of imbolc, which is today. St. Brigid's feast day is also today, marked on the christian calendar as 40 days after Christmas, which was when Jesus could be presented in the temple, because a woman needed that time to become "clean" again after childbirth, according to Mosaic law. Women needed to make holocaust at that time, through the presentation of a lamb and a dove. If the family was poor, two doves would do, which was the case with Mary. This detail was most likely given to suggest that Jesus himself was the lamb of God, taking away the sins of the world.
Again, not surprising that early christian leaders would use pagan Brigid as a surrogate Mary, on the spring feast, tying her to christian tradition in order to present St. Brigid, Mary and Jesus as a more fully illuminated truth.
So was St. Brigid all a lie? Was she constructed, in whole or in part, as a marketing technique? I don't know. To paraphrase Andrew M. Greeley, just because a story isn't true makes it no less interesting.
Welcome to spring. Happy Groundhog's Day.
-Laura