Brigit, Brigid or Bríg is a goddess of pre-Christian Ireland. She appears in Irish mythology as a member of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the daughter of the Dagda and wife of Bres, with whom she had a son named Ruadán. She is associated with the spring season, fertility, healing, poetry and smithcraft. Cormac's Glossary, written in the 10th century by Christian monks, says that Brigid was "the goddess whom poets adored" and that she had two sisters: Brigid the healer and Brigid the smith. This suggests she may have been a triple deity. , Rennes, probably depicting Brigid or Brigantia: c. 2nd century BCESaint Brigid shares many of the goddess's attributes and her feast day on 1 February was originally a pagan festival marking the beginning of spring. It has thus been argued that the saint is a Christianization of the goddess.
Familial relations
She is identified in Lebor Gabála Érenn as a daughter of the Dagda and a poet. The same passage mentions that she has two oxen, Fe and Men, that graze on a plain named after them, Femen; elsewhere Fe and Men are described as the two oxen of Dil, "radiant of beauty," which may be a byname for Brigid. She also possessed the king of boars, Torc Triath, and Cirb, king of wethers, from whom Mag Cirb is named. The animals were said to cry out a warning and thus Brigid is considered the guardian of domesticated animals. As the daughter of Dagda, she is also the half sister of Cermait, Aengus, Aed and Bodb Derg.
Overview
In Cath Maige Tuireadh, Bríg invents :wiktionary:keening|keening, a combination of weeping and singing, while mourning for her son Ruadán, after he is slain while fighting for the Fomorians. She is credited in the same passage with inventing a whistle used for night travel. Brigid is considered the patroness of poetry, smithing, medicine, arts and crafts, cattle and other livestock, sacred wells, serpents and the arrival of early spring. In the Christian era, nineteen nuns at Kildare tended a perpetual flame for the Saint, which is widely believed to be a continuation of a pre-Christian practice of women tending a flame in her honour. Her festival day, Imbolc is traditionally a time for weather prognostication: In her English retellings of Irish myth, Lady Augusta Gregory 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." A possible British and continental counterpart Brigantia seems to have been the Celtic equivalent of the Roman Minerva and the Greek Athena. goddesses with very similar functions and apparently embodying the same concept of elevated state, whether physical or psychological. She is the goddess of all things perceived to be of relatively high dimensions such as high-rising flames, highlands, hill-forts and upland areas; and of activities and states conceived as psychologically lofty and elevated, such as wisdom, excellence, perfection, high intelligence, poetic eloquence, craftsmanship, healing ability, druidic knowledge and skill in warfare. A number of these associations are attested in Cormac's Glossary.
In the Middle Ages, the goddess Brigid was syncretized with the Christian saint of the same name. According to medievalist Pamela Berger, Christian "monks took the ancient figure of the mother goddess and grafted her name and functions onto her Christian counterpart," St. Brigid of Kildare. St. Brigid is associated with perpetual, sacred flames, such as the one maintained by 19 nuns at her sanctuary in Kildare, Ireland. The sacred flame at Kildare was said by Giraldus Cambrensis and other chroniclers to have been surrounded by a hedge, which no man could cross. Men who attempted to cross the hedge were said to have been cursed to go insane, die or be crippled. The tradition of female priestesses tending sacred, naturally occurring eternal flames is a feature of ancient Indo-European pre-Christian spirituality. Other examples include the Roman goddessVesta, and other hearth-goddesses, such as Hestia. Both the goddess and saint are associated with holy wells, at Kildare and many other sites in the Celtic lands. Well dressing, the tying of clooties to the trees next to healing wells, and other methods of petitioning or honoring Brigid still take place in some of the Celtic lands and the diaspora.
Brigid is an important figure for modern pagans, who emphasize her triple aspect. She is sometimes worshipped in conjunction with Cernunnos.
Other names and etymology
Brigit came to be spelled Briġid and Brighid by the modern Irish period. Since the spelling reform of 1948, this has been spelled Bríd. The earlier form gave rise to various forms in the languages of Europe, starting from the Medieval Latin Brigit, suggested by the written form, and from there to various modern forms, such as English Bridget and Bridgit, French Brigitte, Swedish Birgitta, Italian Brigida and Finnish Piritta. The name is derived from Proto-Celtic *Brigantī and means "The High One", cognate with the name of the ancient British goddess Brigantia, the Old High German personal name Burgunt, and the Sanskrit word Bṛhatī "high", an epithet of the Hindudawn goddessUshas. The ultimate source is Proto-Indo-European*bʰr̥ǵʰéntih₂, derived from the root *bʰerǵʰ-. Xavier Delamarre, citing E. Campanile suggests that Brigid could be a continuation of the Indo-European dawn goddess.
