Threefold goddess of poetry, smithcraft and healing
Brigid is a daughter of the Dagda and among the most beloved figures of the Irish pantheon. The earliest systematic account is in Sanas Cormaic, Cormac's Glossary, compiled around 900: Brigit the female poet worshipped by the filid, with two sisters of the same name, one a healer, one a smith, so that the three most honoured crafts of early Ireland gathered under a single name. The glossary adds that her fame was such that 'Brigit' served the Irish as a word for any goddess. The name descends from a Proto-Celtic word meaning 'the exalted one' and is cognate with Brigantia, the tribal goddess of northern Britain.
In Lebor Gabala Erenn and related texts she is married to Bres, the half-Fomorian king. When her son Ruadan was killed after wounding the smith-god Goibniu at Mag Tuired, Brigid wept aloud over the battlefield, and tradition counts her lament the first keening heard in Ireland.
Her longest shadow falls through her merger with a Christian saint. Brigid of Kildare (c. 451-525) inherited the goddess's name, her fire, and her feast: the pagan quarter-day Imbolc on 1 February, marking lambing and the first stir of spring, became St Brigid's Day, when crosses woven of rushes are hung over doorways against fire and harm. Gerald of Wales recorded in the twelfth century that nineteen nuns at Kildare kept a flame perpetually alight in her honour. Since 2023 the feast has been a public holiday in Ireland.
