Brigid’s Story

I thought today would be a good day to share Brigid’s Story as a celebration of Imbolc, and the lengthening of the light…  

Perhaps like many goddesses, Brigid’s story has become one tangled up in hegemonic religious doctrine. This isn’t to say this integration of the older religious interpretations into the new isn’t important, or that it doesn’t deliver new and delicious aspects of the goddess to engage with – precisely the opposite!

This retelling consciously engages with both the Celtic and the Christian reinscriptions of Brigid’s story for the gems of wisdom both narratives deliver.

I hope it keeps you warm as you wait for Spring…

“Hello! Hello! Come in out of the cold. It’s an awful chilly evening to be out wandering the streets. Come in, Come in, and I’ll put the kettle on. Sure, it’s no trouble at all. Let me take your coat. Go on. Just go through to the kitchen. The fire’s on and we’ll soon get you warmed up in no time.”

Back slightly hunched, white hair faintly gleaming in the dimmed lights of the little cottage, the old lady helped me slip my arms out of the sleeves of my denim jacket. The days had been warming up over the last week or so, but this evening a fierce cold had gripped the small town of Kildare. It was almost as if winter had decided to put up a final fight to the death before it was ready to relinquish to the inevitable arrival of spring.

I’d been out with friends. A catch-up drink at the local pub to share all our news since we last spoke at New Year’s. Time had passed more swiftly than we had realized and before I knew it the pub was closing, my friends had left and I had missed the last bus home. As I watched the tail-lights of the bus rounding the far corner, my heart heavy in my chest and my fingers quickly turning numb with the cold, I remembered Brigid.

Her hospitality was legendary. Everyone in the county, and perhaps even beyond, knew that if they needed a bed for the night, Brigid’s door would be open to them. But still, as I had hesitantly shuffled my feet on the doorstep, working up the courage to knock on the door of an elderly woman after midnight, I couldn’t help but wonder if I should just start the long walk home. I was sure I could be home by sunrise, but the very thought of trudging home alone in the freezing darkness was enough to stir my courage, and I held my hand up to knock on the door.

But before my hand had even struck the wood, the door had swung open and I had been greeted by a vision of the loveliest old woman I had ever seen, her clear blue eyes sparkling as though she had been expecting me. And now I was sitting in her kitchen as she pottered around preparing a large pot of tea. The fire burned hotly in the grate warming my frozen pink skin. Feeling began to return to my fingers and toes, and with that return came a dull ache of limbs chilled to the very bone.

Brigid popped a bright orange hand-knitted tea cosy on top of the teapot, and poured the strong amber liquid into the two china cups that she had set down in front of us, and took a seat opposite mine. “Milk?” she asked as she passed a tiny jug that perfectly matched the china teacups. I thanked her in a soft voice, still a little bewildered at the way my evening had turned out.

“It’s a cold cold night to be out in such thin jacket,” she remarked. I nodded, and explained that I’d been fooled into thinking that spring had arrived because of the warmer temperatures that our little corner of the world had been enjoying this past week. She nodded sagely before turning to stare into the fire. Her voice, when it came, was coloured by an ancient certainty. “Ah, but tonight belongs to the Cailleach.”

I waited for her to continue speaking, to explain what she meant, but she lapsed into silence. Just when I was beginning to wonder if she’d fallen asleep, and whether I should excuse myself, she began to speak again.

“Did your granny ever tell you the story of Bride and the Cailleach, child?”
I shook my head. “I never knew my granny on either side of my family,” I explained. “They both died before I was born.”
“A pity,” she replied. And even although I had never really missed the presence of a grandmother, I couldn’t help but agree with her in that moment. My heart felt heavy in my chest with a loss I’d never really felt before.

“Well, seeing as you’re here, I might as well tell it to you. All girls should know the story of the crone and the maiden,” she said, her eyes crinkling in a beautiful smile that radiated enough love & warmth to melt a part deep inside of myself, my soul perhaps, that I never even knew was frozen.

“The Cailleach,” she began, “lived in a cave nestled deep within a mountain range that she had created many years before, when the rocks she was carrying tumbled left and right from the pile she held in the muddy fabric of her soiled apron. There was little in the way of light, the world poised at the far end of the year when the sun approaches with timidity, before hurrying to hide its much-weakened light back beneath the unforgiving horizon.

Her home was one of unchanging frigidity. There was no greenery growing, no water flowing, no animals moving. Everything was still, held within a deep stasis that permeated the very core of the land. Not even a trill or caw of birdsong broke the profound silence that lay so close to the bare rock, suffocating any threat of noise that might break through to disturb the quiet.

The Cailleach herself drew her dusty grey mantle around her thin sinewy shoulders and closed her pale, ice blue eyes. A breeze swept across the room scattering the skeletons of leaves long fallen and swirling the infertile freeze-dried dirt. But still, the Cailleach sat, unmoving, unchanging, apart from the tangled tendrils of iron-grey hair that twisted and turned in on itself, creating knots within knots. Immune from the cold, she settled into a stillness that seemed to permeate the pulse of her blood, the beat of her heart.

Time passed, as time is wont to do, and gradually, in fact, so slowly that the change was imperceptible day to day, the sun began to grow in confidence. It stayed a little longer. It rose a little higher. It burned a little brighter. It shone a little hotter.

Until one day it reached a certain elevation in the pale February sky that a few stray sunbeams escaped across the tall mountains, and danced across the threshold of the Cailleach’s cave. The sunbeams scattered as they hit the hard granite rock sending sparkles of reflected light around the darkened recesses of the cave.

The weak granite sparkles illuminated something pale, hidden away at the very back wall of the cave. It was an arm draped protectively across a face. The bare skin, so white that it was tinged with blue, contrasted sharply with the brilliant russet red of her long hair. She lay there as though dead, but now that the stray sunbeams had caressed her flesh, there appeared an infinitesimal movement beneath the skin of her thin wrists. A pulse.

Each day more sunlight began to pool into the Cailleach’s cave, and each day the beautiful maiden’s heartbeat grew a little stronger. The Cailleach was not unaware of the growing light which was now spreading across the land, and with the reluctance and the irritation of the very old, she gathered herself up and rose to walk to the cave’s entrance, taking only the briefest of glances at the still supine figure lying in the dimness.

She gazed at the edge between mountain and sky, eye travelling along rough edges, corries and clefts, content with all she saw: a land still gripped by the iron fist of winter.

And then, movement caught her attention. Down the gravel slopes skidded a tall man with broad shoulders and fair hair. She smiled as she recognized this figure, before catching herself in the act and twisting her expression to a scowl. Her pleasure at his visit, however, was still playing around her eyes, which now seemed a slightly deeper shade of blue. Angus, her son, was coming.

Angus climbed up from the arid, frozen valley towards the Cailleach’s cave as she stood in silence awaiting his arrival. She was so distracted by this rare occasion that she did not hear the sound of soft footsteps crossing the dusty cave floor behind her. As Angus pulled himself across the lip of the cave and stood in front of his mother, his eyes only glanced at the woman he’d travelled so far to see, before they shifted somewhere to the left of the Cailleach’s shoulder.

With furrowed brow and pressed lips, the Cailleach turned to see what had so distracted her son, what could have possibly drawn his attention from her, his mother…. And then she saw her.

Bride stood there, dressed in thin, white muslin, her long red hair falling in waves to the middle of her back and her brilliant bright blue eyes shining like pools of the purest water. The last of the sun’s rays glanced off her pale skin, causing it to flush slightly. Angus stared at Bride, and Bride stared back, both of them forgetting about the dark figure standing between them whose anger had begun to seep out from beneath her cloak to chill the very air that surrounded them.

The sun sank beneath the mountain ridge, and with it the last of the light departed. At this sign, the Cailleach broke the long silence and shrieked her fury before rushing towards Bride, both hands outstretched like the talons of a hawk. She gripped Bride and tried to force her back towards the back of the cave. But Bride had been touched by the new season’s sun, and, while she still appeared a delicate and frail maiden, the sun’s warmth had filled her with an innate strength to resist the crone’s determined efforts.

The Cailleach and Bride, clasping each other in an embrace welcomed by neither, battled throughout that long night. Angus, unable to aid either one, was forced to watch from the cave’s edge while his mother fought the woman he had fallen in love with. The storm clouds began to close in on the valley, and the wind began to howl. Harsh sleet flew first from the west and then from the east, and a deathly frost crept across the rocky land.

But Bride stood her ground, and when the sun rose the following morning, she was still only a few feet away from the cave’s threshold. The Cailleach could feel her strength running out of her limbs like meltwater, and it wasn’t long before she crumpled into a heap at Bride’s feet. Daintily stepping around the spent body of the crone, she took the last few steps towards the coming day and into the arms of Angus. The lovers embraced and walked out into the sunlight leaving the Cailleach behind, exhausted and weakened from the fight.

Bride only faced forwards, the future beckoning her onwards, but Angus spared one look behind him and saw his mother, the Cailleach, turn to granite rock, her features carved out of the smooth, hard stone. It was then that he noticed, trailing behind his Bride, a blanket of snowdrops, each nodding their head at the coming of the spring.”

“And now, I think we better get you off to bed,” Brigid said, breaking the story’s spell. I shook myself, my now warmed limbs feeling sluggish and slow, and followed the old lady to a room at the back of the house that was made up for guests. There was a narrow single bed dressed in a rose pink coverlet, a small bedside cabinet with a bible placed upon it and an unusual cross hung above the bed. It seemed as though it were hand-woven from reeds, but as I turned to ask Brigid about it, she had already gone. Assuming she had turned in for the evening, I switched the light off and collapsed into the bed fully clothed, before kicking off my shoes and snuggling beneath the covers.

That night I dreamed of Bride.

She was dressed all in white and was sitting at the kitchen table. She looked strangely familiar but I couldn’t quite place where I knew her from. A small smile danced around the corner of her mouth as she kneaded dough to make the day’s bread. There was something very sure, very certain about each of her movements. It was as though everything she did was quite deliberate. No small motion of hands or intake of breath was unconsciously taken. I watched her, an invisible presence in the corner, and although I knew she couldn’t see me, I wondered if she sensed that I was there.

She had no sooner placed the prepared dough upon the stove to rise, when there was a knock at the door. Bride smiled. She’d been expecting this visit. She rose to answer the door, and I followed close behind.

There, standing at the door were two beautiful figures. It was impossible to tell if they were male or female, but this mattered little, as what was far more distracting than their unearthly androgynous beauty were their enormous feathered wings which towered above us. The two beings radiated such a strong sense of love and peace that it formed a rose-gold glow, which surrounded their bodies and spread out to the far edges of Bride’s tiny front garden. While I had never seen one before, I was filled with an unshakeable belief that these two winged figures were, undoubtedly, angels.

“It is time, Bride,” said the taller of the two as he reached forward to take her hand. She smiled and gently nodded, before giving her left hand to the other angel. The three of them walked down the path to the garden gate, where the angels gently lifted Bride from the ground and started to ascend towards the sky.

Much to my surprise, I followed them, my consciousness appearing to be tied to their movements. The angels carried Bride across the oceans, across deserts and forests, across jungles and inland seas, until we entered into deep night. The starlight twinkled all around us, touching the tips of the angels’ wings and illuminating Bride’s long, white dress. There seemed to be one star in particular that was larger than all the rest, one which shone with a concentrated brilliance that pierced through the velvet blackness.

The rays of this special star highlighted a small rickety structure built at the back of a larger building. The smells of farm animals and sweet hay filtered through the air, and the angels made their descent. They settled Bride down gently upon her feet and stood back to allow her to approach the roughly hewn wooden door.

Bride pushed the door, which creaked on its rusty hinges before it gave way to a room strewn with straw and lit with candles. A man swiftly came to the door, his eyes betraying a suppressed panic. “Have you come to help us?” he asked Bride. “The angels said they were bringing someone to help Mary.”

Bride nodded and stepped through the doorway into the manger.

I woke up then, feeling too hot from the sun that was now pouring in through the window and my mind still preoccupied by my dream. Casting off covers, I turned to my left, away from the light that was hurting my eyes, to find a small vase of snowdrops had been placed on the bedside cabinet. I tried to remember if they were there the night before, but I was fairly sure that all that had been there was an old battered copy of the bible.

I swung my legs out of the bed and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. The house was completely silent, and I got the strong sense that I was alone. I stumbled through into the kitchen where I’d sat with Brigid the night before, but she was nowhere to be seen. I filled the kettle, found a mug and a box of teabags and soon had my hands clasped around a large mug of tea.

I held the tea close to my face as I breathed in the fragrant steam, and then turned to look out of the kitchen window at the small garden that had been shrouded in darkness the night before.

My breath hitched noisily in the back of my throat as I caught sight of her. It was Brigid, but not the Brigid that had taken me in the night before. Not the Brigid who was old and frail. This Brigid was more my age, her long red hair cascading down to the middle of her back without even a strand of white. This Brigid stood straight and moved with ease. This Brigid was Bride.

I dropped my mug into the sink and ran to the backdoor and threw myself down the steps into the garden… only to find that I was alone. But there, in small clumps scattered throughout the lawn, beneath the shrubs, around the trees, were delicate snowdrops, each nodding her head to the coming of the spring.