St Brigid of Kildare is one of three national saints of Ireland. She is the patroness of poetry, learning, healing and protection, and is known for performing miracles, writes Mae Leonard.

 

Out on the Curragh of Kildare this early morning, the first day of February, there’s a strange kind of hush. It’s as if the world is holding its breath – a sort of pause – before something big happens.

The sheep are still asleep – all rolled up like big white cushions scattered on the short grass. If you stop a while and listen you might hear a wren warbling sweetly within the furze bushes or a robin somewhere trilling his song to proclaim his territory.

And as the blue-white mist begins to lift there is a faint sound of thunder off in the distance. But there is no need to worry that thunder is a herd of Ireland’s best thoroughbred horses out for their morning gallop. Morning is seeping through onto the plains of Kildare and now the waiting is over.

It is Lá ‘le Bríde – the Feast Day of St. Brigid – and this is what we’re waiting for out here on the Curragh – the light that St. Brigid brings today to banish winter and it spotlights new life creeping into the land all around us.
See the snowdrops pushing up through the earth – those shy little white flowers full of hope and strength; see the yellow and purple satin of the crocus – they seem to say it is time to wake up to the new light – spring is here – Brigid brings it with her.

But who is this, Brigid? St. Brigid – Mary of the Gael – contemporary of St. Patrick? This great woman who defied her father by refusing to marry the man he had chosen for her and she became a religious sister instead – the woman who founded the great Abbey at Cill Dara – the Church of the Oak – that still stands in Kildare today to bear witness of her wonderful work.

And when the time came for her to be professed as a nun – on receiving the veil from Bishop Mel, he recited the prayers for ordaining a bishop over Brigid’s head. Later when queried about it he said that he had no control over his words at the time and that dignity had been “given by God unto Brigid beyond every other woman” – thus she became Ireland’s first female bishop.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own