We celebrated St. Brigid’s Day a little differently than last year.

Last year, I gathered rushes and sought the expertise of my aunt to learn how to make the St. Brigid’s cross, which I then passed on to my partner and we made loads together one night. We kept two for ourselves and then gave the rest away. On St. Brigid’s Eve, we hung cloth on a hazel tree that I had just planted over Trinity Well and then collected it the next morning after the cloth had absorbed the healing and protective energy of St. Brigid.

This year, St. Brigid’s Day came upon us all of a sudden. I almost forgot about it, partly due to the recent death of my partner’s mother, who also shared the saint’s name, but also because of the weather we’ve been having and trying to keep water out of my house.

My partner sees Brigid as the saint, whereas I see her as the Goddess, and it doesn’t really matter which way you see her, either way is the right way. To me, celebrating Brigid is about celebrating Imbolc, the arrival of spring. In Celtic times there would never have been a specific date for celebrating this. Rather, it was marked around this time of year, when there was a good sense that spring was arriving and you could feel the heat of the sun whenever it showed itself.

However, I’m not getting that feeling at the moment. I think the Cailleach still has control.

The Cailleach is the divine hag of winter, the goddess of storms and a land-shaper. She took over control of the ecosystem at Samhain (around the time of Halloween). She brings darkness and decay, but importantly she gives nature time to rest and re-energise. It’s around the time of Imbolc that the Cailleach transfers her power to Brigid, and it is Brigid who wakes up the land in spring.

I think this year though, the Cailleach is hanging on to winter for a little longer. I think you might agree with me when you go outside, the ground is soggy underfoot, there’s a cold east wind blowing in off the Irish Sea and mixing with warmer air coming up from the south, and it’s causing a lot of rain to fall on us for weeks now and, judging by the weather forecast tonight, for another week yet. Apart from a few snowdrops popping up, I think it’s fair to say winter is most certainly still here.

Do I actually believe in the Goddess Brigid and the myths and legends that go with her? In short… no. But… yes, I do believe there was a woman called Brigid, and I believe she did great things. She was the bridge between Pagan Ireland and Christianity. The stories that go with her may be just stories, but they are very important.

From an ecopsychology point of view, those stories help us to remember that we are all a part of nature. They remind us of the importance of biodiversity and the ecosystem, and when these ecosystems are disrupted by human activity, they not only affect the health of the environment but also our own physical and mental health. When the environment is sick, so are we.

There are many stories of Brigid, some are Pagan, some are Christian. The truth is that we will never really know the full story. What is common between them all is that she was kind, generous, and accepted everyone whether they were Pagan or Christian. But she was also short-tempered, and if you crossed her you’d know about it. It’s her deep connection to nature that draws me to her.

One story says that she now resides in the Otherworld, still giving life to this world, and one of the ways she does this is through her bees. Eighty percent of Irish bee species are solitary bees that go around pollinating plants for the rest of us to live from. The solitary bees live underground, and each night they go into their burrows, which are actually little portals to the Otherworld, where they return to their Queen, Brigid. The moral of this story is not to anger Brigid by messing with her bees or destroying their habitat, she’s only trying to give us all life.

Another story says that Brigid was not just one woman, she represented the power all women have. That was one of the things the Pagans got right and the Christians got wrong. The Pagans worshipped women, and rightly so, they are the only ones with the power to give life.

So how did we celebrate St. Brigid’s Day this year?

Well, we took a spin up to Faughart, which is said to be the birthplace of Brigid. We took a walk around the old medieval graveyard where St. Brigid’s Holy Well is and educated ourselves about other events that happened there, such as the Battle of Faughart in 1318, where King Edward was killed in battle and his remains still rest there.

In the car park, I stood for as long as the gale-force wind would allow me and took in the view of the Cooley Peninsula to my east, Dundalk Bay to my south-east, and the fertile lands of Mid-Louth to the south. I thought: this is the perfect place for the Cailleach to meet Brigid and pass her power over. Brigid will bring the spring while the Cailleach will return to stone.

We bought two St. Brigid’s crosses from some children and, when we returned home, I lit the stove. We placed last year’s crosses in the fire and hung up the new ones, one in the kitchen and the other in our daughter’s bedroom.

As I write this now, the rain is back. Not as heavy as before, but it’s there. The ground is fully saturated and the water has nowhere to go. I’m thinking about how people back in the time Brigid was alive, some 1,500 years ago, would have experienced this. Well, they weren’t speaking English anyway, they would have spoken Old Gaelic, a language rooted in nature and unfortunately much of it now lost.

However, I was flicking through Manchán Magan’s book Ninety-Nine Words for Rain and found some interesting words to describe our current weather in the old language:

Ag cur dobhar =                      Raining torrents, or pouring down floods

Bascadh dheannachtach =     Cold, drenching rain.

Síorbháisteach =                     Persistent rain.

Ag díle báistí =                       Pouring, flooding with rain.

Spútrach =                              Rain-soaked ground

Boglach =                                Rainy weather; saturated ground.

Gailfean =                               Heavy rain, accompanied by strong wind.

I wonder how much more we could all be connected to nature if we still had our old language!

Ultan Cavanagh