Today is St Brigid’s Eve. Brigid (also Bride, Brighid, Breeshey, Ffraid, Britgantia or Bridget) was a goddess with unusually broad distribution throughout the lands of Celtic-language peoples. Along with Lugh (who was not her consort, nor even related…), she seems to have been the principal idea of deity for these peoples, and because both are spread from one end of Europe to the other, they might have come west with the migrating ancestors of the Celts. However, neither have retained any characteristics of the Central Asian steppe and sky gods. They have been firmly rooted in their lands.
Lugh is the chameleon Trickster god of the Tribe, the all-purpose handyman who can MacGyver his way out of any situation. (Note that we gave that modern trickster a Scottish name.) Brigid is the Source, creative Maid, protective Mother, and wise Crone all in one. But also three, as she is often three Brigids, Brigid of the Forge (fire and transformation), Brigid of the Waters (healing), and Brigid of the Bards (inspiration). She is a fertility deity in its purest sense — she ensures the creation, sustenance and continuity of all life.
When the new religion came north, neither deity would shift out the way. Lugh became a hero and many of his myths were transferred to his putative son, another MacGyver, Fionn mac Cumhaill (pronounced Finn McCool, appropriately enough). This hero gallivanted about the British Islands (note that name, folks…) with the original band of merry men, the Fianna or Fenians (again, note the name), apparently just in search of interesting stuff. There wasn’t a whole lot of violent adversity in the stories, though they were called warriors. There was a great deal of feasting and escaping the faeries — who were mostly women.
Brigid was so fixed in the Celtic world view as an exalted being (which is the closest translation of her name and may actually be a title, like God) that she could not be turned into just any human. The Church’s solution was to name her a saint and give that saint an origin story, complete with druids and magical thresholds, that explained her oddness within that faith — but she was also given very high status in the saintly order. Though she was a northern woman, she was magically translated to the stable on Christmas Eve and served as midwife to the birth of the Christ-child. And though the supposed Abbess who newly embodied this deity, St Brigid of Kildare, lived hundreds of years after the conversion of the islands, she is portrayed as above or preceding the other native saints in the British Islands, inspiring them in their evangelical and contemplative work, being second only to Patrick and that only in Ireland.
To the Celts, the Church story was merely grafted on to her myths and they carried on following her as they always had. And tomorrow, Imbolg (meaning “in the belly”), is her main feast day, though there really isn’t a time where Brigid isn’t central to the story of the year. Being a culture of moon time-keeping, the festival begins at sunset tonight, and in traditional Celtic cultures, this is when most of the ritual for Imbolg takes place. St Brigid is welcomed into the home with rush crosses and formal family ceremony and doors thrown wide. A welcome mat of woven rushes is spread by the door. Oats and cream for the saint and hay for her magical white cow (who may be the deity’s mother, Boann or Boyne, whose name means “white cow”…) are left by the doorstep. A bed is prepared by the hearth, and the fires are banked — smoored — with extra care, spreading just a wee layer of ash smooth to see what fortunes might be foretold in the morning. A footprint indicates a visit from the saint, blessing the hearth and home.
On this night, young people went around with a rustic doll dressed in white, begging food or pennies. This doll was called a Brídeóg or Biddy (another name to note…). This doll was sometimes the same decorated last sheaf of grain paraded about at the close of the harvest season, the Corn Dolly; but more often, the Biddy was made of rushes or straw, late winter animal fodder not human grain. This is significant because Imbolg is the start of the lambing season, a festival of the pastoralists, not necessarily the horticulturists. In any case, the Biddy Boys and sometimes girls, all wearing white dresses and sometimes straw masks (for the boys), carried the Biddy from door to door asking for handouts in exchange for the blessing of the goddess/saint. In Scotland, the Biddy was decorated with sparkles and lace and laid in a cradle with a willow withe or twig of ash or birch. This cradle was left either outside the door or by the hearth. Any disturbance in the hearth ash or the rushes spread by the door was interpreted as a sign that the saint had visited with her blessing. In some places, St Brigid’s mantle, a strip of white cloth, was laid either on the Biddy or, in the absence of the doll, on the windowsill overnight to also receive her blessing. This cloth could be hung in the kitchen, granary, or stable as year-round protection. Other places, the mantle was more of a sash or belt which was tied into a large hoop the next morning. People would step through the hoop three times to be blessed. Some sashes were large enough to accommodate the livestock, and the hoop was passed over their bodies to invoke protection.
St Brigid’s Day itself may be marked with a quiet meal centered on the new milk that is flowing from the flocks. There are also various candle customs, both lighting them and putting them out. There might be candles set to burn in the western window or at the church if the winter has recently claimed a loved one, but that custom is not particularly associated with St Brigid’s Day. A stronger tie to the day is the traditional presentation of a large candle to the lord of the manor, symbolically proclaiming the end of the winter darkness. From this day forward into the year, candles no longer need to be burned to do morning work, and that considerable expense is relieved.
I would like to point out that if candles were no longer needed for morning work in the far northern places where this custom originated — Ireland and Scotland and, to a much lesser extant, western Britain — then work didn’t begin until much later than it does for us. Peasant laborers — the house servants, shepherds, and farmhands — did not work their winter bodies as hard as we do and rested quite a bit more. The sun does not rise in Dublin, one of the more southerly places you might find this tradition, until after 8:15am. That’s over an hour after the sun rises in my town and well after my work shift begins in the morning.
Work done without candles in the northern latitudes also indicates that evening quitting time was substantially earlier than what we consider the end of the work day. In Dublin, sunset is at 5:15pm and even the dim light of twilight is gone by 6pm. Working without the expense of candles — and make no mistake, candles and lamps of all kinds were very expensive before petroleum, still are expensive, but that expense is wrapped into the increased cost of living — means the body spends considerably less than the nine plus hours I have to spend at work each day.
Furthermore, morning and evening were not dedicated to all the work that a body must do for itself. Work without the expense of artificial light means you are done working, all working, when you can no longer see — which is 6pm in Dublin at this time of year. What time you spend awake after that is for doing small tasks near the light of the hearth fire. You can’t even wash the dishes in the dark (nor much by candlelight, for that matter). So all the cleanup from meals had to be completed before nightfall.
I hope this shows that even the lives of those who were considered drudges in pre-industrial cultures were considerably less burdened by labor than our lives are. It wasn’t until labor was done for wages in a regulated factory setting — to the light of oil and gas and eventually electric lamps — that we began to spend so much of our lives laboring for others, at the expense of rest — and at the expense of all that artificial light!
Imagine how much of our wasteful economy could just be wiped clean if we stopped using artificial light to extend the workday. We would have all the rest we need in the dark winter hours. There would be no production of excess whatever in those ridiculously long workdays that we keep. And there would be much less labor and resource use given over to trying to light the world in the hours that we should be resting, all the while keeping the rest of the diurnal world awake and sowing much confusion among night beings with our ever-glaring lamps.
Imagine being able to sit down and rest by 6pm every evening in the dark months!
Now, this might be balanced with extra hours of labor in the brighter growing season. But then there is also extra food and all that sunlight to give us the energy to work longer. And it must be said, except for planting and harvest weeks, there isn’t enough labor needed from bodies to keep them working for 14 hours when bodies are just working to produce what they need. So mornings are for tasks, and all that expansive evening light can be spent with friends and family. Which is what people did.
Notice all this ritual that comes down to us, much of it still practiced into the late 19th and early 20th century when the folklorists were writing down the traditions. People actually had time to dedicate to these gatherings. From traveling to be together to preparing special feasts to cleaning up afterwards and going home. I have a hard time even finding the time to stand still and give thanks.
I find myself resenting artificial light and all these other prophylactic methods of extending the work day into my living time. Even this computer, maybe especially this computer, with its bright screen that allows me to tap out ideas at 2am, is extremely bad for my body. I long for days without all these candles, days that end quietly in the darkness surrounding the lambent hearth fire… where Brigid will soon be visiting.
©Elizabeth Anker 2025
By My Solitary Hearth 