From Armagh we not unnaturally turn to Kildare. If St. Patrick is the father, St. Brigid is the mother of all the saints of Erin, both monks and nuns. She may be regarded not only as the foundress of the monasteries and School of Kildare, but also, in one sense at least, of the diocese of Kildare itself. She has always been deemed one of the three great patron saints of Ireland. Her festival was honoured next after that of St. Patrick himself. The name has always been a favourite one with the daughters of Ireland. She was a woman not only of great virtues but of great talents; and exercised a powerful influence on the Church in her own day. She was the hope of the poor, the counsellor of bishops, the guide of kings; and to some extent that influence is felt even at the present hour. Her history, too, is exceedingly interesting, and throws much light on the manners and morals of those early days. We can, however, only give the reader a brief sketch of the leading incidents in her very remarkable career.
Although Brigid was the greatest, she certainly was not the first of the daughters of Erin who dedicated their virginity and their lives to the service of Jesus Christ, and received the veil from St. Patrick himself.
The sisters twain who died after their baptism at Clebach’s Well, on the slopes of Rath Cruachan—Fedelm the ruddy, and Ethne of the golden hair—were probably the first daughters of Erin[128] who put on the veil for Christ.
“Patrick put a white veil upon their heads,” as we are told in the Tripartite, and having received Communion—Christ’s Body and His Blood—they fell asleep in death, and Patrick laid them side by side under one mantle in the same bed. And their friends bewailed them greatly; but God’s angels rejoiced, for they were the first fruits that the Spouse took to himself from all the land of Erin.
About the same time Mathona, the sister of the young and gentle Benignus, received the veil from Patrick in the first bloom of her youth and beauty. It seems she accompanied her brother, who attended the Apostle all the way from the banks of the Boyne; and that she, too, had the privilege of ministering to Patrick and his companions. She had heard, if she had not seen, how, when Patrick abode at her father’s house near Inver Boinde, the earth opened wide its jaws and swallowed up the wizard or Druid, who had mocked at Mary’s virginity;[129] and she resolved to become a virgin like unto Mary. So when Patrick had crossed the Shannon, and was come to Elphin in Roscommon, we are told that he went thence to Dumacha of the Hy Ailella, and founded there at Senchell, near Elphin, a church in which he placed Maichet, and Cetchen, and Rodan, the arch-priest, and Mathona, Benen’s sister, who took the veil from Patrick and from Rodan, and became a religious. She afterwards crossed the mountain to the north-east and founded a church and convent of her own at Tawnagh, near Lough Arrow, in the county Sligo. This is the second express reference to the profession of a nun in Ireland. Bishop Cairell was also placed by St. Patrick in Tawnagh to watch over that infant establishment.
It is not unlikely that the ‘sisters twain of Fochlut’s wood,’ whose infant voices had summoned Patrick over the sea, calling him to come and walk once more amongst them, were also clothed with the religious veil by the Saint, when he went to Tyrawley. He certainly baptized them there, and we are told that they are the patronesses of the church called “Cell Forgland,” which was situated a little to the north of Killala over the present road to Palmerston.
“On a cliff
Where Fochlut’s Wood blackened the northern sea,
Their convent rose. Therein these sisters twain,
Whose cry had summoned Patrick o’er the deep,
Abode, no longer weepers. Pallid still
In radiance now their faces shone; and sweet
Their psalms amid the clangour of rough brine.”[130]
We are told in the same Tripartite that once when Patrick was at Armagh, nine daughters of the King of the Lombards came over the sea, and a daughter of the King of Britain came also on a pilgrimage to Patrick, and they tarried at the place near Armagh, called Coll-nan-Ingen—the Hazel of the Daughters. Some of the virgins died and were buried there, but the others went to Drum-Fendeda, and there abode. The virgin Cruimtheris, however, went and set up at Cengoba, and Benen used to carry food to her until Patrick planted an apple tree for the holy virgin; and then she lived on the fruit of that tree and on the milk of a doe, that grazed in her little orchard.
There is no doubt therefore that Patrick received the vows of many holy virgins in Erin before St. Brigid was professed. As Benen himself was the earliest and apparently the best beloved of Patrick’s disciples, so his sister was amongst the first of the daughters of Erin that he clothed with the veil of virginity, and there is every reason to believe that her holy relics sleep in the old church of Tawnagh, in Tirerrill, co. Sligo.
It is not improbable, too, that Patrick received the vows of St. Fanchea, the sister of the celebrated St. Enda of Aran, whose convent was established at Rossory, on the shore of Lough Erne. Hereafter we shall see how Enda owed his own conversion to his sister, St. Fanchea, and as this event must have taken place about the year A.D. 480, she herself may have seen St. Patrick, if she did not receive the veil from his hands.