Just a reminder to those who read books about Brigit that I have a whole slew of reviews of Brigit books which you can find on my this blog, Brigit's Sparkling Flame and at Academia.edu.

I have a store of new books to review over the next year or two, and these come out one at a time on the blog. (A few have already been added, such as Morgan Daimler's Pagan Portals: The Dagda - Meeting the Good God of Ireland.) When I am done reviewing them all I will update the paper, or perhaps just do a Volume Two.

This marks the first time there have been so many books about her that I am picking and chosing which to review, rather than going for every one I can find. If you have some obscure title I might miss and think I should review it, please let me know. Review copies of your own books are welcome, and that includes your poetry book! I confess that I am omitting a couple of books I would like to review because of costs.

Meanwhile…

Happy reading!

Image: "Libreria ambulante Santiago de Chile" by L'odyssée Belle on Unsplash.

Review of River Magic by M. A. Phillips, book one of The Rituals of Rock Bay

 

Review of River Magic by M. A. Phillips, book one of The Rituals of Rock Bay (2020) Shadow Spark Publishing

 

First, what I like:

 

I want to say right from the start that I really like this book. It has a kind of ebullience and innocence about it that is really charming. The protagonist, though imperfect, as we all must be, has an integrity that guides her actions, and a passion for life that goes beyond herself and her friends, to the beings, sometimes familiar, sometimes frightening, that dwell in the world around her. It also deals with something I haven’t seen represented much in fiction: The coming of age of a modern Neo-Pagan woman.

 

Lacey Moran has explored Paganism with her friend Lidia since their school days, but she hasn’t really found her spiritual home. When Lidia opens a metaphysical store in their village of Rock Bay (situated along the beautiful Saint Lawrence River – a visit there is now on my bucket list), a group of modern Druids book the space for their Imbolc ritual. This ritual introduces Lacey to the goddess Brigit, and a connection is made immediately. (Hurrah! This is why I decided to read and review this book.)

 

Lacey has also had cryptic dreams of a mermaid in the river. Coming from a family with a talent for premonition, Lacey knows that many of her dreams foreshadow events to come. Do these?

 

Now, I have completely left out the other main theme of this book: the love that Lacey has for her longtime friend, Cian, and her conflicting feelings about becoming romantically involved with him. Cian is a feature of these dreams, making them more concerning to her. What do they mean?

 

Review – Poems for the season of Imbolc by Kris Hughes

Poems for the Season of Imbolc by Kris Hughes

US$8.00

I recently received a very short, self-published chapbook by an author whose writing I was not familiar with. I get nervous about reviewing people’s work—I don’t like to hurt feelings but I also don’t like to say I love something when I really don’t. Somehow the stakes seem even higher when it is self-published, I suppose because they don’t obviously have anyone else promoting the work for them, so more depends on one review, but equally they may well be depending entirely on their own eyeball when it comes to editing, layout, and so on, which as many writers have shown is not always a great idea. So it was with some trepidation that I awaited delivery of this booklet.

It arrived shortly before Imbolc. To my relief, it looked pretty darn good. The layout is done with an artist’s eye, though there is little decoration; it is printed on nice paper; there were no wild claims on the back cover: all promising signs.

Because of its subject matter, I wanted to review it right away so people could know about it before the feast day, but it is my busiest time of year and it just wasn’t possible. At last today I had a clear enough mental space to sit down and read the whole thing at once and pay it the attention it (and the author) deserved. I have to say—I love it.

Twenty pages all told, including front and back matter, Poems for the season of Imbolc focusses on the Scottish tales of Bride, Angus, and the Cailleach. There is a short and useful introduction and then four poems, “If Angus Would Come,” “The Cailleach Becomes Bride,” “Cailleach Rant,” and “Woman of the White Sky.”

Apart from “Cailleach Rant,” which is a prose poem of gathering power, the poems are free verse, telling their stories pithily and beautifully. Their tone ranges from lilting and passionate to wild and world-shaping, climaxing in a defiant call to giant selfhood.  I will give two small tastes, but far better that you read the book all at once. Often this is not the case with poetry. It’s best to take deep sips of one or two poems and then sit with them before going back. But Poems for the season of Imbolc is strongest when taken all together, from the longing of Bride for Angus to the transformation of Cailleach to Bride to the roar of the Cailleach to women everywhere, to the brief silence of the final poem of praise to her.

… If Angus would come

He would search for me

Guided by the light of a thousand candles

He would know my abode

By the sark I have hung on the window sill

It collects the snow, to be wrung as dew

To ease his wounds when he comes …

                        from “If Angus Would Come”

… I cackle again from the treetops

raising a storm that sends the cattle

lowing and bucking in indignation

from sleet like knives

for the shelter of the dyke

The ponies

lower their heads to the ground

tails plastered to their legs …

                        from “The Cailleach Becomes Bride”

What does it feel like when life turns out not to be a journey, after all, but an immense impermanence?

                                                from “Cailleach Rant”

Children's Book Review: “Brigid and the Butter” by Love and Stott

Review Brigid and the Butter: A Legend about Saint Brigid of Ireland 
  by Pamela Love (author) and Apryl Stott (illustrator) (2017) 
  Pauline Books and Media. 
  30 pp. For children ages 5-8 years.

What a delightful picture book! I was pleased when I learned of its existence. I have read, reviewed, and enjoyed three other picture books about Brigit so I looked forward to discovering another person’s—or rather pair of persons’—perspective on her young life. I was not disappointed.

Brigid and the Butter is the first Catholic offering I’ve encountered in the Saint Brigit picture book genre, which have included one specifically Orthodox book and two that tell the saint’s tales from an “Irish Legends” perspective and from an almost magical perspective in which young Saint Brigit goes to Bethlehem to help out Joseph and Mary in the birth of Jesus. (For my review of these books please go here.)

In Brigid and the Butter the first thing I notice of course is the art of Apryl Stott. The cover shows a comely, open-faced young girl with a bowl of butter, cattle in the pasture behind her, and a painted framework round the whole that mixes Irish knotwork with another style of art inlaid into it—beautiful though a little out of keeping with the setting. Flipping through the book without reading, to get an idea of the flow of the story and to steep in Stott’s imagery, I grew more excited—her paintings are rich and generous and well designed, and even the non-reader is quickly drawn into a land where there are great cattle looming over us, finely arching thistles growing up along a page, and an earnest young girl caring for the cattle and setting to work making butter.

I have few criticisms of Stott’s lovely work, apart from a neglect of research into the times depicted. The hut, for instance, looks like something from a different land (England, perhaps?), unlike what would be expected in Iron Age Ireland, when Brigid lived. The cattle would be at home in a modern cowyard but are not the native cattle of Ireland—and so on. Those elements, if done correctly, would have added to the charm of the book and its usefulness in teaching children about 5^th century Ireland, but even as it is, the art is outstanding and supports the story of the book very well.

Pamela Love has drawn together a number of elements to tell a story that is both entertaining and educational, mostly in terms of its spiritual teachings. The child who reads the book will learn a little of what life was like for a youngster in Brigid’s time, for instance that children were expected to work independently and hard (potentially dangerous work, too, if you check out the size of and the horns on those critters). She handles a herd of animals much larger than herself, caring for them in many ways, and does the exhausting work of making butter from their milk. Butter comes from milk?! From a cow?! Amazing! And this is how it’s done. By hand?!

Add to this that the girl is briefly mentioned to be a slave. It may come as news to a child that Irish children have ever been slaves—in our uneven coverage of the topic we have tended to give the impression that only African people were ever captured as slaves, but of course slavery exists even today and has been an important and legal part of many cultures all across the world. This mention might give a teacher or parent an opportunity to talk to a child about slavery. But it is not explored in the book, and indeed if you forget that one introductory line you may think from the following story that Brigid and her mum lived unmolested on their own in a pretty, well equipped house and had a good herd of cows. You would notice, though, that they seem to have very little to eat.

And that is the crux of the story. Hard-working Brigid churns the butter and comes up with only a little for herself and her mother (who we never meet). There is no mention that most of the churnings and indeed most of the milk would have gone to the master; the impression is that only a teeny bit of produce comes from all that work, and I can only assume this is to simplify the story, but I do think it leaves it a little bit unanchored. If we saw that the results of Brigid’s hard work were mostly carted away and then she was left with only a little there would be a stronger impact—although even the smallness of the butter is a literary device, as there is no indication in Brigid’s Lives that she and her mother were poorly fed, only that they were hard-worked. No matter, a small opportunity lost but possibly needless clutter avoided.

So, back to the crux of the story, which is that with only a small amount of food for herself and her mother, Brigid is faced with a situation where someone with even less has asked for help, and she must decide what to do. An elderly, skinny woman comes to the door asking for food. Brigid offers to let her wait for her mum to return, saying she might bring food and they could share it with her, but the woman is in a hurry. Brigid says all they have is butter, with nothing to put it on, and the old woman gets a look of longing and says how much she loves butter and how it’s been ages since she’s tasted it.

Earlier in the story Brigid has heard Saint Patrick tell the story of the loaves and fishes. In it a young child brings a tiny offering of bread and fish, all he has, to Jesus, and Jesus makes of it enough to feed a great crowd. Brigid thinks of this when considering what to do with the butter. She and her mother had eaten nothing all day and she had been looking forward to tucking into the butter, whether her mother brought other food back with her or not. Now she was faced with the difficult choice of preventing a hungry woman from finding enough food to carry on and facing that deepening hunger herself. Her instinct is to be inviting and generous, but her feeling of self-preservation makes her reluctant to just give it all away.

Suddenly she understands that “helping others could be difficult”. What had seemed like a nice idea in the story was actually a hard reality in day to day life. She has a little conversation in her head with Jesus, a kind of natural prayer where she acknowledges that unlike him, she isn’t able to feed thousands, but that she can help the one person right in front of her. Thus, the elderly woman walks happily away, all the butter and even the bowl tucked nicely in her bag. Brigid is a little worried that her mother will be upset, and she asks Jesus to provide for them so that they, too, will have something to eat.

As was nearly always the case in the Lives of Brigid when she has acted in this fashion, her generosity ends up not being as costly as it at first appears it will. She turns back to the table and there two bowls of butter stand, each more full than the original. The young girl who has taken a risk with her own and her mother’s bellies in order to help someone else is rewarded with enough food for several days, and gives thanks.

I like how gently and humanly this story is told. There is no hectoring, no sense that she was a bad girl even to think of not giving, but that this was a difficult life decision that each of us faces—in fact we face such decisions thousands of times in our lives. Will we be generous today? Will we reserve enough for ourselves? What makes sense in any given situation? The complexities of such ethical decisions aren’t gone into here, nor should they, but the beginning of the conversation is opened up. The idea is put before a child that even when we ourselves have very little, we are capable of giving, capable of helping someone else, and that we might consider this when faced with a decision of whether or not to give help.

I like that Brigid and the Butter can be read as it is and enjoyed quite simply, with no pressure to have big heavy Teaching Discussions, or can become the starting off place for several different conversations, then or later, round the dinner table perhaps, on the different kinds of responsibilities children face, on slavery, on miracles, on generosity, on taking care of ourselves and our own families, on cattle rearing and making butter, or on the Biblical stories referred to in the text. (A family that is into history might even look into whether or not Saint Patrick and Saint Brigit could ever actually have met, as they were said to have done in some of her later Lives.)

The story is followed by a portrait of the grownup Brigid and a few paragraphs about her later life, and then by a short prayer to Saint Brigid:

“Saint Brigid, you gave food to someone who was hungry although your stomach was also empty. I want to be generous, too. Pray for me so that, like you, I may do what I can to help others. Help me to care for people in need, even when it isn’t easy. Amen.”

A prayer we could most of us benefit by.

The book ends with writeups and photos of the author and illustrator but also, wonderfully, of the Catholic Sisters who run Pauline Books and Media, as well as a brief catalogue of some of their children’s books. I am left with the sense of a very joyful and loving group of women, and I am well pleased that I have this book.

For a sneak peek into the first few pages of the book, follow this link.

For a review by a Catholic father of three (so you can get the kids’ response, and not just some fusty old adult’s), check out Steven R. MacEvoy’s blog.

Brigit Book Review PDF Now Available as Download

The PDF of the Brigit book reviews is now available through the Daughters of the Flame website, saving you having to leave your email address here and wait for me to send you one. Much simpler.

  Enjoy!

Brigit Reviews (Series Six): Nonfiction, Academic/Popular Academic

Finally! The last installment of my promised book reviews. A pleasure it was to acquaint myself with the breadth of writing available on Brigit. I'll pin links to the reviews on the Pages tab (below the title banner of this blog) in order to make them more accessible to later readers, and will also make the whole lot available by request as a pdf. In the meantime you can find the previous reviews and introductory material at these links:

Brigit Book Reviews (1): Introduction

Brigit Book Reviews (2): List of Books to be Reviewed

The Reviews, At Last!

Brigit Reviews (Series One): Picture Books

Brigit Reviews (Series Two): Novels

Brigit Reviews (Series Three): Plays and Poetry

Brigit Reviews (Series Four): Nonfiction, Popular (Saint)

Brigit Reviews (Series Five): Nonfiction, Popular (Neo-Pagan)

Brigit Reviews (Series Six):

Nonfiction, Academic/Popular Academic

By “academic/popular” I mean books written in a scholarly style but accessible (sometimes with a real effort) to a general audience. They are footnoted, backed up citations, and so on, and so the thinking in them can be more or less traced and verified. These I can only observe as a reader, not criticize as an expert.

The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion, and Power in Celtic Ireland, Mary Condren (1989)

“Fire and the Arts” (etc) in Pagan Past and Christian Present in Early Irish

            Literature, Kim McCone (1990)

The Festival of Brigit, Séamas Ó Catháin (1995)

Celtic Goddesses: Warriors, Virgins and Mothers, Miranda Green (1996)

“Imbolc: A New Interpretation”, Phillip A. Bernhardt-House (pp 57-76) in Cosmos 18 (2002)

The Rites of Brigid, Goddess and Saint, Seán Ó Duinn (2005)

Landscape with Two Saints: How Genovefa of Paris and Brigit of Kildare Built Christianity in Barbarian Europe, Lisa M. Bitel (2009)

“Queering the Flame: Brigit, Flamekeeping, and Gender in Celtic Reconstructionist Pagan Communities”, by Erynn Rowan Laurie in The Well of Five Streams: Essays on Celtic Paganism (Immanion Press, projected release 2015) 17 pp.

Introduction

There are some delicious writings in here, with lots of obscure references and nimble interpretations; a cornucopia of ideas to mull over in building an understanding of Brigit. Two recommended sources which give abundant info on the world in which St Brigit lived are Early Medieval Ireland 400-1200 by Dáibhí Ó Crónín (1995) (not reviewed here) and Bitel’s Landscape with Two Saints: How Genovefa of Paris and Brigit of Kildare Built Christianity in Barbarian Europe. Placing her in the context of her world allows for a much deeper look into her Lives and mythos, helping us to notice where our assumptions are modern and inappropriate, and allowing us to develop a more balanced perspective.

Though the earliest of these investigations, Condren’s The Serpent and the Goddess is less about Brigit as it is the Christian church in Ireland and its treatment of women. I don’t recommend it for developing an understanding of Brigit.

In The Festival of Brigit, Ó Catháin explores the festival of Imbolc and searches far afield for evidence linking Brigit to, for example, the bear cult and horned deities. Fascinating reading, carefully explored and documented.

McCone’s Pagan Past and Christian Present contains important insights into sacred kingship, the sovereignty goddess, and the three major divisions of Celtic society and convincingly suggests their reflection in Brigit’s various personae.

Green examines the place of women and female deities in Celtic society, and focusses on a number of female-related themes and specific goddesses in Celtic Goddesses: Warriors, Virgins and Mothers. Brigit is looked at in the chapter on the transition from paganism to Christianity.

Bernhardt-House offers a detailed and unique examination of the meaning of the word Imbolc and its possible links to the wolf in ancient times in “Imbolc: A New Interpretation”.

In The Rites of Brigid, Ó Duinn examines a variety of Brigit-related folk customs. He compares in detail the perpetual fires of the Vestal Virgins and Brigit, and describes other sacred and perpetual flames in medieval Ireland.Very useful.

Bitel looks at some important Lives of St Brigit in Landscape with Two Saints, comparing that by Cogitosus of Kildare with those of later writers of Armagh, and putting them into the political context of their times. She examines the legacy of Brigit, and the changing role of women in Ireland.

A rather different perspective is offered in Laurie’s “Queering the Flame: Brigit, Flamekeeping, and Gender in Celtic Reconstructionist Pagan Communities”. This piece, which could have fit well into the Nonfiction, Popular (NeoPagan) section, I place here because of Laurie’s exacting standards of research and presentation. (Footnotes and citations and quotes, oh my!)

You may notice trouble linking to footnotes through their symbols. No worries. Just scroll to the end of the post and they are there.

Read More!

REVIEW: Brigid: Goddess, Druidess and Saint, by Brian Wright

This book review by Dorothy Ann Bray was first published in Folklore 121 (December 2010): 346–362.

Brigid:Goddess, Druidess, Saint. By Brian Wright. Stroud: History Press, 2009. 255 pp. Illus.

£18.99 (pbk.). ISBN 976-0-75244-865-7

Saint Brigid of Kildare is considered one of Ireland’s foremost saints of the early Christian period, along with Saint Patrick and Saint Columba. Her floruit was supposedly the late fifth century to the early sixth century and she is credited with the foundation of a major monastic community of both monks and nuns at Kildare. Her cult spread from Ireland into Wales, Scotland, England, and the Continent, and continues to the present day. Her hagiographical tradition is extensive, with her earliest Life dating from the mid-seventh century. Her folkloric tradition is even more extensive: on her feast day, 1 February, she is celebrated with special rituals and customs; several holy wells have been dedicated to her; in the Hebrides, she has been associated with the Virgin Mary—as her midwife, no less; and she has been closely identified in the modern era with a pagan Irish deity of the same name, to the extent that many people believe that she is the goddess Christianised. A book that draws together her early and later traditions, and examines the popular folklore surrounding her, ought to be welcomed—but, unfortunately, not this book.

Brian Wright does draw together Brigid’s early traditions in his first few chapters, beginning with a discussion of the origins of the goddess Brigantia who became venerated as “Brighid” (sic) in Ireland, thanks to the druids (according to him). Brigid the saint, he believes, was a druidess who converted to Christianity and, with her fellow druids and druidesses, founded the monastery of Kildare. Alas, there is no evidence whatsoever for this. Wright offers a potted history of pre-Christian and early Christian Ireland that takes theories for fact and makes use of sources in an uncritical way. His account of the goddess Brighid, about whom he admits few tales exist, is devised in a similar fashion, where he synthesises several discrete strands of mythological lore and speculative ideas.

When it comes to relating the customs and traditions connected to Saint Brigid, Wright proceeds from the firm conviction that many of these stem from the pre-Christian beliefs and lore surrounding the goddess; most of the miracles of Saint Brigid, including the multiplication of food and drink and control of the weather, are, according to him, survivals of the deeds of the pagan goddess. He does not take into consideration the miracles of Christ (except once, on page 235, where the hagiographer himself does it), although he does allow that her early hagiographers adapted these deeds for a Christian moral purpose. ButWright’s purpose is not to examine these tales, customs, and beliefs in any scholarly way; this is meant as popular book for a non-academic audience. There are no references to his sources in either footnotes or endnotes. Translations of hymns, prayers, and saints’ lives go unacknowledged. This, however, is a disservice to his readers, academic and non-academic alike, both of whom might like to follow up his sources. Although he provides a list of Further Reading, this is a jumble of the scholarly and nonscholarly, and a mess in terms of citation; journal articles are cited as if they were books, and one item is, in fact, cited twice, owing it seems to some confusion over the authors’ names (Amber, K and Azreal Arynn K or K, Amber and K, Arynn—which is it?).

Wright does actually provide some extensive compilations of folk customs and traditions surrounding Brigid, including Saint Brigid’s Day celebrations. However, his account is no substitute for Séamus Ó Cathaín’s The Festival of Brigit: Celtic Goddess and Holy Woman (1995). On the other hand, Wright does tell his readers how to make a Saint Brigid’s cross in Chapter Seven, “Celebrating the Goddess-Saint in Ireland,” and Chapters Eight and Nine contain a compendium of Brigid’s traditions in Scotland, Wales, and the Isle of Man. Chapter Eleven, on holy wells, also brings together several of Brigid’s folk customs and beliefs associated with wells, although Wright does not consider the possibility that not all wells dedicated to Saint Brigid may have been pre-Christian sites of worship. It is simply assumed as a fact.Wright is billed as a teacher of folklore and British mythology in Somerset and Devon, and his local interests are evident in his chapter on the tradition of Brigid’s association with Glastonbury (Chapter  Ten). In his final chapter, he lists some of the modern manifestations of the veneration of the “goddess-saint” and ends with a brief advertisement for the Friends of Bride Mound at Glastonbury.

Had he stuck with simply bringing together the modern folk customs and beliefs of Saint Brigid—and had he offered proper references—Wright might have produced a book both interesting and useful. As it is, this book is seriously limited in value. It is also very poorly written. Individual chapters are badly organised internally, and the entire text is riddled with grammatical errors (sentence fragments abound) and mistakes in spelling and punctuation. For example, a common and consistent error is the use and misuse of the apostrophe (“it’s” for “its,” and vice versa); these and mistakes like “Keeting” instead of “Keating” (p. 70), “formerly” for “formally” (p. 135), and   “Cannon” for “Canon” (p. 189), to name but a few, suggest that no human copy-editor laid eyes on the manuscript prior to publication. Yet the material quality of the publication is high: it is printed on good, heavy paper; the photographs and line drawings are well reproduced; and the front and back covers are colourful and eye-catching. But priced at £18.99, this is asking too much for what it is. The content just does not live up to the packaging.

Dorothy Ann Bray, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

©2010, Dorothy Ann Bray

Another Brigit Novel!

To my surprise and delight I stumbled the other day across an unknown (to me) novel involving the goddess Brigit. Written by English author Sarah Baylis, it is a Young Adult offering that pre-dates all the saintly novels by several years. I have added my review of this book to the previous novel posting, so please wander back there and have a look.

Brigit Reviews (Series Four): Nonfiction, Popular (Saint)

Nonfiction, Popular (Saint):

“Brigit, the Mary of the Gael”, from A Book of Saints and Wonders by Lady Gregory (1907) (Mention only.)

Saint Brigid of Ireland, Alice Curtayne (1954)

Saint Bride, Iain MacDonald (1992)

Power of Raven, Wisdom of Serpent, Noragh Jones (1994)

Rekindling the Flame: a Pilgrimage in the Footsteps of Brigid of Kildare, Rita Minehan CSB (1999) (Pilgrimage Guidebook; Guided Meditation)

The Life of Saint Brigid, Anna Egan Smucker (2007)

Introduction:

This is a surprisingly small sampling, but I like all of these books. If you could read only one I would recommend Curtayne. Unless of course your purpose was to hurriedly prepare for a pilgrimage to Kildare, in which case go with Rekindling the Flame. Oh, heck. They all have different aims, so any could be the one for you, depending on your needs.

Curtayne’s book, written in the early 1950s, is a detailed and broad-ranging introduction to the saint which has no time for the goddess, yet which deepens our understanding of Brigit on many levels. It is told from the perspective of a believing Catholic—ironically, a rare view in the current Brigidine literature, and therefore doubly valuable for the insight it provides. It is the first full book I read about Brigit and remains a favourite.

MacDonald’s highly portable text contains translations of a late (15^th century) Life of Saint Brigit from the Book of Lismore and an unusual prayer sometimes credited to Saint Columba (among others): the 9^th century “Hail Brigid”. Perfect for a quiet walk in the countryside, reflecting on the saint.

Jones looks at length and in an accessible style at the traditional roles and rituals of the Scottish countrywoman, and Brigit appears throughout.

Minehan, herself a Brigidine nun, has written a moving and informative pilgrims’ guide to the Brigidine sites of Kildare town and its environs.

Smucker has pieced together a small and lively (and beautifully illustrated) primer on Saint Brigit as told through the late (15^th century) Life of Brigit from the Leabhar Breac and customs and prayers related to her.

I had hoped to include “Brigit, the Mary of the Gael”, from A Book of Saints and Wonders by Lady Gregory (1907). Unfortunately, the copy I borrowed from the Vancouver Public Library in the ‘80s appears to have been withdrawn from the collection, and I don’t have another copy near to hand. Hence only a brief mention below.

Read More!

Brigit Reviews (Series Three): Plays and Poetry

Poetry/Plays:

The Story Brought by Brigit, Lady Gregory (1924) (play)

St Brigit of the Mantle, Norah Kelly (1924) (play)

Brigit of Kildare, Ann Egan, (2001) (novel/poetry) (SEE ALSO the review in the NOVELS posting)

Brighid’s Runes, ed. Rachel Mica McCann (2008) (poetry)

Introduction:

I'll be brief here as the reviews are not long, themselves. Each of the four books brings something of interest and value. Two are Christian, tinged with the rosy blush of the Celtic Twilight, one is Christian, but embraces to some degree the saint’s pagan roots, and bases the story on diligent research, and the last is NeoPagan poetry that has little to do with Brigit herself. 

The Story Brought By Brigit, Lady Gregory (1924) G. P. Putnam’s Sons (play)

T.R. Henn, in his introduction to Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, wrote that “Lady Gregory herself could achieve a comedy as refined as her gay and gracious nature, and a tragedy, pathetic or patriotic, fitted to her vision and gifts” (pg 37). This is evident in her Passion Play, The Story Brought By Brigit. The story is tightly scripted and effective, with poems sparsely interspersed in the dialogue. The characters speak in a homey Irish manner, which at first is surprising but which becomes comfortable and pleasant, to my ear, anyway. When a minor character speaks of oppression and rebellion we can easily read English where he says Roman. But if we are hoping to get more than a glimpse of the great lady herself (Brigit, not Lady Gregory) we are to be disappointed.

The play’s conceit is that if Brigit could be present at Christ’s birth (as in Irish and Scottish folk tales), why not at his death? St Brigit arrives in Jerusalem shortly before Passover in order to see Christ for herself, but she is very seldom on stage and has few, brief lines and no role in the action. Where she does surface is in the notes at the end of the play, where the author discusses Brigit’s connection to Mary and Jesus in Irish and Scottish folklore, pointing out that whereas in Scotland Brigit is thought to have gone to Palestine to Jesus’s birth, in Irish tales Mary and her son come to Brigit. Although the play itself has nothing to say about Brigit, the notes do share some lovely images.

“Our tradition, and that of Gaelic Scotland, speak (sic) of St. Brigit as ‘the foster-mother of Christ’, and I have been told by poor women of Slieve Echtge that she succoured both the Blessed Mother and Child when they were brought here by a Heavenly Messenger for safety in Herod’s time, and that she ‘kept an account of every drop of blood He lost through His lifeftime.’”

pg vi

“The two names are constantly put together, ‘calm, generous Brigit,’ ‘mild, loving Mary.’ And in the dedication, the binding, of the young hunter ‘not to kill a bird sitting, or a beast lying down,’ he was bade remember ‘the fairy swan of Brigit of the flocks; the fairy duck of Mary of Peace.’

                                                     pg 92

Fora fine rendering of the hymn Lady Gregory includes in the book, follow this link:

Iarla Ó Lionáird - Caoineadh na dTrí Mhuire

Those interested in a play that actually concerns Saint Brigit, Norah Kelly’s St Brigit of the Mantle, also published in 1924, is the one for you.

St Brigit of the Mantle, Norah Kelly (1924) Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London. (Religious Drama) 32 pp.

First produced in Gloucester Cathedral in 1923, this play is a lovely blend of Celtic Twilight Paganism and unpretentious Christian evangelism. Kelly acknowledges her debt to “‘Fiona MacLeod’ (William Sharp)” for her version of the legend of Brigit.

William Sharp was, with WB Yeats, Lady Gregory, and others, a Celtic Revivalist. This movement drew on traditional Celtic literature and art but did not reproduce them exactly, using them as the loam on which to seed a new self-image for Celtic people. As was Yeats, Sharp was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an occult group famous now for the membership of Aleister Crowley.

How Sharp’s occultism influenced his writing would make an interesting study, but regardless, with this acknowledgement we know that we can’t assume the story “MacLeod” has written, and Kelly bases her play on, is traditional. Had she used a story collected by some diligent folklorist, or an old Life of St Brigit, a vision she’d had at prayer one night, a tale handed down by her grandmother, we would watch out for different elements, trust the material in different ways.

The legend as given is a unique take on the life of St Brigit, bearing elements that likely stem from Scottish legend but which havebeen liberally embellished.

A herdsman named Dughall and his daughter Brigit, ordinary peasants, live on the Scottish island of Iona in the Hebrides in the mid-6^thcentury CE. Only the local Arch-Druid knows that Dughall was a prince of Ireland, exiled for having allegedly made pregnant a Princess Mora. Both she and he protest his innocence—the child, she says, is an immortal, a daughter of the Tuatha De Danann¹.

A storm washes their boat ashore on Iona, killing all but the father and child. Brigit proclaims that one day she will hold “the King of the Elements Himself” in her arms. They are welcomed by the Arch-Druid of Iona who links this statement to a prophecy that “a child of the immortals” would one day “hold eternity in herarms”, neatly combining Pagan and Christian symbols and marking Brigit as an Otherworld being.

Brigit grows up in Iona. Inspired by the Druids’ offerings to a “Most High God”, she time travels “in search of a deathless love” through a gate of quicken trees (either the mountain ash or the service-tree, both in the genus Aucuparia), trees with Otherworld associations. She arrives in Palestine, in therole of the inn-keeper’s daughter²at the “Rest and Be Thankful”, in time to offer lodging to Mary and Joseph and attend the birth of Jesus. In keeping with the traditions of Celtic Otherworld adventures, she is gone for a year and a day.

The prose is delightfully “old fashioned” and well put together. In a wonderful aside, Brigit worries about the cattle of Palestine, caught in drought, and says “scarce a drop of milk will they give, and that only after the milking lassies have sung tune after tune tothem...” I don’t know about the milking lassies of ancient Palestine, but this is exactly how the Irish dairymaids approached such a problem.

It is intriguing that the heavy Pagan symbolism, given in a positive light, is accepted and absorbed into the Christian story, rather than being rejected outright as at other times and places. But be not confused, this is purely Christian in its intent.

Thestory of Jesus’s birth is of course is a familiar one to those raised in Christian tradition, but the infusion of Brigit—disobedient, sincere, and generous to a fault—and the melding of her medieval vitae with the biblical tale is delightful. Introducing Celtic saints into biblical stories (and vice versa) is not uncommon and gives a wonderfully accessible and neighbourly feel to both the saints and the stories themselves. No longer a tale of a remote time and place, it is an incident fresh and real as today’s new churned butter. Mary chastises the storm for threatening to wake her baby. Brigit offers refreshment that grows no less for the drinking. She swaddles Jesus in her blue cloak to keep him warm, and Mary responds that henceforth she will be known as Brigit of the Mantle.

In the closing scene, Brigit has returned to Iona, now blessed with the knowledge of deathless love, to bring Christianity to her “own sea-girt isle...that never more may Druid-worship sway the people’smind.” Ah, well.

Nicely done, all told, and with the various hymns prescribed for scene openings, I can see that a very pleasant afternoon could come of the staging of this play.

1In the statement that Brigit is a daughter of Pagan deities we find a nontraditional element undoubtedly introduced by either Sharp or Kelly.
2See Bryce Milligan’s Brigid’s Cloak: An Ancient Irish Story (picture book) for another instance of Brigit’s assuming this role in fiction.

Brigit of Kildare, Ann Egan, (2001) (novel) Kildare County Council Library and Arts Service, Eire.

This novel is reviewed in the previous post—Brigit Book Reviews (Series Two) but I want to mention it here because Egan, an award-winning Irish poet, has included a number of excellent Brigidine poems.

From “Dufach’s Daughter”:

the touch of her small hand

cool as a breeze-kissed petal

on my hard warrior’s palm,

the woodbine tendrils on her brow

have me within her spell, I am

bondman to my druid daughter.

To her I bequeath my sword,

its hilt aglow with rubies.

Brighid’s Runes: A Collection of Women’s Soul Poetry, Rachel Mica McCann, editor, Mica Arts, England, 2008.

When I heard about this book I imagined that the poems would have something to do with Brigit, but almost without exception, they do not. Instead, they are dedicated in a more generalized way to Goddess, sometimes to specific goddesses, such as the Cailleach, or to the process of ritual and awakening, from a woman’s perspective.

There are some very nice pieces in here. All of the poets are connected in some way to Scotland, England, Wales, or Ireland. They range in poetic experience from relative newcomer to adept, but the sensibility throughout is one of celebration, connection, growth, and joy. The youngest author is in her teens; another has gone on to the Land ofthe Dead. A very pleasant collection under the aegis of Brigit, patron of poetry.

Samples from the poems:

I have a Venus urge

for slow love making

soft kisses, smooth caresses

Autumn cooking,

pickles, stewed apples and spices.

I feel my body soften

as the gentle waning sun beckons me outside,

to pick up hazlenuts from the warm afternoon track,

so that I can bake wisdom cake.

My love for you.

Debra Hall

It was in the wreckage of kelp limbs I found you

The long crescent of your thigh,

a shade quicker than sand,

woven in the tidal reach, the tangle of sea

dried into cloth or food,

dried salt around your lips

your sea fingers

open and

close about drifted wood...

Sophia Dale