SOUTH ALBIN GAELS—BRIGIT.
It has been usually taken too much for granted that the early
Christian preachers of Britain and Ireland succeeded in fully
Christianising the districts in which they laboured, and with which
their names are associated. This is a very imperfect apprehension of
the results of their efforts. No missionary of the cross could excel
Patrick and Columba in their enthusiasm for work, in their devotion
to the Gospel cause, and in their resolute attempt to conquer the
whole land for Christ. Yet we find that their evangelisation of the
races to which they were respectively sent was very incomplete.
Patrick writes of the large numbers who were converted under his
preaching, but there is no evidence that Christianity was universally
adopted by the whole people. On the contrary it is clear that the
Ardri, or chief king of Ireland, continued to be a Pagan during the
whole period of the mission of Patrick. It was only in the year 513
that a Christian sovereign exercised rule for the first time from the
throne of Tara. This was some time after the death of the apostle of
Ireland, which occurred in 493.
While Patrick was labouring to lay the foundations of the Irish
Church, spiritual decay appears to have crept over the heart of
his own native church among the Gaels of Strathclyde. The poetic
and literary flowering of this period we have in the person of the
celebrated Brigit. In those who are familiar with the revivals and
declensions of church life, as unfolded in history, such a decay
can excite no surprise. In our own times, with all the rich aids of
civilization and Christian literature, enkindling and preservative
that we possess, we find that one generation of earnest believers
in a district is frequently succeeded by an apathetic one. So the
living church of Strathclyde from which Patrick went forth, was in a
decadent condition when his name began to shine and burn brightly on
the shores of Erin.
There were many causes that contributed to the weakening of this
Gaelic Church of the Clyde valleys. The Roman arms had been withdrawn
and all over the Romanised provinces political disintegration set
in. Dependence on a foreign rule, and the enervating luxuries of
more southern lands had not only paralysed the native manliness of
the British races, but had also greatly emasculated the primitive
Christianity of these islands. Indeed, in southern Britain the
early Christianity became so completely extinguished that it had to
be re-kindled from the north in the sixth and seventh centuries.
The vigorous forces of the unconverted and unconquered tribes of
the north were too powerful for a Church which had been accustomed
perhaps to lean too much on the civil protection afforded by an alien
power. It must not also be forgotten that those early Christians had
literally no help to feed the flame of their devotion. The fragments
even of the Scriptures that may have been in circulation could only
have been in the hands of a very limited number; while the languages
in which they were written were utterly unknown to the people, and
there were no translations. When all this is remembered it becomes
rather a matter of marvel that the sacred glow of Christian truth
survived so long in some places after the personal life that kindled
it ceased to be. Those were truly ages when Christian witnesses were,
and had to be living epistles known and read of all men; for the
personal life became practically the literature in which the gospel
was heralded. So the strength of a Church depended mainly on the
character and personality of the teachers.
But notwithstanding the deadening influences around and in the Gaelic
Church of the Clyde districts subsequent to the period of Patrick’s
mission, we still mark in the sixth century the rays of Gospel truth
struggling there with the thick inclosing darkness of Paganism. One
heroic figure emerges from the surrounding gloom. It is that of
Kentigern, or Mungo, forever associated with the origin and rise of
the powerful commercial metropolis of Glasgow. The traditions of his
life abound with myths and marvels; while his name has been a rich
and suggestive theme for the etymological fancy. From the romantic
literature that has gathered around his name, we glean what appears
to be recognised as generally accepted facts—that he was born at
Culross, and that he died at Glasgow about 601-3. He had been the
pupil of the famous St. Serf in the east in the northern boundaries
of the Brythonic race with Gaels to the north of them. So he may
have been a Highland or a Welsh Celt. One or other of the forms of
his name has been resolved, apparently with equal ease, into either
a Gaelic or a Welsh etymon. Perplexing or unsatisfactory as this
undoubtedly is it yet may suggest an explanation. As happens in our
own and other times his name would assume various forms according to
the dialects or languages of the speakers and writers. The forms of
his name, therefore, furnish no key as to the race of his fathers.
When Kentigern began his labours on the Clyde the church of St.
Patrick’s people had lost much of its first love. Many of the Gaels
themselves had also been driven westward under Brythonic pressure
from the east and from the south. As Christian soldiers or Milesians
some had sailed to the north of Ireland to find a home; others had
drifted into Perthshire and Argyll, which at this period became the
true “Gaidhealtachd,” or the “land of the Gael.” Kentigern strove
devotedly to revive the drooping church. In his cold stone bed
strewn with ashes on the classic banks of the Molendinar stream he
cultivated the spirit of prayer; rehearsed the sacred strains of the
psalmist; and warmed his spirit by visions of divine fellowship.
In the local sovereign of the name of Morken he encountered much
disagreeable opposition and sarcastic interpretation of the saint’s
faith in a Providence. Kentigern virtually made an application
for an ecclesiastical establishment and endowment of himself and
his presbyter followers. King Morken received the application for
temporalities in a spirit that would do no discredit to a statesman
of modern times. He reminds the saint of his own popular saying:
“Cast thy care upon the Lord and he will care for thee.” But argued
the King further: “Now here am I, who have no faith in such precepts,
who do not seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness; yet for all
that, are not riches and honours heaped upon me?” The royal granaries
were full, while the Christian saints were starving. How could he
expect to believe in a Providence that thus arranged the possessions
of men. The saint’s replies and interpretations proved unavailing
with the royal sceptic, so broken in heart the holy man retired to
his oratory to pray. His emotions were profoundly stirred; he began
to weep. Then as the tears started in his eyes and coursed down his
cheeks, so did the waters of the Clyde begin to rise and swell into
a mighty flood, which at last overflowed around the royal granaries,
carrying them down the stream, and leaving them stranded at the very
door of the saint on the banks of the Molendinar. The sanctity of his
youth and the faith of his mature years have been in this fashion
richly attested by miraculous manifestations, according to his rather
credulous biographer, Jocelyn.
The earnest and heroic labours of Kentigern were not confined to
Strathclyde. We obtain glimpses of him beyond the Mounth among the
northern Picts of Aberdeenshire, while his Christian fellow-worker
and friend, Columba, was beginning to proclaim the gospel in
Perthshire. In his latter days we find him in Wales where he founded
the church of St. Asaph, and where he finally died, leaving behind
him a name whose holy influence has shed lustre across the course of
thirteen centuries.
Kentigern is peculiarly associated with the origin of Glasgow. In
the armorial bearings of this city we have perpetuated, according
to very remarkable legends, three remarkable miracles which were
wrought by the holy man, and which it would be probably unfair to
pass by without reference, considering that the sons of Gaeldom ever
since have helped and shared so very specially in the prosperity of
Glasgow. A pet robin redbreast, which belonged to the college over
which St. Serf presided, is represented on a shield argent by a bird
proper. This bird either through accident or mischief was torn to
pieces among the students. When the president appeared to punish,
young Kentigern, the best boy among them, was made the scapegoat. The
pieces of the bird were thrown in his lap; but the hidden holiness
of the boy was such that the creature gathered up his limbs, flapped
his wings, and sang a joyous song on the approach of the holy master.
On another occasion Kentigern found his fire extinguished by his
enemies; so he was compelled to bring a tree from the frozen forest
and breathe into it the breath of fire. The remembrance of this
feat is preserved in the tree or branch which forms the crest. The
figure of a fish, with the ring in its mouth, recalls the scriptural
reference to the finding of a fish with the needed coin in its body.
The biographer of Kentigern, Jocelyn of Furness, knew well how
to enrobe his hero, with the help of the mythic accounts already
developed, with those miracles which had served sacred ends in the
lives of other saints at that period. Fishes with rings in their
bodies had always been found on critical occasions.
This brief sketch, in connection with the lives of Patrick and
Kentigern, of the Gaelic Christianity of Scotland in the fifth and
sixth centuries, will help to show forth in clearer outlines the work
of Columba. The spiritual forces that waved forth from Iona were
certainly not the first that brought religious light to the land of
the Gael. Nor were they so exclusively of Irish origin as they are
represented to be. In eastern Gaeldom in Scotland Christianity had
been already known. But in the course of the century which elapsed
from the time of Patrick it had greatly decayed. Columba came to
the west of Scotland to revive and to proclaim the faith afresh.
He came back among his ancestral people from the midst of whom the
gospel had been sent a century previously to Ireland. In Iona the
religious centre of the land of the Gaels was simply removed further
west and north. The Gaelic-speaking people themselves were drifting
in the same direction towards the Atlantic. As they themselves were
largely absorbed by the Brythons behind them, so they absorbed in
their north-west progress those brave non-Aryan clans to whom they
became the missionaries of the cross and the channels of letters.
They extended the area of Gaeldom, and imposed their Christian and
literary tongue on the conquered just as the Christian and more
literary Latin had been previously imposed on many of their own
ancestors. In the fourth century we mark gospel light in Strathclyde;
in the fifth we see it kindling on the shores of Ireland; in the
sixth it begins to burn from Iona.
It was among these South Albin Gaels at an early period that we mark
the appearance of Brigit: the Mary of the Gael. There is no standard
of Gaelic maintained in the orthography of this proper name. _Brigit_
is used here as one of the most ancient forms; as also to preserve
a chronological harmony with the secondary significant title of
“Mary of the Gael.” As we all know the present form of the name is
_Bridget_ in English; but it has been so little talked of in later
ages by Gaelic Highlanders that it becomes almost a serious matter
for the majority of them even to spell it in Gaelic. It is only in
the compound “_La-Fheill-Brighde_”—[Brìde] or _The Day of the Feast
of Bridget_, and surname MacBride, that we are familiar with this
female saintly name.
This by necessary phonological laws recalls _Brigid_, which in its
turn reminds us of the more ancient orthography _Brigit_, which is
adopted by Dr Stokes in his “Three Middle-Irish Homilies.” Other
Irish scholars have spelt it _Brigid_, even when they are quoting
from productions such as the poem ascribed to Brigit, found in the
Burgundian Library, Brussels, headed thus:
_Brighitt_ (CCT.)
[Brigid (Cecinet)].
The distinguished Stokes follows accurately the spelling of _Leabhar
Breac_, _Brigit_. This is the form which we also find in “Cormac’s
Glossary” compiled originally nearly a thousand years ago. The
definition or explanation appended in Cormac’s work is suggestive
and instructive. “Brigit i.e. a poetess, daughter of the Dagda
(doctus?). This is Brigit the female sage, or woman of wisdom, i.e.
Brigit the goddess whom poets adored, because very great and very
famous was her protecting care. It is therefore they call her goddess
of poets by this name. Whose sisters were Brigit the female physician
[woman of leechcraft]; Brigit the female smith [woman of smithwork];
from whose names with all Irishmen a goddess was called Brigit.”
To this Dr Stokes adds that the “name is certainly connected with
the Old Celtic goddess-name _Brigantia_ as possibly with the Skr.
Brhaspati and O. Norse Bragi.” p. 23. This gives us a glimpse of a
“female smith”; a “female physician”; and a “female saint” (sanct
Brigit) rolled into one, and that one a goddess of Indo-European
connections.
With these lofty associations and suggestions clinging to the name
of Brigit we almost find it difficult to descend to the regions
of ordinary earthly womanhood; and recognize in her a mere Gaelic
Christian maiden. Her name has never been absolutely dissociated
from the realm of myth, or rather _mythus_; but at the same time we
cannot help regarding her as a historical character. Her name became
celebrated very early wherever the Gaelic folks did congregate. We
find her name associated with King Nectan of Albin, and with a church
founded in her honour at Abernethy. So her fame was not confined to
the Gaelic regions of Erin. That illustrious Scot, Patrick, a native
of the district of Strathclyde, is supposed to refer to her in his
confession, where he says, “There was one blessed Scottic maiden,
very fair, of noble birth, and of adult age, whom I baptized; and
after a few days she came to me, because, as she declared, she had
received a response from a messenger of God desiring her to become
a virgin of Christ, and to draw near to God. Thanks be to God, on
the sixth day from that, she with praiseworthy eagerness seized on
that state of life which all the virgins of God likewise now adopt.”
These notices help to bring us nearer what Carlyle calls the “actual
Air-Maiden, incorporated tangibility and reality,” whose electric
glance has fascinated the Gaelic world. It could not be expected
that the date of the birth of Brigit would be preserved; but when
she became a woman of consequence in the Gaelic or Scottic world her
movements began to be marked. The accounts of the fabulous lives are
very circumstantial; but sober-minded critics like O’Curry are fairly
satisfied with two principal dates, and most reasonable folks will be
the same. These two dates are Brigit’s advent at Downpatrick on the
17th of March, 493, A.D.; and her death in 525 A.D.
The historical and fabulous lives of Brigit suggest a few interesting
questions which can only be hinted at in these remarks:—
1. Her conversion by the British Patrick to Christianity.
2. The probability that she belonged to a good British family who,
in the days of the Roman occupation, crossed to the nearest Irish
districts: (She is described as “of Kildare,” a county close to the
eastern shore).
3. And that she was a woman of exceptional character or culture,
which was possible in that century, under the perpetuated influences
of the Roman occupation.
That she and her people, like Patrick himself, were recent immigrants
to Ireland from Roman and Christian Britain, there cannot be any
serious doubt.
These may be the possible or probable facts ascertainable relating
to the life of the Mary of the Gael. But around them has been woven
a very interesting body of Gaelic literature which was loved and
cherished and cultivated for upwards of a thousand years.
We have two ancient lives of Brigit, written on vellum; and these are
regarded as the oldest; and are attributed to St. Ultán, whose death
took place in the year 656. The _Liber Hymnorum_, a production of the
eleventh century is our authority for the information that the “Life
and Acts of St. Brigid of Kildare, were collected and written by St.
Ultán,” who was her successor in her church, as Adamnan was that of
Columba in Iona.
The two lives referred to are found in the _Lebar Breac_ and in the
Book of Lismore. A life written within the last two hundred years
on paper is also to be found in the Royal Irish Academy. Her life
is generally associated with the lives of Patrick and Columba,
as they also very appropriately are in “The Three Middle-Irish
Homilies,” edited by Dr Whitely Stokes, (Calcutta; 1877). In one of
the so-called prophetic poems, a Norse Chief Mandar, with a fleet,
is represented as exhuming the body of Columba which was afterwards
buried “in Downpatrick, in the same tomb with St. Patrick and St.
Brigid.”
In the celebrated _Domhnach Airgid_, one of the most ancient relics
of the old Gaelic civilization, we are presented with the _figure_ of
Brigid.
Dr Petrie in his account of the relic says:—“The smaller figures
in relief are, in the first compartment, the Irish saints Columba,
Brigid, and Patrick.” Perhaps the most interesting relic associated
with Brigit is “a very ancient crozier, said to have belonged to
_St. Finnbarr_ (of Tormonbarry, in Connacht),—and believed to have
been made by _Conlaedh_, the artificer of _St. Brigid_ of Kildare,
early in the sixth century,” which is “now in the Museum of the Royal
Irish Academy.”.—_See O’Curry’s M.S. Materials._
In early ecclesiastical annals Brigit is thus on the same platform
with Patrick and Columba in Gaelic Hagiology. True; her name is not
found, for instance, in the Benchor Antiphonary; but her name is
not unknown even in Latin Hymnology. The earliest Latin poem that
recognizes her is a fragment of three stanzas, beginning with the
letters X, Y, Z, respectively. It appears to have belonged to an A
B C Darian hymn of a somewhat biographical nature.—[See _Anecdota_
etc., 1713: Leabhar Imuinn: Dublin, 1855-1869.] The following Latin
lines give us the earliest conceptions of this “Mary of the Gael.”:—
Ymnus iste angelicae
Summeque sanctae Brigidae
Fari non valet omnia
Virtutum miribillia
Quae nostris nunquam auribus
Si sint facta audivimus
Nisi per istam virginem
Mariae sanctae similem.
Of this the following English rendering may be given:— “This hymn, of
the most angel-like and most saintly, Brigit is unable to speak of
all the marvellous works of power, such as we have never heard of as
been wrought, except through this virgin, like unto the Holy Mary.”
The prevalence of Brigit’s name in Gaelic Hagiology is not
surprising, when we take into account her reputation for superior
powers of knowledge and wisdom. And this exceptional distinction
naturally suggests the question—Where could her superior learning
have been obtained? The writer thinks that it can be clearly
established that Brigit, like Patrick of Strathclyde, was a fruit
of Ninian’s celebrated monastery of Rosnat. Indeed, there can be
little doubt about this statement, although the question has not
been either put or answered hitherto. Philology and history combine
to make Brigit a native of that district known first as that of the
Brigantes, afterwards Bernicia, and later as the Saxon Lowlands
of Scotland. Professor Rhys thinks the folks of this district
in Brigit’s time were Celtic and largely Cymric:—“Thus the term
Bernicii would seem to have meant the people of the Brigantian land,
which, in this case, was mostly that of the ancient Otadini, or
Gododin of Welsh literature, together with a part probably of that
of a kindred people, the Dumnonii.” According to the same learned
authority _brigant_ is phonologically “the Gallo-Brythonic form of a
common Celtic _brigant_, which, with the nasal suppressed, we have
in the Irish name Brigit (for _Brigentis_ of the I declension), St.
Bridget or Bride. On the whole then, Brigantes would seem to have
meant the free men or privileged race as contrasted with the Goidelic
inhabitants, _some of whom_ they may have reduced under them.”
The Gaelic entries in the Book of Deer give us the name of Brigit
in compound forms, with which we are familiar. “Domnal mac giric 7
mal _brigte_,” (_Domnal_ son of Girec, _and Maelbrigte_). In the old
Gaelic genitive this term is “moilbrigtae.” The Latin rendering has
been “calvus Brigittae;” similar to this is again “Servus Brigittae,”
or “Gillabrìghde,” as found in the Four Masters, A.D. 1146. And it
ought not to be forgotten that as Columba’s name has been perpetuated
in that of the Clan Calum so has that of Brigit in Gaelic Scotland
been preserved in the name of MacBride.
We have thus traced all that is actually known of Brigit in philology
and authentic history. But it is in poetry and fabulous biography
that her figure becomes haloed over with the interest of romance and
the veneration of ages.
Brigit herself was regarded as a poetess, and as we have already
seen, a MS. in the Burgundian Library has preserved a poem attributed
to her. This poem was probably the production of a Gaelic bard of
“the time of Aengus” _Ceile De_; but the ascription of it to Brigit
recalls her poetic reputation; while its sentiments reveal some of
the inward life of the old Gaelic Church of Ireland and Scotland. The
first stanza runs thus in the original:—
“Ropadh maith lem corm-lind mór.
Do righ na righ,
Ropadh maith lem muinnter nimhe
Acca hòl tre bithe sir.”
_English_:
I should like a great lake of ale
For the King of the Kings;
I should like the family of heaven
To be drinking if through time eternal.
I should like the viands
Of belief and pure piety;
I should like flails
Of penance at my house.
I should like the men of Heaven
In my own house;
I should like kieves
Of peace to be at their disposal.
I should like vessels
Of charity for distribution;
I should like caves
Of mercy for their company.
I should like cheerfulness
To be in their drinking;
I should like Jesus
Too, to be here (among them).
I should like the three
Marys of illustrious renown;
I should like the people
Of heaven there from all parts.
I should like that I should be
A rent-payer to the Lord:
That should I suffer distress,
He would bestow upon me a good blessing.
This production is peculiarly Celtic; and is remarkable in its
freedom from the growth of superstition which characterised the Latin
Church of the time. But it must not be supposed that the old Gaelic
Church was free from an external growth of a superstition of its
own. Indeed it set up rather a hagiology of its own in opposition
to that of Rome, so keen, like all the true Scots that its members
were, was its love of spiritual independence. Patrick, Columba, and
Columbanus, became its _Papae_, or Papes, and Brigit herself its
Virgin,—celebrated as the “Mary of the Gael.”
Brigit was a very great and saintly personage to several of the
authors of the Gaelic Hymns in the _Liber Hymnorum_. Ultán of Ard
Breccain, who is said to have died in A.D. 656, composed a special
“Hymn in praise of Brigit,” whose extravagant sentiments and poetic
power are but inadequately manifest in the following translation:—
Brigit, excellent woman,
A flame golden, delightful,
May (she), the sun dazzling splendid
Bear us to the eternal kingdom!
May Brigit save us
Beyond throngs of demons!
May she overthrow before us
Battles of every disease!
May she destroy within us
Our flesh’s taxes,
The branch with blossoms,
The mother of Jesus!
The true virgin, dear,
With vast dignity:
May we be safe always,
With my Saint of the Lagenians!
One of the pillars of the Kingdom,
With Patrick the pre-eminent,
The garment over _liga_,
The Queen of Queens!
Let our bodies after old age
Be in sackcloth:
With her grace may Brigit
Rain on us, save us!
In Colman’s Hymn she is as usual associated with “Patron Patrick with
Erin’s saints around him.” The blessing pronounced on the sacred
person of Brigit runs thus:
A blessing on Patron Brigit
With Erin’s virgins around her:
Let all give—a fair story—
A blessing on Brigit’s dignity.
The chief poetic tribute to Brigit’s name is ascribed to Broccán
Cloen, who flourished about A.D. 500. The first verse in the original
runs thus:
Nicar brigit buadach bith
Siasair suide eoin inailt
Contuil cotlud cimmeda
Indnòib arecnairc ammaicc.
_English_:
Victorious Brigit loved not the world:
She sat at a seat of a bird on a cliff:
The holy one slept a captive’s sleep
Because of her Son’s absence.
The bard then proceeds to describe her virtues in more than two
hundred lines of rich and glowing language.
She was not a carper, she was not vile,
She loved not vehement woman’s ear:
She was not a serpent violent, speckled:
She sold not God’s Son for gain.
We are told that it was in a “good hour MacCaille set the veil on
Saint Brigit’s head.” The poet concludes his hymn of praise with the
consolatory reflection:—
There are two nuns in heaven,
Whom I rely on for my protection,
Mary and Saint Brigit:
Under the protection of them both be we!
The life of Brigit printed by Dr Stokes from the Lebar Brecc, a
manuscript of the fifteenth century, occupies about eighteen printed
pages. Like Adamnan’s life of Columba it is largely taken up with
legends and traditional memories of miracles. Here is a specimen of
this standard Gaelic of the 15th century:
Fecht and dorothlaig araile bannscal iressach codubthach condigsead
brigit lea amuig life. arbói comthinól senaid laigen and.
The passage beginning with this sentence is translated thus:
Once upon a time a certain faithful woman asked Dubthach that
Brigit might go in with her into the plain of the Liffey, for a
congregation of the Synod of Leinster was held there. And it was
revealed in a vision to a certain holy man who was in the assembly,
that Mary the Virgin was coming thereto, and it was told him that
she would not be (accompanied) by a man in the assembly. On the
morrow came the woman to the assembly, and Brigit along with her.
And he that had seen the vision said “This is the Mary that I
beheld!” saith he to Brigit. The holy Brigit blessed all the hosts
under the name and honour of Mary. Wherefore Brigit was (called)
“the Mary of the Gael” thenceforward.
The last sentence in the original is as follows:—
Conidhi brigit muire nangædel ósin ille.
Dr Stokes points out how this life of Brigit furnishes a good
“example of the way in which heathen mythological legends became
annexed to historical Christian saints.” He shows how the story of
Brigit, in many of its recorded incidents, belonged originally to
the myth or ritual of some goddess of fire. In proof of this the
following incidents in the life are referred to: Brigit was born at
sunrise; and her name, in cognate Sanskrit _Bhargas_ is associated,
it is thought, with fire. Her birth takes place neither within nor
without a house. She is bathed in milk. Her breath revives the dead.
A house in which she is staying flames up to heaven. Cowdung blazes
in her presence. Oil is poured on her head. The milk she is fed with
comes from a white, red-eared cow. A fiery pillar is seen rising
from her head. Her wet cloak is supported by sun-rays. And while she
remains a virgin, she is yet described as one of the two mothers of
Christ the Anointed One.
Other authorities have described her as having perpetual ashless
fire, which was watched by twenty nuns, of whom she herself was one,
blown by fans or bellows only, and surrounded by a hedge, within
which no male could enter.
Various other interesting allusions, illustrative of the ancient
institutions of Gaeldom, are made in this life, such as the purchase
and sale of slaves, mulcts, (_eric_), witchcraft, dowry. We are also
reminded that leprosy once existed in Ireland; that Gaels practised
ale-brewing; that jewellery was in use; and that wattling was
employed for buildings.
But further discussion of these matters must be left to a future
volume. In the meantime, the writer’s best wishes for all who hear of
the name of Brigit, are that they may all be endowed with the moral
beauty, goodness, and dignity, which have been assigned to the godly
_Mary of the Gael_.
[Illustration: (decorative end-of-chapter icon)]