The literature of the Highlanders : $b a history of Gaelic literature from the earliest times to the present dayMacNeill, Nigel
History
The literature of the Highlanders : $b a history of Gaelic literature from the earliest times to the present day
MacNeill, Nigel
Scottish Gaelic literature -- History and criticism
The historical and fabulous lives of Brigit suggest a few interesting
questions which can only be hinted at in these remarks:—
1. Her conversion by the British Patrick to Christianity.
2. The probability that she belonged to a good British family who,
in the days of the Roman occupation, crossed to the nearest Irish
districts: (She is described as “of Kildare,” a county close to the
eastern shore).
3. And that she was a woman of exceptional character or culture,
which was possible in that century, under the perpetuated influences
of the Roman occupation.
That she and her people, like Patrick himself, were recent immigrants
to Ireland from Roman and Christian Britain, there cannot be any
serious doubt.
These may be the possible or probable facts ascertainable relating
to the life of the Mary of the Gael. But around them has been woven
a very interesting body of Gaelic literature which was loved and
cherished and cultivated for upwards of a thousand years.
We have two ancient lives of Brigit, written on vellum; and these are
regarded as the oldest; and are attributed to St. Ultán, whose death
took place in the year 656. The _Liber Hymnorum_, a production of the
eleventh century is our authority for the information that the “Life
and Acts of St. Brigid of Kildare, were collected and written by St.
Ultán,” who was her successor in her church, as Adamnan was that of
Columba in Iona.
The two lives referred to are found in the _Lebar Breac_ and in the
Book of Lismore. A life written within the last two hundred years
on paper is also to be found in the Royal Irish Academy. Her life
is generally associated with the lives of Patrick and Columba,
as they also very appropriately are in “The Three Middle-Irish
Homilies,” edited by Dr Whitely Stokes, (Calcutta; 1877). In one of
the so-called prophetic poems, a Norse Chief Mandar, with a fleet,
is represented as exhuming the body of Columba which was afterwards
buried “in Downpatrick, in the same tomb with St. Patrick and St.
Brigid.”
In the celebrated _Domhnach Airgid_, one of the most ancient relics
of the old Gaelic civilization, we are presented with the _figure_ of
Brigid.
Dr Petrie in his account of the relic says:—“The smaller figures
in relief are, in the first compartment, the Irish saints Columba,
Brigid, and Patrick.” Perhaps the most interesting relic associated
with Brigit is “a very ancient crozier, said to have belonged to
_St. Finnbarr_ (of Tormonbarry, in Connacht),—and believed to have
been made by _Conlaedh_, the artificer of _St. Brigid_ of Kildare,
early in the sixth century,” which is “now in the Museum of the Royal
Irish Academy.”.—_See O’Curry’s M.S. Materials._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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