goddess of the crops as well as of fire.[788] If that was so, it is another reason for comparing her to Vesta, whose priestesses performed ceremonies to fertilise both the earth and the cattle.[789] Further, there are some grounds for connecting Brigit, like Vesta, with the oak; for at Kildare her Christian namesake, St. Brigit, otherwise known as St. Bride or St. Bridget, built her church under an oak-tree, which existed till the tenth century, and gave its name to the spot, for Kildare is _Cilldara_, “the church of the oak-tree.”[790] The “church of the oak” may well have displaced a temple or sanctuary of the oak, where in Druidical days the holy fire was fed, like the Vestal fire at Rome, with the wood of the sacred tree. [Sidenote: Early Irish monasteries built in oak groves.] We may suspect that a conversion of this sort was often effected in Ireland by the early Christian missionaries. The monasteries of Derry and Durrow, founded by St. Columba, were both named after the oak groves amidst which they were built; and at Derry the saint spared the beautiful trees and strictly enjoined his successors to do the same. In his old age, when he lived an exile on the shores of the bleak storm-swept isle of Iona, his heart yearned to the home of his youth among the oak groves of Ireland, and he gave expression to the yearning in passionate verse:— “_That spot is the dearest on Erin’s ground, For the treasures that peace and purity lend, For the hosts of bright angels that circle it round, Protecting its borders from end to end._ “_The dearest of any on Erin’s ground, For its peace and its beauty I gave it my love; Each leaf of the oaks around Derry is found To be crowded with angels from heaven above._ “_My Derry! my Derry! my little oak grove, My dwelling, my home, and my own little cell, May God the Eternal in Heaven above Send death to thy foes, and defend thee well._”[791] A feeling of the same sort came over a very different exile in a very different scene, when growing old amid the turmoil, the gaieties, the distractions of Paris, he remembered the German oak woods of his youth. “_Ich hatte einst ein schönes Vaterland. Der Eichenbaum Wuchs dort so hoch, die Veilchen nickten sanft. Es war ein Traum._”