Happy Brigid's Day

Notes on the festival and a mothers scribbles

Tonight, by the ancient Celtic calendar, is Imbolc Eve and we prepare for the return of spring. The Cailleach, that fierce goddess of winter transforms into the seemingly more gentle Brigid. Tomorrow marks Brigid’s Saints Day, and the first one as a National Holiday here in Ireland.

The festival of Imbolc, meaning ‘in the belly’ is traditional feast day of the Goddess Bridget/Brigid and the first day of Spring. As often happened with Celtic festivals, when the church couldn’t stamp out the worship of a deity, they incorporated them into their own pantheon of Saints and so it’s perhaps now more widely known as St. Brigid’s Day or Candlemas. 
By tomorrow, February 1st, when we mark this feast day, we will be halfway to the spring equinox, the light is returning, and we celebrate with candles and fires. Bridget was the goddess of mothers, children whose parents are not married, the hearth fire, crafts people, poets (this originally included seers) and healers/healing wells.

All sacred wells in Ireland once belonged to Bridget, you’ll find them more often than not at churches now, built on top of these older sacred sites and their healing wells renamed, usually after male Christian Saints. 

On Imbolc Eve we weave the traditional Brigid’s Crosses from the traditional green rushes (you can read more on those in my last post) and perhaps leave out a Brat Bride. The crosses are to bless the house and call in the Goddess/Saint and the Brat is a piece of cloth left out overnight to be blessed with her healing powers.

Tonight, is the perfect time to get clear on all you want to tend, to grow into spring, projects, love, friendships, health, anything you’ve been nursing in your heart and mind all winter. Get clear on what you want to carry forward and let what doesn’t serve you fall away. We’ll grow things slowly as we head towards the bright light of Summer.

Today we are in Donegal, my boy and I, our home away from home. A storm is raging around the house as I write but later I will gather rushes and cook us a feast full of cheeses and cream. Tonight, after my son sleeps, I’ll weave crosses by the fire and tomorrow we’ll take some to the two ancient sacred wells nearby. This is exactly how we spent this festival last year, but for years I was away for this sacred day. Doing my traveling in Winter I was often very far from Irish soil at this time of year; Marrakesh in particular stands out, lighting candles in a Riad so far from home…

And then I had my son and spent Brigid’s day at home.

He was almost two months old. He was attached to me near constantly. Our days were a milky haze. And so I was beside the hearth, a seer, a poet, an ‘unwed mother’, nursing my son on this sacred day and it was the first time I felt at peace in a very long time. I wove rushes, I tended a fire as I tended my child, I lit candles, I let the fire tell me its tales, I scribbled in the in-between. I fully inhabited this day for the first time and for the first time in the fog of motherhood I felt the power of it. Brigid has been with me since. Perhaps she always was.

There is much I could say about Ireland having such a prominent saint dedicated to children whose parents were ‘unmarried’ given what the state and church did to those children and their mothers. It makes a sacred rage boil in me. My child and I have already faced the stigma that lingers still. I was told to give him up for adoption when it became clear his father wouldn’t be involved. I was lectured by a woman my age about doing what she deemed ‘best’ for my child; apparently this included making a relationship work with a man who had threatened to use violence to end my pregnancy…

I’m struggling to write a short story dealing with the forced adoption so widely practiced on this island because I know two generations ago it could have been my story, and that of my son.

I recall both my grandmothers having two entirely different approaches to being born to ‘unwed’ parents. One lived with the shame she perceived in it; the shame drummed into her by the church. The other held her head high, she stuck her pretty little nose in the air and wore the term ‘bastard’ proudly until the day she died.

I wonder what Brigid the Goddess or indeed the Saint would say, I’d guess her fury would burn hotter than mine.

And so today, as we prepare to celebrate, I want to bring you some of my scribbles from early motherhood; a poem written in the thick of the fog.

With You

With you my days are a warm, milky haze
The hands on the clock mean nothing
we’re between the cracks
straddling worlds
awake in the wee hours
darkness a constant cloak
soft half-light, constantly burning
just enough to dream by.
The tidal ebb and flow of sleep
lulling us deeper 
still
inward, downward.
You
My second heart
beat on your own now
but you stay tethered
to my breast.
My body
knits
itself back together
battered and bloodied
but intact
no longer a home
now nourishment
comfort
heat.
My mind
whirls
with the awe and ache 
of it all
the lonely never-aloneness
the hours washing by
milk-stained
and lowly-lit
a dream-time
in-between time
Wake us up when it’s spring.


However, if ever, you are celebrating may Brigid bless you all year, and may the seeds you are tending thrive as we grow towards the light. 
Happy Brigid’s day. Xx