From the Hexenkunde Magazine Winter issue 2022/23.

In the pagan Gaelic Irish calendar the festival of Imbolc marks the beginning of Spring. It was also known as Oimelg and after the conversion period as La Fheile Bride, ‘The Day of the Festival of Bride’ or ‘St. Brigid’s Day’ (MacNeill, 1965, p. 353).

Imbolc has been attested an important time of the year since the 10th Century, with its mention in the Irish tale of Tochmarc Emire. Here Imbolc is described as an important seasonal high festival when livestock resume giving milk or, as it explicitly states, ‘when the ewes are milked at Spring’s beginning’.

Additionally, Imbolc would also mark the time of sowing new seeds with the first blooming of the Blackthorn plant. However, this festival may have had variations due to seasonal changes each year, so the 1st of February would not necessarily always mark precisely the time when Imbolc was celebrated. So, what was the original meaning of the pagan festival of Imbolc?

Crucially, its customs and beliefs appear to separate Spring from Winter, it is a time of weather divination and honoring new beginnings (Löffler, 1983, p.30). In both Ireland and in Scotland, a sheaf of straw was fashioned into a human figure in honor of Brigid, whose arrival was very much welcomed (MacLeod, 2011, p. 62). But who exactly is Brigid? According to the Bishop of Cormac, Brigid was the daughter of Dagda and she had two daughters. She likewise owned two oxen and was associated with skills of blacksmithing, fire and healing in general. There are many traits that Saint Brigid shares with the pre-Christian Celtic goddess Brigid/Brigit, particularly in her association with livestock, cattle, agriculture and light. The pre-Christian Brigid was a seer and has strong connotations with the female art of seeing and healing (Maier, 1997, p. 47).

According to the professor of Irish folklore Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, her name meant ‘the exalted one’ and scholars proposed that the name which circulated among the pagan British Celts (‘Briganti’) gave birth to the name of the tribe Brigantes. Brigit belongs to the supernatural and powerful deities of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Although potentially similar to the goddess Danu, a mother goddess, what remained unclear is if Brighid reflected different aspects of the same Gaelic mother-goddess or was venerated as a separate deity (Ó hÓgáin, 1991, p. 60). The 6th century St. Brigid of Kildare and the pre-Christian deity Brigid are believed by several scholars to converge on both cultic and ideological/religious levels (Lawrence, 1996, p.40). St. Kildare appears to have ,cShe is said to travel the countryside on the night of the 1st of February, in order to give blessings to both people and to livestock, and one the attributes of this saint is a connection to milk and dairy production (Green, 2012, p.436).

According to the Irish folklorist Seán Ó Súilleabháin, we might be witnessing a Christian recontextualization, where a formerly pre-Christian tradition continued well after the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, albeit with a different cultural context: “The main significance of the Feast of St Brigid would seem to be that it was a christianization of one of the focal points of the agricultural year in Ireland, the starting-point of preparations for the spring sowing. Every manifestation of the cult of the saint (or of the deity she replaced) is closely bound up in some way with food-production. (Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 1945, p. 164).

The practice of crafting human or animal shaped figures has been well recorded across rural Europe. German folklorist Wilhelm Mannhardt saw in these figures deities of vegetation, spirits of corn and above all; pre-Christian deities of fertility, agriculture and restoration (1868, 1875). Such a custom was also recorded in rural Scotland in honor of Brigid. In Scotland, rural households would craft a human shaped figure, dressed in female clothes out of straw oats. Around the time of Imbolc, this figure would also serve as a kind of divination on future crops and harvests as described in the 1549 publication Description of the Western Isles of Scotland. The idea behind this custom may be explained by James Frazer’s suppositions regarding ‘last sheaf’ customs in that the corn-mother deity would return fertility and abundance back into the soil (Frazer, 1922, pp. 412, 463).

Grains and corn from last year’s harvest would be preserved over the Winter and then re-used upon the arrival of spring in order to craft human-shaped sheaf figurines that would restore fertility in the fields. This straw figurine, called a Brideόg (‘little bride’) is kept throughout the year to protect the household from negative influences and bad luck. In some parts of Ireland the straw dolls are crafted by a girl from the local village. Furthermore, fresh butter would also be made around this time of the year and this theme of dairy production and livestock may be mythologically linked with the two oxen owned by the Goddess Brigid (Mikhailova, 2020, pp. 94, 95).

According to Miranda Green, we see similar customs in connection to the Christian St. Brigid. At her monastery in Kildare a perpetual fire was lit, guarded by 19 virgins from the Order of Brigid. However, in order to have a better comprehension of what Imbolc may represent and its cosmological function, it may be appropriate to look outside of Ireland towards the Scottish Highlands. Frazer records that there we can witness several customs that take place on February 1st, Saint Brigid’s Day. Veneration of the spirit of vegetation, crops and food-production is implied by both naming the human representation of the spirit ‘the bride’ and in dressing it in bridal clothing. We find the same custom of crafting an oat-straw doll and it was customary to build it a bed from grains and hay, positioning it near the front door of the house. Once the bed is ready with lit candles and blankets, a member of the household would go outside to invite the spirit of Brigid to stay for the night. Similarly, a fire would be burned for her throughout the entire night.

Frazer regards the custom of virgins guarding the sacred fire at the monastery of Kildare as similar to both extant French and Roman superstitions. In both cultural spheres, there appears to be a strong correlation between sacred fires and the virgins who maintained them. Among French farmers there was a superstition that only virgin women could rekindle a smoldering candle into a flame and among the Romans only virgins were allowed to light the sacred fires in honor of Minerva (Frazer, 1913, p.95). Could the fires that were lit at the monastery of Kildare shed light on the question if Saint Brigid is, in fact, derived from pre-Christian Celtic Goddess Brigid?

Finally, let us examine The ecclesiastical history of Ireland (1829) written by John Lanigan, an Irish Church historian and Professor at the University of Pavian. On page 460 he notes the pre-Christian worship of fire – and the use of sacred fires – among the pagan Gaelic population. However he does not ascribe the fire lit at the Kildare monastery purely to a pagan origin. Instead, he argues that pagan worship in Ireland and beyond was sometimes allowed to continue if directed by the Church toward the worship of the true and almighty God. In other words, at the monastery of Kildare and Saint Brigid we might be seeing a merging of both pre-Christian and Christian cultic and religious worship, guided by the authority of the Church.

References:

Catháin, S. Ó. (1992). Hearth-Prayers and Other Traditions of Brigit: Celtic Goddess and Holy Woman. The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 122, 12–34. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25509020

Löffler, C. M. (1983). The Voyage to the Otherworld Island in Early Irish Literature. Austria: Brill Academic Pub.

Frazer, James George, Sir. The Golden Bough. New York: Macmillan, 1922; Bartleby.com, 2000. www.bartleby.com/196/. [Date of Printout].

Green, Miranda (2012) The Celtic World. . (n.p.): Taylor & Francis.

Lanigan J. (1829). An ecclesiastical history of ireland from the first introduction of christianity among the irish to the beginning of the thirteenth century. compiled from the works of the most esteemed authors … who have written and published on matters connected with the irish church; and from irish annals and other authentic documents still existing in manuscript (Second). R. Cadell and Co. Simpkin and Marshall Printed for J. Cumming.

Mannhardt, Wilhelm (Wald- und Feldkulte. Band 1: Der Baumkultus der Germanen und ihrer Nachbarstämme: mythologische Untersuchungen (1875 – reprint))

Mannhardt, Wilhem, 1868. Die Korndämonen. Beitrag zur germanischen Sittenkunde. Berlin: Ferd. Dümmler’s Verlagsbuchhandlung.

Macneill, M. (1965). Irish Folklore as a Source for Research. Journal of the Folklore Institute, 2(3), 340–354. https://doi.org/10.2307/3814154

Mykhailova Tatyana (2020). February 1st in Ireland (Imbolc and/or LáFhéile Bride): From Christian Saint to Pagan God

MacLeod, S. P. (2011). Celtic Myth and Religion: A Study of Traditional Belief, with Newly Translated Prayers, Poems and Songs. United States: McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers.

Maier, B. (1997). Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture. Germany: Boydell Press.

Ó hÓgáin, D. (1991). Myth, legend & romance: an encyclopaedia of the Irish folk tradition. United Kingdom: Prentice Hall Press.

Suilleabhain, Sean O.(1967). Irish Folk Custom and Belief. Three Candles Ltd., Dublin.

Suilleabhain, Sean O. (1945) Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland.

Walker, S. K. (1994). Brigit of Kildare as She is: A Study of Biographical Image. Biography, 17(2), 111–124. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23539666