It is said—but the tradition is rather uncertain—that Brigid had the consoling privilege of weaving with her own hands the winding sheet in which the body of St. Patrick was laid. At the time of his death, if, as is generally believed, he died in A.D. 493, Brigid must have been a nun for several years, and have already founded her own great convent at Kildare. She lived, however, until A.D. 523, or more probably until A.D. 525, and then dying in her own holy city, was buried at the right of the High Altar—Bishop Conlaeth, having been already laid on the left hand of the same altar, and both within the sanctuary.
Brigid is called by Ængus the chaste head of the nuns of Erin; and St. Cuimin of Connor describes her “as Brigid of the blessings, fond beyond all women of mortification, of vigils, of early rising to pray, and of hospitality to saintly men.” Her very name was prophetic, for it signifies either a ‘fiery dart’ or the ‘strength’ of her virtue—brigi being the Celtic for strength or might.
Kildare, as might be expected, became, during the life and after the death of Brigid, a great city and a great school—Cogitosus, with pardonable exaggeration, describes it as the head city of all the bishops, and calls Conlaeth and his successors Arch-bishops of the Bishops of Ireland, and Brigid (and her successors) the Abbess, whom all the Abbesses of Ireland hold in veneration. He says that no one could count the crowds of people coming to Kildare from all the provinces of Erin; that some come for the feasting or food—ad epulas—that the sick come to be healed; the rich come with gifts for the shrine of St. Brigid, especially on the 1st of February; and that sight-seers come to enjoy the wonderful spectacle.
He also gives a most interesting description of the great Church of Kildare in his own time. It was very lofty and very large, richly adorned with pictures, hangings, and ornamental door-ways. A partition ran across the breadth of the church near the chancel, or sanctuary; at one of its extremities there was a door which admitted the bishop and his clergy to the sanctuary and to the altar; at the other extremity, on the opposite side, there was a similar door by which Brigid and her virgins and widows used to enter to enjoy the banquet of the Body and Blood of Christ. Then a central partition ran down the nave, dividing the men from the women—the men being on the right and the women on the left, each division having its own lateral entrance. These partitions did not rise to the roof of the church, but only so high as to serve their purpose. The partition at the sanctuary, or chancel, was formed of boards of wood, decorated with pictures and covered with linen hangings, which might, it seems, be drawn aside at the consecration to give the people in the nave a better view of the Holy Mysteries. Such was the great Church of Kildare in the seventh and eighth centuries, before the advent of the Danes to Ireland.
In connection with St. Brigid and the School of Kildare, we may here make brief reference to the celebrated scholars who have compiled her biography.
The first of the six Lives printed by the learned Father John Colgan is the metrical Hymn of the Saint commonly attributed to St. Brogan Cloen of Rostuire in the Diocese of Ossory. The original Hymn is written in the Irish language; Colgan also gives a Latin translation. But the Irish original has been printed by Dr. Whitley Stokes, and also in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record for February, 1868. This Irish original has been preserved in the Liber Hymnorum, and also in a MS. in Trinity College of very recent date. The following Irish preface is prefixed to the Hymn in the MS. of St. Isidore’s, now in Merchants’ Quay, Dublin.
The place where this hymn was composed was Sliabh Bladhma (Slieve Bloom), or Cluain Mor Moedhog. The author was Brogan Cloen. The time (to which it refers) was when Lughaidh, son of Laeghaire, was King of Ireland, and Ailill, son of Dunlang, King of Leinster. The cause of writing it, viz., “Ultan of Ardbraccan, the tutor of Brogan, requested him to narrate the miracles of Brigid in suitable poetical language, for Ultan had collected all the miracles of Brigid for him.”
We gather from this interesting statement that St. Ultan of Ardbraccan, who was an uncle on the mother’s side of St. Brigid, collected the materials for this poem. It is true St. Ultan did not die until the year A.D. 656 or 657, but if he were then, as is stated in the Martyrology of Donegal, 189 years of age, he might well have been the uncle and contemporary of the Virgin Saint. He was a very celebrated man, and was especially remarkable for his love of poor orphans, for he often had no less than 200 of them together, whom he used to feed with his own hands. He was also very mortified in his life, sleeping on the bare board in his narrow stone cell, and bathing his body in cold water in the sharpest blasts of the wintry wind. “It was he,” says the same authority, “that collected the miracles of Brigid in one book, and gave them to his disciple Brogan Cloen to render them in verse.”
St. Brogan Cloen himself lived, it seems, for some time in the monastery near Slieve Bloom, founded by St. Molua, and afterwards in that of Clonmore, in the barony of Bantry, county Wexford, which was founded by St. Aidan about the year A.D. 620. The scholiast doubts whether he composed this hymn while at Slieve Bloom or Clonmore; so we may fairly suppose that it was composed sometime between A.D. 620 and 657, when St. Ultan died. The statement of the scholiast as to the time of the hymn seems to refer not to the time of its composition, but to the time of the events which it narrates; and which, he says, took place during the reign of Lughaidh, King of Tara, and Ailill, King of Leinster. The former reigned 25 years and died in A.D. 503; the latter died in A.D. 523, so that their joint reigns would exactly mark the period during which St. Brigid flourished in Kildare. The hymn consists of 212 lines or 53 stanzas of four lines each. It describes at great length the virtues and miracles of St. Brigid, but is unhappily too meagre in historical facts. The writer assumes that because her history was well known in his own time, it would continue to be equally well known to future generations. It is, however, a most interesting monument of our early Irish Church, and competent judges pronounce it to be an admirable specimen of early Celtic versification.
There is also in the Book of Hymns published by Dr. Todd, what seems to be a fragment of an ancient Latin hymn in praise of St. Brigid. The preface to this Hymn attributes it either to St. Ninnidh of the Clean Hand, Brigid’s chaplain, or to St. Fiacc of Sleibte, or to St. Ultan of Ardbraccan. This last conjecture, however, seems to arise from the statement that Ultan collected the miracles of St. Brigid into one book. It was an abecedarian hymn originally, and is undoubtedly a very ancient composition. At present it consists of four stanzas of four lines each, having a rhyme or assonance in the middle and at the end of each line, which properly should consist of sixteen syllables. The first line at present is:—