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Brigit; Bride; Power; Fiery Arrow; Breo-saighead; Renown;

The Irish Goddess Brighid is daughter of the Dagda and is of the Tuatha De Danann. As such she inherits the mantle of Dana, the ancestress of the Celtic people and is strongly associated with the festival of Imbolc. Brighid has three aspects, being a matron of healing, smithcraft and poetry; poets calling her the mistress of inspiration and prophecy. Her primacy within Britain and Ireland is marked by many springs, wells and rivers dedicated to her. She also has resonances with Brigantia, the territorial Goddess of Northern Britian.

Many aspects of the cult of Brighid became subsumed in that of St Brigit of Kildare (450-523) who was fostered in a druidic household and founded a monastery at Kildare which maintained a perpetual sacred fire tended by nineteen priestesses, nineteen representing the nineteen year cycle of the Celtic "Great Year". This fire burned from the 5th century and was not extinguished until the Reformation when all monastic foundations were dissolved. The fiery connections of Brighid/Brigit are still maintained in parts of the Gaelic world whenever the fire is raised in the morning or smoored (covered) at night, by invocatory prayers. St Brigit is known in Wales as St Ffraid and in Scotland as St Bride and so is venerated in all parts of the insular Celtic world.

Brighid/Brigit is one of the most important bridging figures between Pagan and Christian Celtic traditions, acting as foster-mother to Christ in many legends. In Ireland, she is called 'the Mary of the Gaels' and her protective mantle is invoked as a ward agains all dangers. Her rites are still celebrated at Imbolc by the making of Brigit's Crosses out of interwoven rushes which are hung near the door of house, stable and barn. St Brigit is the secondary saintly protector of Ireland after St Patrick.

As the Cailleach had hardened the earth with her hammer at the beginning of Samhain, so Brighid was believed to make it soft again with her white wand with which she awoke the spring.

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