Fifty-something years ago in a Catholic school not so far away, the nuns used to read to us from The Lives of the Saints. St. Brigid was always my favorite, but not because she lived in my matrilineal ancestral home of Ireland. No, she was my favorite because she had the best stories.
Celtic history (or mythology as it is sometimes called) holds that Brigid was the daughter of a pagan king who wanted to strengthen an alliance by offering her in a political marriage. But Brigid became a Christian like her mother, and vowed to become a nun. Her father said no, but Brigid wouldn’t back down. There are different versions of what happened next. Some say the beautiful Brigid was miraculously transformed into an ugly young woman. Others say Brigid took a knife and slashed her own face. Either way, her intended no longer wanted her. But when she entered the convent and took her final vows, her beauty was restored, a sign that she had found favor with God.
My favorite story is the tale of Brigid’s cloak. As a leader in the young Irish church, Brigid appealed to the King of Leinster to donate some land for her newly-formed order of sisters to build a convent. The king laughed at her request. Brigid was persistent and asked the king for a smaller plot of land. Again he refused. Finally she asked, “If I drop my cloak upon the ground, may I have the land that it covers?” Amused, the king relented. Oh woe, to this naive monarch who dared to underestimate a woman and a saint! For when the holy Brigid dropped her cloak, it stretched and grew until it spread out like an enormous quilt to cover the entirety of County Kildare.
I’m sure it will come as no surprise that Brigid is the patron saint of poets. And so I want to share with you a poem I wrote for her a few decades ago. Back then I called her “Bridget,” spelled as my Great-grandmother Bridget Cassidy Moss of County Donegal, Ireland, and Yolo County, California, spelled her name.
Bridget
I was conceived by a woman
of the Fir Bolg
who caressed the paper thin bark
of a lone birch tree
and its small green leaves
fluttered like the hands of children
making shadows in the sun.
I was borne by a woman
of the Tuatha de Dannan
who cradled me
in the blue cup of a lupine
carried me in a wreath of fresh blossoms
she braided into her blonde hair.
The Celts named me
in contemplative dreams
of flute notes and turf smoke.
I stoked the dying embers
of the hearth fire
in the dampness of morning
and Oisin, in that hazy half hour
between wakefulness and sleep,
tasted poems on his tongue.
But the Christians say
my body was conceived
in the last hours of darkness
on a Beltane morning.
At daybreak
a cloudburst
cracked
the sky
and raindrops
caught in my eyelashes,
fog hung like heavy cream
thick and cold
in my throat.
I retreated to a peat fire,
spread cut river grass to dry,
then wove it into a cross
I presented to my father.
Finally I followed Patrick
to Slane,
sought abby walls to shelter me
from bitter chill
of a waning moon.
Still music of a Gaelic phrase
swells my lungs
and curls my lips.
They cannot silence me.
I cast my cloak onto the wind
and like fire it spreads
enveloping the hills and loughs
with a brilliance
even the Welsh women see
across the water.
Call me goddess or saint
but my face is always beautiful.
Tomorrow, Saturday, February 1st is St. Brigid’s Feast Day! Coincidentally, it is also the Celtic Feast of Imbolc, a holiday set midway between the solstice and the equinox, to celebrate the lengthening of daylight and the promise of warmer spring days ahead. So Happy Feast Day!–whatever your pleasure.