In early ecclesiastical annals Brigit is thus on the same platform with Patrick and Columba in Gaelic Hagiology. True; her name is not found, for instance, in the Benchor Antiphonary; but her name is not unknown even in Latin Hymnology. The earliest Latin poem that recognizes her is a fragment of three stanzas, beginning with the letters X, Y, Z, respectively. It appears to have belonged to an A B C Darian hymn of a somewhat biographical nature.—[See _Anecdota_ etc., 1713: Leabhar Imuinn: Dublin, 1855-1869.] The following Latin lines give us the earliest conceptions of this “Mary of the Gael.”:— Ymnus iste angelicae Summeque sanctae Brigidae Fari non valet omnia Virtutum miribillia Quae nostris nunquam auribus Si sint facta audivimus Nisi per istam virginem Mariae sanctae similem. Of this the following English rendering may be given:— “This hymn, of the most angel-like and most saintly, Brigit is unable to speak of all the marvellous works of power, such as we have never heard of as been wrought, except through this virgin, like unto the Holy Mary.” The prevalence of Brigit’s name in Gaelic Hagiology is not surprising, when we take into account her reputation for superior powers of knowledge and wisdom. And this exceptional distinction naturally suggests the question—Where could her superior learning have been obtained? The writer thinks that it can be clearly established that Brigit, like Patrick of Strathclyde, was a fruit of Ninian’s celebrated monastery of Rosnat. Indeed, there can be little doubt about this statement, although the question has not been either put or answered hitherto. Philology and history combine to make Brigit a native of that district known first as that of the Brigantes, afterwards Bernicia, and later as the Saxon Lowlands of Scotland. Professor Rhys thinks the folks of this district in Brigit’s time were Celtic and largely Cymric:—“Thus the term Bernicii would seem to have meant the people of the Brigantian land, which, in this case, was mostly that of the ancient Otadini, or Gododin of Welsh literature, together with a part probably of that of a kindred people, the Dumnonii.” According to the same learned authority _brigant_ is phonologically “the Gallo-Brythonic form of a common Celtic _brigant_, which, with the nasal suppressed, we have in the Irish name Brigit (for _Brigentis_ of the I declension), St. Bridget or Bride. On the whole then, Brigantes would seem to have meant the free men or privileged race as contrasted with the Goidelic inhabitants, _some of whom_ they may have reduced under them.”