Mea Culpa: A Wee Mistake I Need to 'Fess Up To

In my review of novels involving Brigit, I gave a number of reasons for not recommending Heather Terrell's Brigit of Kildare. One small part of this was her representing Brigit as a legitimate daughter of well-to-do Christian parents, when the accepted version is that she was the daughter of a slave and her owner. I had entirely forgotten that in Cogitosus's Life of Saint Brigit, probably the oldest if not the most magical of her Lives, he says, "The holy Brigid...was born in Ireland of noble Christian parents".

Oops. A good reminder to me that the tales are not unified and indeed are often in direct conflict with each other, particularly when their authors are serving different aims. See Lisa Bitel's Landscape with Two Saints for a detailed explanation of the divergent aims of her hagiographers. E. A. D'Alton in The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 4 (1913) points out that he "gives the names of her parents, but is careful to conceal the fact that she was illegitimate, and that her mother was a slave." So even he was not buying what Cogitosus was selling--at least not that bit.

D'Alton also examines the evidence and concludes that Cogitosus must have lived in the ninth and not the seventh century, as is commonly assumed. I would be interested to know if anyone has followed up his thoughts on the matter and where they led.

You can read his comments about Cogitosus and Brigit here, as well as download the De Paor translation of Cogitosus's Vita Sanctae Brigitae, which seems awfully hard to find online.

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 Two): Fiction

Fiction: 

     The Tomb of Reeds, by Sarah Baylis, (1987) (YA novel)
    Brigit of Kildare, Ann Egan, (2001) (novel/poetry)
    Brigid of Kildare, Cindy Thomson, (2006) (novel)
    “The Brideog” by Casey June Wolf. Escape Clause: A Speculative Fiction Anthology, edited by Clelie Rich (2009)
    Brigid of Kildare, Heather Terrell (2010) (novel)

(People! You’ve got to start getting more imaginative in the Brigit book titles! It’s getting a bit hard to tell them apart.)

    Mention only
Confessions of a Pagan Nun, Kate Horsley, (2001) (novel)
Sister Fidelma series (novels), Peter Tremayne/Peter Beresford Ellis (1994 onward)

         Historical novels which are based on real people must be constrained by known facts. The fiction comes in where facts are unknown. An author’s note at the end of the book will point the interested reader to which elements are fact and which are fiction, thus satisfying both the love of imagination and the love of clear scholarship. In the case of St Brigit, much of the “fact” is hagiography, tales written long after the woman’s death, but they nevertheless form a body of understanding that can’t be tossed aside without cause.

         At times authors feel free to dispense with, or are unaware of, important facts about the person or her times, and paint very misleading pictures as a result. Possibly this is unimportant to you if you’re looking for entertainment only and don’t also want to learn about the subject of the book. In our case, we do want to increase our understanding of Brigit, as goddess or saint or both; only one of the three novels included here is worth turning to for that purpose—Brigit of Kildare by Ann Egan.

Writing good historical fiction is a lot of work. If you don’t want to spend energy getting the details right, or if the details don’t suit your plot, there are lots of alternatives. Don’t present your story as historical fiction. Write fantasy, or alternate history; invent a similar situation and character and do whatever you like.

Acknowledgements provide clues as to what sort of novel you have in your hand. Egan thanks, among others, Kildare librarians and the Regional Archivist. Thompson thanks, among others, God and her prayer partners. This does not mean that the one is not prayerful, and the other did no research, but it does hint at how much weight is given to each in the shaping of the book. (Terrell, for the record, thanks her publisher and friends—among others.)

Although Egan and Thompson draw from the same source materials, and approach Saint Brigit as Christians, their interpretations are worlds apart. Egan’s Brocassa and her daughter Brigit live in a world where Paganism is the norm; they understand and are themselves a part of that world. There is no disdain or distance between themselves and those who haven’t adopted Christian beliefs – beliefs which were in their day rare and unimportant in Irish society. Pagans are their relatives and their friends. There is an assumption that it is a good thing that Brigit herself and people around her become Christians, but it isn’t made at the expense of those who do not.

Thompson reveals a very different attitude. Pagans, especially druids, are nearly all deluded or dangerous. To Egan Brigit’s father is a good guy who cares about his land and his family, including Brigit and her mother, his slave Brocassa, whom he is in love with. His wife is greedy, but she is smart. For Thompson he is despicable, fat, and greedy. (Another stereotype I would love to see the back of: if you are greedy you are fat, and vice versa.) His wife is an evil druid. The Christian characters display a smug, knowing arrogance toward the Pagans which becomes more clear as the novel progresses.

Egan is herself an Irishwoman, living in the area where Brigit lived. Her dialogue is natural and readable, with no particular accent attempted. Thompson, who is American, uses a clunky “Irish” accent in the dialogue. This is in part a reflection of their writing skills. These are first novels for both of them, but Egan is an accomplished poet. She has won many literary awards, and Thompson is very much a beginning writer. There is talent here, but her skill is as yet unpolished.
The single short story looks at a traditional visitation on St. Brigit's Eve by Wolf, a Canadian writer of speculative fiction.
Terrell’s novel aims to be a rousing mystery story of the DaVinci Code ilk, with no particular religious sentiment beyond a dash of feminist revisionism. There is more polish in her writing than in Thompson’s, but it never comes alive; between that and the mishandling of historical materials, this book, which I was so looking forward to, is very disappointing.