BRIGID, THE POET AND THE SEER
IMBOLC, 2020
What follows is a short essay I wrote three years ago, at the beginning of a delve into the history of the Irish goddess Brigid (at the time of this post, it's 1 February 2023, Imbolc). Alongside this piece, I wrote another on her aspect as the smith, which deeply resonates with me, and in a funny but not surprising twist, when it came time to write about her aspect as healer, I abandoned the writing entirely save for a list of resources I'd meant to reference. There's a lot more to the story there, which maybe I'll tell another day, but for now I thought I'd share this piece that rekindled something meaningful in me. While this uses lore as a reference, it's entirely speculative and my own exploration of what I see as personal gnosis. Do not take this piece as fact, history, or actual lore. That aside, I hope you enjoy it!
The Irish goddess Brigid’s historical aspects are threefold: poet, smith, and healer. But it’s her iteration as the poet that interests me most. In contemporary culture, a poet is regarded as a creative, artistic, dreamy, sentimental, or winsome person. If not regarded in such a culturally diminishing way, a poet might also be regarded as an orator, warrior, activist, or an iconoclast or rebel challenging the status quo; something I see a lot of in art, literature, performance, spoken word, rap and hip hop, and overlapping activist communities. But to me, alongside all these things, if not because of them; a poet is also a recorder, chronicler, documenter, or archivist; a cultural and political critic, a historian, a culture-bearer, a satirist delivering a scathing curse … the lore is the container and the method for learning as oral tradition carries history forward. Songs and stories are a legacy to be carried on by others to encourage and inspire. But also.
A poet is an oracle, a seer.
In the lore, Brigid whistles, keens, and cries out a warning.
This Imbolc, when I extended my hand in friendship to Brigid, to get to know her, “Brigid the seer” escaped my lips as I listed her attributes—I found myself saying, “to Brigid the smith, the healer, the seer” and my eyes snapped open because I didn’t recall having read of her as being a seer, anywhere. But I couldn’t shake it as being something important or true to my personal relationship with Brigid, as we begin to get to know one another better. I felt strongly that any of the work I do with her would be in these ways; related to wordsmithing and the forging of various things, but also to seeing and speaking, as well.
From Lebor Gabala Erenn: (via Mary Jones)
317. Brigid the poetess, daughter of The Dagda, she it is who had Fea and Femen, the two oxen of Dil, from whom are named Mag Fea and Mag Femen. With them was Triath, king of the swine, from whom is Tretherne. Among them were heard three demon voices in Ireland after plunder, to wit, whistling and outcry and groaning.
From Cath Maige Tuired, The Second Battle of Mag Tuired:
Now after the spear had been given him, Ruadán turned and wounded Goibniu. But he plucked out the spear and cast it at Ruadán, so that it went through him, and he died in the presence of his father in the assembly of the Fomorians. Then Brígh comes and bewailed her son. She shrieked at first, she cried at last. So that then for the first time crying and shrieking were heard in Erin. Now it is that Brígh who invented a whistle for signalling at night.
And from Sanas Cormac: (via John O’Donovan’s translation)
Brigit, poetess, daughter of the Dagda. This is Brigit the female sage, a woman of wisdom, ie, Brigit the goddess whom poets adored because very great and very famous was her protecting care. It is therefore they called her goddess of poets by this name. Whose sisters were Brigit the female physician [woman of leechcraft], Brigit the female smith [woman of smithwork]; from whose names with all Irishmen a goddess was called Brigit. Brigit, then, brio-aigit, breo-shaigit, "a fiery arrow".
The scripts from Lebor Gabala Erenn and Cath Maige Tuired are typically used to demonstrate how Brigid is the first to perform keening, the high-pitched lamentation or wailing rite that is traditionally performed by trained singers, usually women. And The Second Battle of Mag Tuired also mentions how Brigid first uses night whistling as a method of signaling. But these all have another, different timbre for me, and I can’t exactly pinpoint why but it’s something that captured me, and won’t let go. The passages give me a sense of Brigid having a longstanding relationship and community with the animals cited, and an oracular sense (“the female sage”) to know how to call out a warning or a whistle; and to have the vision or wherewithal to disguise that warning or whistle as the sound of animals. In this way, you could indicate your message to those who are meant to hear it, but not betray it to those who aren’t. To cultivate such a skill requires a strongly rooted oracular craft, and therefore to be a powerful poet goddess in this wisdom or these ways of communicating, Brigid would have had to be a seer. And further, the protective qualities of potentially uttering words as a prayer or proclamation; or a curse—that fiery arrow—emphasize the multiple important roles of poets/bards and poetry in Irish spirituality and tradition.
How do we use words to curse, bless, or to heal? How can we use words to convey layered meanings, to speak to a multitude of people, conveying our intended messages towards each of them? How do the aesthetics of sound and breath and movement embody our will and our direction? How does the craft of words relate to the role of culture-bearer, and healer, and how are those two things related to each other?
These questions are reflections of what I’m continuously thinking about, especially in terms of healing ancestral wounds and traumas; and how some of that healing has to do with connecting to the ways humans have always tended to their wounds. Across cultures, my ancestors would have used song, prayer, poetry, and blessings for healing and protection. Some, they would have learned and emulated from the natural world. others, they would have created and elaborated for the embodiment of histories and stories to be learned by future generations. I like the idea of a living oral history that isn’t singularly authored, but carried forward through varying contexts of time, to be relevant to each speaker and listener who tells and hears them. In all its incarnations as medicine, politics, imagination, blessings, healing, and futures, the art of filidecht is a rare gift of intergenerational wisdom that I hope we can collectively find, and that I can continue to connect and reconnect to over the course of my life.
The Irish goddess Brigid’s historical aspects are threefold: poet, smith, and healer. But it’s her iteration as the poet that interests me most. In contemporary culture, a poet is regarded as a creative, artistic, dreamy, sentimental, or winsome person. If not regarded in such a culturally diminishing way, a poet might also be regarded as an orator, warrior, activist, or an iconoclast or rebel challenging the status quo; something I see a lot of in art, literature, performance, spoken word, rap and hip hop, and overlapping activist communities. But to me, alongside all these things, if not because of them; a poet is also a recorder, chronicler, documenter, or archivist; a cultural and political critic, a historian, a culture-bearer, a satirist delivering a scathing curse … the lore is the container and the method for learning as oral tradition carries history forward. Songs and stories are a legacy to be carried on by others to encourage and inspire. But also.
A poet is an oracle, a seer.
In the lore, Brigid whistles, keens, and cries out a warning.
This Imbolc, when I extended my hand in friendship to Brigid, to get to know her, “Brigid the seer” escaped my lips as I listed her attributes—I found myself saying, “to Brigid the smith, the healer, the seer” and my eyes snapped open because I didn’t recall having read of her as being a seer, anywhere. But I couldn’t shake it as being something important or true to my personal relationship with Brigid, as we begin to get to know one another better. I felt strongly that any of the work I do with her would be in these ways; related to wordsmithing and the forging of various things, but also to seeing and speaking, as well.
From Lebor Gabala Erenn: (via Mary Jones)
317. Brigid the poetess, daughter of The Dagda, she it is who had Fea and Femen, the two oxen of Dil, from whom are named Mag Fea and Mag Femen. With them was Triath, king of the swine, from whom is Tretherne. Among them were heard three demon voices in Ireland after plunder, to wit, whistling and outcry and groaning.
From Cath Maige Tuired, The Second Battle of Mag Tuired:
Now after the spear had been given him, Ruadán turned and wounded Goibniu. But he plucked out the spear and cast it at Ruadán, so that it went through him, and he died in the presence of his father in the assembly of the Fomorians. Then Brígh comes and bewailed her son. She shrieked at first, she cried at last. So that then for the first time crying and shrieking were heard in Erin. Now it is that Brígh who invented a whistle for signalling at night.
And from Sanas Cormac: (via John O’Donovan’s translation)
Brigit, poetess, daughter of the Dagda. This is Brigit the female sage, a woman of wisdom, ie, Brigit the goddess whom poets adored because very great and very famous was her protecting care. It is therefore they called her goddess of poets by this name. Whose sisters were Brigit the female physician [woman of leechcraft], Brigit the female smith [woman of smithwork]; from whose names with all Irishmen a goddess was called Brigit. Brigit, then, brio-aigit, breo-shaigit, "a fiery arrow".
The scripts from Lebor Gabala Erenn and Cath Maige Tuired are typically used to demonstrate how Brigid is the first to perform keening, the high-pitched lamentation or wailing rite that is traditionally performed by trained singers, usually women. And The Second Battle of Mag Tuired also mentions how Brigid first uses night whistling as a method of signaling. But these all have another, different timbre for me, and I can’t exactly pinpoint why but it’s something that captured me, and won’t let go. The passages give me a sense of Brigid having a longstanding relationship and community with the animals cited, and an oracular sense (“the female sage”) to know how to call out a warning or a whistle; and to have the vision or wherewithal to disguise that warning or whistle as the sound of animals. In this way, you could indicate your message to those who are meant to hear it, but not betray it to those who aren’t. To cultivate such a skill requires a strongly rooted oracular craft, and therefore to be a powerful poet goddess in this wisdom or these ways of communicating, Brigid would have had to be a seer. And further, the protective qualities of potentially uttering words as a prayer or proclamation; or a curse—that fiery arrow—emphasize the multiple important roles of poets/bards and poetry in Irish spirituality and tradition.
How do we use words to curse, bless, or to heal? How can we use words to convey layered meanings, to speak to a multitude of people, conveying our intended messages towards each of them? How do the aesthetics of sound and breath and movement embody our will and our direction? How does the craft of words relate to the role of culture-bearer, and healer, and how are those two things related to each other?
These questions are reflections of what I’m continuously thinking about, especially in terms of healing ancestral wounds and traumas; and how some of that healing has to do with connecting to the ways humans have always tended to their wounds. Across cultures, my ancestors would have used song, prayer, poetry, and blessings for healing and protection. Some, they would have learned and emulated from the natural world. others, they would have created and elaborated for the embodiment of histories and stories to be learned by future generations. I like the idea of a living oral history that isn’t singularly authored, but carried forward through varying contexts of time, to be relevant to each speaker and listener who tells and hears them. In all its incarnations as medicine, politics, imagination, blessings, healing, and futures, the art of filidecht is a rare gift of intergenerational wisdom that I hope we can collectively find, and that I can continue to connect and reconnect to over the course of my life.
In lieu of an image of an Irish ox, which I couldn't find, please enjoy this photo of a highland cow by Shane Rounce on Unsplash