Gods as Ancestors : Brigit

Scotland-based Celtic Reconstructionist Seren maintains an excellent website on the topic. In her posting "Gods as Ancestor" she investigates the evidence of local connections between particular deities and areas of Ireland. Of Wexford she writes:

In what is now County Wexford, there were the Benntraige, who traced their descent from Benta, son of Mál, all the way back to Lug son of Ethnenn (Ethne).²⁴ James MacKillop makes Lug the god of the Laigin, being of the opinion that Lug is who they derived their name from; this is linguistically unlikely,²⁵ however, and looking at the names of septs in the area – the Uí Brigte, for example, and possibly the Bairrche (though less likely to derive their name from Brigit),²⁶ along with the foundation of Brigid's monastery in Kildare – all suggests that Brigit was very much the goddess associated with the area.²⁷

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