The historical and fabulous lives of Brigit suggest a few interesting questions which can only be hinted at in these remarks:—
1. Her conversion by the British Patrick to Christianity.
2. The probability that she belonged to a good British family who, in the days of the Roman occupation, crossed to the nearest Irish districts: (She is described as “of Kildare,” a county close to the eastern shore).
3. And that she was a woman of exceptional character or culture, which was possible in that century, under the perpetuated influences of the Roman occupation.
That she and her people, like Patrick himself, were recent immigrants to Ireland from Roman and Christian Britain, there cannot be any serious doubt.
These may be the possible or probable facts ascertainable relating to the life of the Mary of the Gael. But around them has been woven a very interesting body of Gaelic literature which was loved and cherished and cultivated for upwards of a thousand years.
We have two ancient lives of Brigit, written on vellum; and these are regarded as the oldest; and are attributed to St. Ultán, whose death took place in the year 656. The Liber Hymnorum, a production of the eleventh century is our authority for the information that the “Life and Acts of St. Brigid of Kildare, were collected and written by St. Ultán,” who was her successor in her church, as Adamnan was that of Columba in Iona.
The two lives referred to are found in the Lebar Breac and in the Book of Lismore. A life written within the last two hundred years on paper is also to be found in the Royal Irish Academy. Her life is generally associated with the lives of Patrick and Columba, as they also very appropriately are in “The Three Middle-Irish Homilies,” edited by Dr Whitely Stokes, (Calcutta; 1877). In one of the so-called prophetic poems, a Norse Chief Mandar, with a fleet, is represented as exhuming the body of Columba which was afterwards buried “in Downpatrick, in the same tomb with St. Patrick and St. Brigid.”
In the celebrated Domhnach Airgid, one of the most ancient relics of the old Gaelic civilization, we are presented with the figure of Brigid.
Dr Petrie in his account of the relic says:—“The smaller figures in relief are, in the first compartment, the Irish saints Columba, Brigid, and Patrick.” Perhaps the most interesting relic associated with Brigit is “a very ancient crozier, said to have belonged to St. Finnbarr (of Tormonbarry, in Connacht),—and believed to have been made by Conlaedh, the artificer of St. Brigid of Kildare, early in the sixth century,” which is “now in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy.”.—See O’Curry’s M.S. Materials.