MoonCon 21 "Brigit Panel"

 

So this just happened! I really enjoyed our #Brigit Panel. And that swirling white streak beneath Erin Aurelia and I is actually Morgan Daimler, manifesting in our shared realm.

If you want to watch the rest of the Con, you can find the sessions on Facebook and YouTube :

https://www.facebook.com/MoonBooks

Our Brigit panel (available on video):

https://fb.watch/5XBxGpw-fs/

OR

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ2_r1CUgx8&list=PLuNR40Q7BCOkgs3wPiTw1GfJbOeLbovoL&index=9

Image: Screenshot, 5 June 2021, MoonCon 21 by Mael Brigde.

Brigit T-Shirts from Eel and Otter

If you are a T-shirt buff, Eel and Otter has just created some Brigit tees:

Drop the Hammer

Forged by Fire

Purified by Flame

Brigit in Her Complexity and Beauty - Art by Valerie Herron

(Click on the image for a larger view)

Valerie Herron just released into the world an awe-inspiring image of Brigit, one which encompasses so much it makes my heart swell. It moves me in a way no other Brigit art, however wonderful, has ever done. It is huge, what Valerie has expressed here.

Here is what she says about it on her Instagram post:

Brigid: Goddess of the flame of inspiration. Patron Saint of Ireland, the blacksmiths and the poets. She is the resplendent fire in the head of writers, painters, and luminaries. The living embodiment of the creative flow. This piece is about my relationship with creativity and creation.

Valerie is a Seattle based illustrator of the "mythological, the macabre, and the absurd." I encourage you to plumb the depths of her offerings.

Where to find Valerie and her art:

Webpage: Mystic Media: The Art of Valerie Herron
Etsy: Mystic Media: The Art of Valerie Herron
Instagram: Valerie Herron Art
Facebook: Valerie Herron


Image: Brigit by Valerie Herron (2019).

French Language Edition of Brigid by Morgan Daimler

Wonderful to see that Morgan Daimler's excellent book on Brigid is now available in a French language edition! Click here to order.

"Cet ouvrage est une introduction élémentaire au culte de la déesse Brigid, qui se concentre sur son histoire et son mythe, ainsi que sur sa dévotion et son culte modernes. Se focalisant principalement sur la déesse irlandaise, le livre inclue également une discussion sur ses apparitions dans le reste du monde celte, en particulier en Écosse. Ses différentes apparitions dans la mythologie sont mises en relation avec la transformation de la déesse païenne en une sainte catholique. Les méthodes modernes permettant aux néopaïens de se connecter et d'honorer cette déesse populaire incluent des méditations et des offrandes, ainsi que des anecdotes personnelles tirées des expériences de l'auteure.

"Qui était Brigid chez les païens préchrétiens ? Qui est-elle et que représente-t-elle aujourd'hui pour les païens modernes ? Comment tisser les liens entre l'ancienne et la nouvelle déesse païenne ? Pour trouver la réponse à ces questions, découvrez les mythes de Brigid chez les païens irlandais, les histoires de Bride en Écosse et la façon dont les gens honorent aujourd'hui cette divinité puissante et si importante..."

12,00 € 

Adomnán's Holy Well Blog: Saint Bridgid’s Well, Kildare

Holy Well by Adomnán features postings on a small number of significant Irish holy wells, with photographs and in-depth articles. The article on Kildare focusses in large part on Brigit's "role in the establishment of the abbey in Kildare", giving the piece a different perspective than many popular writings on Brigit.

I include it in its entirety here but urge you to see it and the other pieces in their original home.

See also "Saint Brigid’s Well, Liscannor, County Clare."

Holy Well

Finding holy well sites in Ireland and recording both religious practice and lore.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Saint Bridgid’s Well, Kildare

The welcoming hands at the parish of Saint Brigid

“Amid the galaxy of the saints, how lustrous, how divinely 

fair, shines the star of Brigid, the shepherd maiden of 

Faughard, the disciple of Patrick the Apostle, the guardian

of the holy light that burned beneath the oak-trees of 

Kildare! Over all Ireland and through the Hebridean

Isles, she is renowned above any other. We think of

her, moreover, not alone, but as the centre of a great

company of cloistered maidens, the refuge and helper

of the sinful and sorrowful, who found in the gospel that

Patrick preached a message of consolation and

deliverance. Let it be remembered that the shroud of

Patrick is deemed to have been woven by Brigid's hand;

that when she died, in 525, Columcille, the future apostle

of Scotland, was a child of four. So she stands midmost

of that trilogy of saints whose dust is said to rest in Down.”

--Alice Milligan (from ‘Irish Heroines’)

Interior of Saint Brigid's Cathedral

When Saint Brigid was given leave to pursue her religious vocation she is 

said to have gone to Kildare to establish an Abbey where she reigned as

its first Abbess. During the medieval period this abbey became

hugely significant throughout Ireland and its Abbess wielded considerable 

political power. This power was retained right through to the time of the

Flight of the Earls, when it is rumoured that the nuns of the abbey were 

raped as a potent symbol of the final breaking of the religious and

political power of the Abbess. From this time on the famous flame of

Brigid fell into cold ashes until more recent times.

The ancient High Cross in the cathedral grounds

I’ve already written a little of Saint Brigid in other places and I

don’t want to repeat what I have already said.  Here, I would

like to say more of her role in the establishment of the

abbey in Kildare. Saint Brigid first enters Irish history as a

disciple of Saint Patrick, acclaimed by Saint Fiech, also a

disciple of Patrick. Fiech flourished around 520AD and is

said to have written a life of Saint Brigid. This is now lost bar

a few cursory fragments, but his somewhat astonishing

hymn of praise to Saint Brigid – ‘Audite Virginis Laudes’ –

still survives. The hymn is a list of miracles attributed to

Saint Brigid listed in alphabetical order with each line

composed of sixteen syllables. There is a longer and fuller

version in the manuscript of Saint Magnus, but to my

knowledge this has never been reprinted or translated.

In any case even shortly after her death, Brigid was already

being honoured as a Saint and was to prove an incredible

inspiration for many Irish saints of the period, most notably

Saint Brendan, Saint Ultan, Saint Erc, Saint Fiech and Saint

Ninnicíus (her chaplain while she was alive). By the

Middle Ages, Saint Brigid was one of the best known and

greatest loved of all saints throughout all of Europe. She

appears regularly in the Breviaries of the Middle Ages and

continues to be mentioned (although with lessened

materials and hymns attributed to her honour) up until the

printing of the 1522 Venice Breviary and the 1622 Paris

Breviary. Some of the Breviaries of the Middle Ages even

contained an Office of Saint Brigid which was reproduced

in the Kilmoon Breviary here in Ireland (only some very

badly damaged fragments of this manuscript now survive,

but a better copy is preserved in the Antiphonary of

Clondalkin).  Brigid became so greatly honoured in Ireland

that she became known as ‘Mary of the Gael’ and many of

the stories of her life by the early medieval period begin 

to draw strong parallels between her and the Mother of God.

Chapel of the Reserved Sacrament on the parish of Saint Brigid

There has been a persistent rumour that Brigid took up

her religious vocation at the very tender age of fourteen. To

this day the people of Dundalk insist that the church at the

top of Faughart Hill is part of the original foundation of Saint

Brigid. It may be possible they are right, but records point

to it being the dwelling place of a holy woman, who in all

likelihood had a deep influence on Brigid. This woman is not

considered to be a saint and there is some confusion as to

her real name. She does appear to have been honoured in some

way though, because a church was built on the site of what was

supposed to be her home - possibly out of interest in her

possible link to Saint Brigid. Kildare, however, remains

the main site associated with Saint Brigid and her order of

nuns. While abbess there she is described as being fearless,

strong willed and politically astute. She held a deep concern

for the poor and was particularly keen to care for the sick

and ill – hence why so many of her wells are considered to be

healing wells.

 The site of the well and the statue of Saint Brigid

It is now generally believed that in the period of early Christ-

ianity in Ireland, that the native Irish did not hold a

common pagan pantheon of gods and goddesses, but rather

that each area held its own beliefs and practices (this is also

attested to in quite a number of the records of the early Irish

saints); some having a complex order of gods and goddesses,

while other areas practiced something akin to animism or

elemental worship. It is in the area of Kildare and Athlone that

Saint Brigid is said to have found a substantial area where two

main systems of belief held great sway over the people. In

Athlone, worship of the moon prevailed as the dominant form

of belief (‘Ath’ meaning ford and ‘Luan’ meaning moon. Kildare

means ‘place of the oak’). In Kildare, the properties of light and

heat were honoured in the form of fire and a fire temple was

said to have been kept alive by many worshippers. It was at the

fire temple that Brigid is said to have established her commun-

ity, using the site as a new focus for a better light to the people.

This is an incident that demonstrates her political astuteness.

Rather than condemn the people in their fire worship, she

quietly turns it to her advantage and sustains a place of

ancient reverence as a new Christian community and overlays

it with a new symbolism to suit her mission. Saint Brigid is

said to have kept this flame alive as a potent symbol of the

light of Christ, but sadly the flame was to go out. The flame was

snuffed out by a Norman Bishop and then again by Henry VIII -

who was likely the last person to snuff it out. In 1993 the 

Brigidine Sisters (a new order of nuns that associates itself 

with the charism of Saint Brigid) symbolically re-lit the flame

of Saint Brigid and plans were set in place to create an eternal

flame in the heart of Kildare town. On 1^st February in 2006

a well made bronze monument to house Saint Brigid’s flame

was unveiled by President Mary McAleese, but the flame has

since been replaced by a rather horrible plastic flame effect!

Saint Brigid's Holy Well

There are two significant churches in Kildare. The oldest
church is Saint Brigid’s Cathedral and round tower, with the
remains of a high cross and the fire temple in the grounds.
The original foundation would have been a wooden structure,
but the cathedral was built in stone between 1223 and 1230
and even by this stage it had been repeatedly ravaged. By 1500
it was in a semi ruinous state and left completely derelict in

1649. An attempt was made to partially rebuild it in 1686, but

it wasn’t until 1875 that work began in earnest to make it a

functioning and safe church to worship in once again. It’s an

interesting building with many well preserved fine stone

carvings. Tour guides will tell you that a Sheelagh-na-gig can

be found on the Wellesley tomb in the cathedral – it’s a lie!

Unfortunately it is a rather dull cherubic acrobat, unusual,

but no Sheelagh-na-gig (if such things exist at all!)

Saint Brigid's Cathedral

The Roman Catholic parish of Saint Brigid has a modern
interior, which works well in some aspects, but not in others.
It does have some rather beautiful bronze doors with
welcoming open hands as handles! However, even here it
is somewhat disheartening to see a modern myth retold as
if it were fact. Not so very long ago a ‘learned academic’ from
TCD decided to make a pronouncement that Patrick likely
never existed, that Brigid was really the pagan goddess
Brigit and that neither had been properly canonized as Saints
by the Roman Catholic church. As you can imagine it made a
little flurry in the press.  There has been some confusion over
Brigid’s name and its spelling, but this is not uncommon
among Irish saints. She is referred to at times as Saint Bride
by Saint Ninnicíus, as Saint Brigit by Cogitosus and Saint
Ultan and mainly as Saint Brigid by all others. All names
refer to the same person. The idea that there was ever a pagan
goddess with the same name is highly unlikely and hugely
speculative. There is a brief reference to a goddess with the
name of Brí in Cath Maige Tuireadh, a twelfth century
document and some try to cite references to her in ‘The Book
of Invasions’ (Lebor Gabála Érenn), an eleventh century work.
Both of these texts have been repeatedly cited as evidence for
the existence of a pagan goddess by the name of Brigid, Bride
or Bridgit. Maybe I’m too skeptical, but I’m really not convinced
by this at all. None of Brigid’s contemporaries relate that her
name bears a strange closeness to a pagan god, neither do
any of her subsequent biographers – a fact that it would be
very hard to believe would have escaped their notice.

The remains of the fire temple in the grounds of the cathedral

Saint Brigid’s well is actually a little way out of the town of
Kildare towards the National Stud. Legend has it that Saint
Brigid was in fact Abbess over the women’s abbey in Kildare
and also had control and governance of the men’s monastery
which was very close to the site of this well. Whatever the
truth of the matter, by the ninth century the monastery has its
own male Abbot and the well would have been important for
both practical matters and religious ones to the adjoining
monastery. Saint Brigid is said to have used the well to baptize
converts.

The arch marking the point where the underground river surfaces

The well is in a somewhat unusual setting. It’s down a narrow
road towards a modern house near the National Stud. Horses
peer curiously at passing pilgrims. As you enter the area it is
fenced off from the surrounding countryside with trees planted
 - some dedicated to the work of cross community groups and
planted in hope, and others in memory of loved ones and
planted in faith. The well is up at the far end of the enclosure; a
circular and deep well, surmounted by a stone cross. Pilgrims
traditionally say prayers at each of the tiny stone ‘stations’
leading up to the well (the stones are said to mark the course
of the underground river).

 A collection of items left at the shrine during the pattern

The site is maintained by the Brigidine Sisters and they have
done a terrific job. The statue of Saint Brigid by sculptor
Annette McCormack dominates the site a little more than
it should, but otherwise this is a fine area, peaceful and
reflective. The stillness of the water in the well and the sound
of the bubbling water below as it passes under the arch erected
over two ancient stones makes for a rather beautiful place. A
pattern is observed here every 1st February and many events
take place in the churches and in the town of Kildare around
this date. Events are usually posted on the towns website.

 A tree planted in hope

This well is supposed to have a little fish. Lady Gregory, co-
founder with W. B. Yeats of the Abbey Theatre and renowned
folklorist, records a story of a mother whose daughter began
to lose weight just before she reached puberty. The child very
quickly became seriously ill and her mother fretted greatly and
prayed most fervently. She decided in desperation, that she
would find somewhere a place that would bring healing to her
daughter. She endeavoured to bring her ailing child to Saint
Brigid’s well and as she prayed over the face of the wells waters
she saw a little fish and knew in that instant that her prayers
had been answered. The child took some of the waters and was
healed.

 Rags tied to the tree above the well

The idea of a fish in a well as a sign of God’s presence or as a
visitation of God is rather peculiar to Irish Christianity of that
early period. Of course, the fish was the principle Christian
symbol in the early period of Christianity - a much more
dominant symbol than the cross, so it is hardly surprising that
in early Irish Christian tales of the presence of God or of visit-
ations from God that the visions are of fish and not of a cross.
Later – although not much later it must be said – the cross
becomes the dominant symbol of Christianity throughout Ire-
land  and when saints have visitations of God it is sometimes 
accompanied by visions of a cross. Today at the well you will 
certainly see many crosses; perhaps if you are lucky you will 
see a little fish and enjoy the healing peace of this place.

The well waters

Brigit Bé Bithmaith

Bright, eternally good lady,

Golden sparkling flame,

May she lead us to the eternal kingdom,

The dazzling shining sun!

May Brigit deliver us

Past throngs of devils;

may she rout before us

the temptations of each attack.

The dear true virgin

Of immense honour,

I shall always be safe

With my saint from Leinster.

A portion of Saint Ultan’s ‘Hymn to Saint Brigit’, translated by 

Stokes & Strachan in 1901.

How to find it:

From the town head out past the Roman Catholic parish
towards the National Stud, traversing the motorway. After
passing the gates to the National Stud on your left, take the
first turn to the right and the well is signposted to the left,
down the lane.

Brigit, Harbinger of Spring: Audio Interview of Mary Condren

March 15, 2009

Brigit, Harbinger of Spring (click here for link to CBC archive of this interview)

Mary Hynes of Tapestry, CBC Radio One, interviews Mary Condren, Irish Brigit scholar and author of The Serpent and the Goddess.

Tapestry is a thoughtful and often inspiring weekly program on spirituality and religion.

Listen:

[runs: 54:12]

Statue of Brigit, near Kildare, Ireland (Photo by: Kim Young-Milani)

The spring equinox arrives in a few days. On the pagan calendar, it is already here. The Celtic season of Imbolc began back in February. Its patroness is Brigit; part saint, part myth, ancient symbol of the Divine Feminine, and of a frozen world coming back to life. Mary Hynes speaks with Irish scholar Mary Condren about the renewed interest around the world in Brigit, fifth century saint from Kildare. Mary Condren teaches at the Centre for Gender and Women’s studies, at Trinity College, Dublin. She is also the author of The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion and Power in Celtic Ireland.

A poem by Anne O'Reilly, read by Mary Condren:

Brigid

These words will never carve your image out of bog oak
But that is what they want to do:
To dig down into the moist wetness,
To touch the layers of centuries that have made you,
Woman, Goddess, Saint
To see your shape emerge in tact from the ancient earth.
The fine coat of resin will preserve your beautiful shape
In tact, and I will call on you, Great Woman
To grace me with a golden branch and tinkling bells.
And I will polish you then with images of
Sun and moon and cows,
Sheep, serpent, vultures,
Bags, bells, bats,
And sacred fires.
So that you become a fiery arrow,
And breath life into the mouth of dead Winter.
As it is in these days in the lives of women, whose
Spirits have ceased to quicken.
Nurture them with your milk,
Be midwife to their birthing,
Release them from all that hinders them.
O! beautiful vessel still in tact, where we have unearthed you,
Remind us of your many manifestations,
And let us smile again in memory.
Your cloak spread in the green field of Kildare;
You who turned back the streams of war;
Whose name invoked stilled monsters in the seas
Whose cross remains a resplendent, golden, sparkling flame.
Come again from the dark bog, and
Forge us anew!

Brigit as Triple Goddess, especially the Yellow-Green Enchantress

Here is an offering from the occultist Rory Goff, who writes extensively on his website about his own Rorian Tradition, a synthesis and extension of many mystical traditions. His perspective on Brigit is unique and fascinating.

First, some background on his spiritual thinking:

The Rorian Tradition is a Mystery School encouraging both (interior) Initiation and (exterior) Celebration through a rich calendrical liturgy which I believe may well be a re-creation or re-cognition of a universal Ur-Religion, and even an Ur-civilization.

As both student and teacher of the Mysteries, I believe firmly in experiential spirituality, and in a mystical substrate of divine experience that underlies, feeds and connects the best and most enduring qualities of all the great religions and civilizations. Ever since I was a small child, I have always studied and eclectically absorbed those elements that most inspired, uplifted, and grounded me: be they from the New-Age Movement, Greco-Roman Classicism, Hinduism, Theosophy, Norse-Celtic Druidry, Wicca, Neo-Paganism, Judaism, or Gnostic Christianity -- that is, Mystical Christianity. Much of my early teaching, in my teens and early twenties, was inspired first by Edgar Cayce, then Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, later by Alice Bailey (channeling Djwahl Khul), and then by Sondra Ray and other Immortalist devotees of Babaji. Since my later twenties, though, I have been going directly to Source to uncover the exciting material I offer to you now. Much of this more current Work I believe to be largely the offspring of my relationship with the Avatar of Synthesis, with whom I began consciously working in early 1985.

The Rorian Tradition

Brigit as Triple Goddess, especially the Yellow-Green Enchantress

(I am indebted to Dr. James MacKillop's masterful Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, 1998, Oxford University Press, for most of the mythological minutia herein.)

The Old Irish goddess Brigit is patroness of so many areas -- fire, smithing, cattle, fertility, poetry, crops -- that we may be justified in considering her a form of Triple Goddess, as Cormac hinted in his tenth-century Glossary. We examine here some arguments for seeing Brigit as a conflation of the Rorian tradition's Demiurges of the three Earth Signs: Blue-Violet Mason (Saturn in Taurus-Equinox Capricorn), Red-Orange Diviner or Abbess (Proserpina in T-E Taurus), and especially the Yellow-Green Enchantress (Isis in T-E Virgo). All three of these earthy Archetypes are both mothers and daughters of their opposite water Archetypes; this may explain Brigit's long-held associations with wells and waters.

Brigit as the Blue-Violet Mason: As patroness of fire and smithing, Brigit might well have originally been lady of the similarly-earthy but older arts of masonry, pottery and stone-cutting. Cooking pots were fired in clay long before they were cast in bronze; before tools and weapons were crafted in metal, they were carved or chipped from stone. As a stonemason Brigit would be equated with the Celtic deity called the Cailleach, the blue-faced Hag of Winter, who gathers up and deposits the giant boulders of the countryside, and thus would have been the builder of the cromlechs and menhirs. In the Rorian tradition the Cailleach is identical to the Indigo Mason, whose trees are the blackthorn and elder, whose animal is the goat, and whose bird is the raven or the crow. Governing Saturn in T-E Capricorn, this form of the Triple Goddess is the Crone, goddess of wisdom, trickery, and death. In her marvelous Pagan Celtic Britain (1996, Academy Chicago Publishers, p. 278), Anne Ross mentions an unidentified squatting deity thought to be the patroness of potters, and beaked like the Irish raven- or crow-goddesses; this would appear to be a form of the Cailleach or Brigit-as-Crone. The Cailleach is also the term for the last sheaf of the harvest, which is saved until spring. This may relate to the straw figure of Brigit placed in "Brigit's Bed" on her Feast Day of February 1; see below, Brigit as the Yellow-Green Enchantress.

Brigit as the Red-Orange Diviner or Abbess: As patroness of cattle and fertility, Brigit is clearly equated with Tara-Anna-Eithne, the Rorian tradition's Abbess, Diviner, and healer of the springtime, whose trees are willow and furze, whose animal is the cow or bull, and whose bird is the crane. Governing Persephone in T-E Taurus, this form of the Goddess is according to some the Mother (springtime is fertile, and her divine centers are the heart, hands, and breasts), or to others the Maiden, as in the springtime is not yet a mother; in the Rorian calendar she does not give birth until September, when she has the Red Hunter and the Turquoise Fowler. Like the Red-Orange Abbess, "Saint" Brigit is the mother of Ruadan ("the Red"), apparently a form of the Red Hunter. Brigit is often compared to Minerva, who in her Greek form of Athena would appear to be cognate with Eithne, wife of Nuada (the Green Priest) and thus the Red-Orange Abbess. In her form of Brigantia, she is equated with victory and Minerva, and even wears the mural crown, as Anne Ross points out in her Pagan Celtic Britain (1996, Academy Chicago Publishers, p. 279). The mural crown is identical to the Rorian tradition's Tower Crown, worn only by the Red-Orange Abbess at her coronation in Taurus.

Brigit as the Yellow-Green Enchantress: As patroness of poetry and crops, Brigit is most clearly equated with Freya as the Rorian tradition's Singer, Enchantress, and harvest-queen of Lammas and August, whose trees are hazel and apple, whose animal is the deer, and whose bird is the swan. The governor of Isis in T-E Virgo, this form of the Goddess is a Virgin and patroness of virgins, but is also the Mother, who in the Rorian calendar has just given birth at Lammas to the Blue Planter and the Violet-Red Forester. Brigit is thus an early form of the Virgin-Mother archetype later used by the Christians for Mary; "Saint" Brigit was revered by Celts as the midwife of Mary. Further, the Feast Day of St. Brigid is February 1; in the Rorian Calendar this is the time of Early Imbolc (ca. January 29-31), when the Yellow-Green Enchantress is reborn. In Celtic tradition this is when "Brigit's Bed" is made of (hazelwood?) basketry and a small figure of straw placed in it. (We can further add that February 14, the Christian "Valentine's Day," is the Rorian calendar's Late Imbolc, the Feast of the Epiphany of Brigit-Freya, when the Yellow-Green Enchanter becomes a woman.) Despite her many roles, Brigit is best known as patron goddess of poets and virgins, and her primary Demiurgic Archetype must thus be the Yellow-Green Enchantress.

© 1997-2001 Rory Goff

rorygoff@hotmail.com

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Brigit Gwers (OBOD lesson) by Susa Morgan Black

Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids member Susa Morgan Black offers online her 38 page lesson on Brigit, looked at from many aspects and supported with lots of notes, images, and resources. Below is a brief sample.

Druid Goddess
Brigit is a “pan Celtic” goddess, who was worshipped by both the Goidelic4 and Brythonic5 Celts in the British Isles and beyond. She is a solar deity, who once hung her mantle on a sunbeam.

In Celtic mythology, Brigit is the daughter of the Morrighan and the Dagda6, the Good God and
Chief of the Tuatha de Danaan, the ancient fairy race of Ireland, and the sister of Ogma, who
invented the Ogham alphabet. She was the wife of Bres, King of the Fomorians (who were at
war with the Tuatha de Danaan). Brigit was said to have been the mediator of peace between
the two ancient warring tribes. She was the mother of the Three Gods of Danu – Ruadan7,
Iuchar and Uar8. These three Gods were said to have married the three princesses of Ireland –
Eire, Fodhla and Banbha.9

In other sources, Brigid is the daughter of Boann, the Goddess of the River Boyne in Ireland.
Boann (bo fhionn) means “white cow”, an association she shares with Brigid.

Brigit is primarily the patron Goddess of poets, healers and smiths. She is also a patron of other
womanly arts – midwifery, dyeing, weaving and brewing, and the guardian of children and farm
animals – particularly cows.10 The island of Ireland itself is said to be the green mantle of Brigit.

She is also said to be the patron of travelers, sailors, and fugitives.

She is specifically a patroness to the Druids in her aspects of poetry (Bards), healing and
prophecy (Ovates) and blacksmithing.11 (Druids).


Notes:

4. Goidelic – Gaels: Irish, Scots, and Manx Celts
5. Brythonic – British: Welsh, Cornish and Breton Celts
6. In other versions, Dagda is the son of Brigit; White Goddess, page 101. Dagda is the patron god of the Druids. In some
versions, he is the consort of Brigid.
7. In some sources, it’s Brian, Iuchar and Iuchurba (White Goddess, page 101)
8. Article on Brigit on the OBOD webpage, by Winter Cymres (http://www.druidry.org/obod/deities/brigid.html)
9. White Goddess, page 102
10. Kindling the Celtic Spirit, pg. 47
11. Blacksmithing is the art of transformation of metal, and they were considered great wizards and mages in ancient times,
which relates them directly to the transformative (alchemical) arts of the Druid.