She always wore dazzling white. Robes flying from the wings of her ramshackle chariot, Brigid of Kildare swept across the country urging peace, freedom - and good humour. Her generosity was legendary, her political power unparalleled, and when she stood at the top of Kildare's round tower and looked across the seven ancient kingdoms, she knew the whole of Ireland was within her reach. This Brigid is the goddess who became a saint, the slave who became a kind of queen, an abbess almost as renowned for her homebrew as she was for her alms. So powerful was her image that she effortlessly replaced the Celtic festival of Imbolc on February 1st, that ancient hooley designed to mark the first day of spring.
La le feile Bride translated the raw energy of pagan times into a progressively more sanitised idea of female piety and obedience. In fact, the evidence about Brigid points to abundant power, never to submission.
Portents surrounded her birth - flames of fire, three angels facing down three awful spectres. Like many other themes in her lore, the images pick up fairytales told worldwide: her magic cloak, her love of song, the brilliance of her epigrams. Even if her story draws as much on the classical Juno as on those pulsing images of women that sound right though Celtic iconography, as Mary Condren and Margaret MacCurtain point out, there probably was a historical Brigid.
But like all great icons, her strength lies in her ability to translate over time and history. Custom claims her birthplace as Faughart near Dundalk in or about 453, daughter to Brocessa the slave who had become pregnant by her master, the chieftain Dubhtach. Dubhtach's wife hated Brocessa, so mother and daughter were sent miles away to Connacht, where they laboured for another master, until Brigid was reclaimed by her original owner, as was his due. Brigid was already known as a great dairywoman, so she could be of use. Anyway, she had no say in her future: although wives had rights under Brehon law - they could own land, sue for ill-treatment, and divorce their husbands - bondswomen had none. So she left her mother, drudged for her father and his wife, and could have spent her life doing precisely that, except for her extraordinary spirit. But that mix of tact and political nous which marked her whole career eventually won her freedom, and her mother's too.
After various adventures, she started a community of women at Kildare; her own cell of wattle, mud and stone sheltered by a giant oak which survived until at least the 10th century. A monastery was founded too, and both became centres for craft and illuminated manuscripts, as well as her famed ale, which could keep the whole of Kildare refreshed for the 10 days from Holy Thursday to Low Sunday. Always a practical woman. From the top of the tower, Brigid could survey the seven ancient kingdoms, or gaze across the Curragh pastures, from which Merlin had magicked away the standing stones which now grace Stonehenge. By the time of her death, she was leader of some 13,000 sisters all over the country, and spiritual adviser to men from Brendan the Navigator to Kevin of Glendalough.
Brendan believed that her name alone was enough to repel the huge sea-monsters which threatened his journeys; Colmcille wanted to know her organisational secrets so he could adopt them to his monastery on Iona. A young lad called Ninnidh wrapped his right hand in an iron glove so as to keep it pure and uncontaminated for the day when he would be called to anoint her. When the day eventually came - February 1st, 524, conveniently - he barely got back from Rome in time. EVERYTHING about Brigid was abundant. Unlike other saints, she was rudely healthy. She leaned on a wooden altar, and the dead wood started to sprout. When the Five Bishops of Cabinteely came to visit, her panicking sisters saw that the feast intended for them, which she had just dispensed to the poor, had replaced itself instantly. Butter churned from her hands could spread for hundreds, dry cows miraculously gave milk. Everyone knew that you always got a good feed at Brigid's, and to a people for whom famine and poverty were frequent affairs, that was among the best recommendations of all.
She did other kinds of miracles, apart from her everyday healing of lepers and those riddled with the yellow plague fought by her kinsman Saint Ultan. A problematic foetus mysteriously disappeared from its mother's unwelcoming womb; a husband complaining of his wife's frigidity found he could hardly keep up with her after Brigid intervened.
She appropriated wattles intended for a chieftain's house by paralysing his horses, until he good-humouredly agreed to donate them to her. Her bishop began to lock up his vestments, knowing that in the absence of other clothing, she'd give them to the poor and cold without a second thought. For herself, she always dried her wet cloak on a sunbeam. Most of all, Brigid was a symbol of reconciliation. A leper received her father's sword, Brigid believing that melting it to pay for food and shelter made far better sense than did killing. When Conall and Cairbre, sons of the High King, tried to fight each other over territory, Brigid caused a veil of tears to mist their eyes so they couldn't recognise each other.
Traces of Brigid persist in placenames throughout the country, inspired perhaps by her constant travels as she founded convents in which Christian women converts could be protected from their family's ire, and bondswomen from the sexual demands of their masters. Kilbride, Tubberbride, Kilbreedy - here as in wells and waterfalls, customs and folktales, her influence lives.
Her woven cross, used by RTE until its logo makeover, stands as an age-old symbol of sunshine and of peace - children still collect the reeds to make them, and families still hang them inside doorways as a symbol of bounty and protection. Now, the cross is a symbol of the eco-warriors too. But Brigid's status as a symbol of female spirituality remains her most challenging legacy. She had power of appointment over bishops and clerics; some legends say that she was consecrated a bishop herself. The Celtic church to which she belonged managed itself more-or-less distinct from Rome until the Council of Whitby, summoned by Abbess Hilda in 664, and although religious texts go out of their way to excuse her differences with Rome by talking about unfortunate delays in getting a copy of the rules, theologians like Condren argue persuasively that Brigid stands for a female spirituality still ignored by most Christian churches. How was her image tamed? Although Brigid survived in prayers as well as folklore, her figure began to take on that passive, modest, gentility demanded of religious women. Massive clericalisation in the 19th century, plus the trauma of famine which encouraged Marian apparitions such as that at Knock in 1879, tidied up the rampant, bountiful power of Brigid.
She nearly became yet another female packhorse, there to carry the woes of the world, to endure rather than to challenge. But no one could corset Brigid. Like all great myths she stays the pace, still singing through legends and stories, still arguing the toss for open-handed, generous humanity.