Dria El
June 15th, 2001, 07:26 AM
Brighid
Brighid was the daughter of the Dagda--'the good god' and father figure of the Tuatha Dé Dannan. She is sometimes said to have two sisters also named Brighid. They were experts in and patronesses of poetry, smithcraft, and healing, respectively. In Brigantia, she was the principal deity.
Her influence was extremely widespread. The number and diverse locations of places, including hundreds of wells, named after her attest to this. Also, Caesar wrote that six gods, including Minerva, were worshipped in Gaul. Brighid is most likely the goddess whith which he equated the goddess Minerva.
In the sixth century, Pope Gregory I gave St. Augustine the instruction to convert England not by destroying and demonizing pagan traditions and locations, but by giving them Christian associations. There is very little historical element in the life of St. Bridget, and her stories undoubtedly come from the goddess Brighid. Proinsias Mac Cana writes about St. Bridget:
She was born, we are told, at sunrise neither within nor without a house, is fed from the milk of a white, red-eared cow (that is, by Irish usage, a supernatural cow), hangs her wet cloak on the rays of the sun, and the house in which she is staying appears to the onlookers to be all ablaze.
The monastery which St. Bridget is said to have founded at Kildare was in all probability a pagan sanctuary dedicated to Brighid. Some practices at the monastery speak of women's mysteries, as the Farrars tell us:
Giraldus Cambrensis, who died about 1220, wrote that a perpetual fire had been burning there 'through all the years from the time of the virgin saint until now,' tended by twenty nuns in a circle of bushes which no man might enter.
Because the saint's popularity undoubtedly continued from the goddess Brighid without interruption, further study of her could be useful in understanding our goddess.
Brighid was the daughter of the Dagda--'the good god' and father figure of the Tuatha Dé Dannan. She is sometimes said to have two sisters also named Brighid. They were experts in and patronesses of poetry, smithcraft, and healing, respectively. In Brigantia, she was the principal deity.
Her influence was extremely widespread. The number and diverse locations of places, including hundreds of wells, named after her attest to this. Also, Caesar wrote that six gods, including Minerva, were worshipped in Gaul. Brighid is most likely the goddess whith which he equated the goddess Minerva.
In the sixth century, Pope Gregory I gave St. Augustine the instruction to convert England not by destroying and demonizing pagan traditions and locations, but by giving them Christian associations. There is very little historical element in the life of St. Bridget, and her stories undoubtedly come from the goddess Brighid. Proinsias Mac Cana writes about St. Bridget:
She was born, we are told, at sunrise neither within nor without a house, is fed from the milk of a white, red-eared cow (that is, by Irish usage, a supernatural cow), hangs her wet cloak on the rays of the sun, and the house in which she is staying appears to the onlookers to be all ablaze.
The monastery which St. Bridget is said to have founded at Kildare was in all probability a pagan sanctuary dedicated to Brighid. Some practices at the monastery speak of women's mysteries, as the Farrars tell us:
Giraldus Cambrensis, who died about 1220, wrote that a perpetual fire had been burning there 'through all the years from the time of the virgin saint until now,' tended by twenty nuns in a circle of bushes which no man might enter.
Because the saint's popularity undoubtedly continued from the goddess Brighid without interruption, further study of her could be useful in understanding our goddess.