Marys of illustrious renown;
I should like the people
Of heaven there from all parts.
I should like that I should be
A rent-payer to the Lord:
That should I suffer distress,
He would bestow upon me a good blessing.
This production is peculiarly Celtic; and is remarkable in its freedom from the growth of superstition which characterised the Latin Church of the time. But it must not be supposed that the old Gaelic Church was free from an external growth of a superstition of its own. Indeed it set up rather a hagiology of its own [in opposition] to that of Rome, so keen, like all the true Scots that its members were, was its love of spiritual independence. Patrick, Columba, and Columbanus, became its Papae, or Papes, and Brigit herself its Virgin,—celebrated as the “Mary of the Gael.”
Brigit was a very great and saintly personage to several of the authors of the Gaelic Hymns in the Liber Hymnorum. Ultán of Ard Breccain, who is said to have died in A.D. 656, composed a special “Hymn in praise of Brigit,” whose extravagant sentiments and poetic power are but inadequately manifest in the following translation:—
Brigit, excellent woman,