The Way of Brigit, Goddess and Saint: Towards a Post-Christian Paganism

Sulamith Wülfing: The Way 

Goddess as saint: my dilemma

Some time ago I wrote about how a visit to Brigit’s church by Llanon had unsettled me and made me wonder about my relationship to her as goddess and saint. I had first read about Brigit in Robert Graves’ The White Goddess where the connection between goddess and saint was stated and so from the first I didn’t question it but incorporated material from St Brigit’s story into her lore. But walking into a church, seeing the prayer books, the cross on the altar and the east window with its depiction of the risen Christ suddenly brought it home to me that Christianity also claimed Brigit and that she had her own relationship with the Christian god. The church was not my church and I was unsure how to relate to the figure of Jesus behind the altar. I felt I needed to make some sort of response and so gave a short nod and muttered something about ‘just having come in to have a word with Brigit’ as I went to the pew beside her own window…

When I first started researching Brigit and other Celtic material, I wanted to dismiss the references to Christianity, to God and Jesus and the other saints beside Brigit. I was trying to sift Christianity out of the narrative and reach further back to a pagan past which I believed was still discernable in such accounts as Giraldus Cambrensis’ description of the keeping of the flame at Kildare. Like many pagans I rewrote some of the charms and prayers in Scottish, Irish and Welsh sources for my own use, missing out the Christian references.

But then as time went on I found myself less sensitive to these and in a subtle and almost imperceptible way began tuning in to the manner in which the Irish, Scottish and Welsh folk and poets related to and interacted with their God and saints. So, for instance, I noted how there were folk traditions concerning Jesus, his mother and the saints, such as this one from the Western Isles where it was told that Christ asked Peter to row 707 strokes from the shore when he was going to fish for tribute money. According to Alexander Carmichael, because of this, the old men of Uist required the young men to row out 707 strokes before casting their nets on Christmas Day and whatever fish they caught were given to the poor as a tribute in the name of Christ, King of the sea, and of Peter, king of fishermen.(1)  Again, certain woods were seen as evil or poisonous, such as aspen, because they were said to have been the wood the cross was made out of.

I saw the way that Christian prayers were used as invocations or charms for healing and protection – for instance the Credo, the Pater Noster and the Prayer of Mary Mother had to be recited by a person needing protection when she had a caim, or circle of protection set around her – and how the actions of Christ and the saints were recounted in healing charms for toothache and other ailments. The attitude to God, Christ, Mary, Brigit and other saints was in general positive and trusting. They were petitioned for protection and healing, their powers seen very often as benevolent and magical – there is a sense that deities and saints are part of the family. A prayer in the Carmina Gadelica for the kindling of the fire says:

Who are they on the bare floor?
John and Peter and Paul,
Who are they by my bed?
The lovely Bride and her Fosterling.
Who are those watching over my sleep?
The fair loving Mary and her Lamb.
Who is that anear me?
The King of the sun, He himself it is.
Who is that the back of my head?
The Son of Life without beginning, without time.

Eventually I began to mentally translate ‘God’ as ‘Godness’ or ‘divinity’ and after a while I stopped having to translate but saw the word ‘God’ as signifying this.

The hagiography, the texts about the saints, were usually written with a specific purpose in mind. Often this was political such as Cogitosus’ life of Brigit which was probably aiming to promote the See of Kildare against the spread of Patrick’s centre at Armagh, or 12th and 13th century Welsh hagiography which was used to further the cause of an independent Welsh Church against Anglo-Norman culture and traditions. The authors of these stories used folklore narratives and motifs as part of their armoury and as a result they drew on concepts and beliefs from traditional patterns. This is especially true in Wales where the values of the native culture were emphasised over traditional church concepts and values.(2) In the Welsh lives of the saints, secular or pagan characters – even the tylwyth teg, the fair people or fairies – figure alongside the Christian saints.

So I began to blur the boundaries between pagan and Christian and exposure to this way of being Christian – essentially a folk tradition – led me to tune not so much into the name of the religion and its divine beings but the way in which the people of the three Celtic-speaking countries of Ireland, Scotland and Wales related to them and worshipped them. And the way they were worshipped seemed to me to emphasise intimacy and immanence (God’s presence in the material universe).

One of the ways folk Christianity differs from orthodox Christianity or the Christianity of the established Church is that it is often conveyed through story-telling which weaves a narrative around the particular culture and landscape of a people. It is more concerned with what Edward Conze has called the ‘initial tradition’ of Christianity – which I think of as that of Gospels and Acts – than the ‘continuing tradition’ that consists of the Fathers and doctors of the church, the decisions of councils and synods and the pronouncements of various hierarchies’.(3) So unlike much of theology which seeks to apply logic and reasoning to religion in an attempt to make it into an ordered system, story-telling is multivalent, fluid, adaptable, forgiving of inconsistency and paradox. It has its roots in the people and their landscape and is therefore less susceptible to the control of a central agency, unlike a top-down theology, the product of an élite which may have political considerations as well as spiritual ones.

I am personally much more influenced and inspired by story than by theology which is often an intellectual exercise designed to apply logic to things which are beyond reason. The word for ‘supernatural’ used by the Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso means ‘that which knowledge cannot eat’. So story, art and symbol become valid means of approaching an interaction with the supernatural and the divine; Jesus understood this and often used parables to convey spiritual lessons, or esoteric speech, ‘secret sayings’. The truth of a story does not depend on its factuality or historical accuracy, the story is a container or vessel for truth. As a poem attributed to St Columba says:

If every poem is a lie,

then clothing and food are lies too,

as are the whole world and even clayey man..

Masa brec gach dan suad,

Is brec brat’s as brec biadh.

‘s as brec an domhan uli,

‘s as brec fos an duinecriadh. (4)

The story of Brigit and Jesus

Returning to my crisis about Brigit as saint, over the weeks following my visit to Llansantffraed, I began to think again about her story as it appears in folklore and poetry. The Carmina Gadelica recounts that Brigit was Mary’s aid-woman or midwife and that she was present in the stable in Bethlehem and helped to bring Jesus into the world. After he was born, she became his foster-mother. She was known as ban-chuideachaidh Moire (the aid-woman of Mary), Muime Chriosda (foster-mother of Christ); Bana-ghoistidh Mhic De (the god-mother of the son of God) and Bana-ghoistidh Iosda Criosda nam bann agus nam beannachd (godmother of Jesus Christ of the bindings and blessings). And Jesus is called Dalta Bride (the foster-son of Bride); Dalta Bride bith nam beannachd (the foster-son of Bride of the blessings) and Daltan Bride (little fosterling of Bride). Foster parenting was very important in Celtic society, sometimes more tender and close than blood ties and it commanded obligations and duties.

In Ireland two poems or hymns refer to her – rather surprisingly - as the actual mother of Jesus:

“she, the branch with blossoms,

the mother of Jesus!”

in chróieb co m-blathaib

in mathair Ísu  

(Ultan’s Hymn: Brigit Be Bithmaith)

and

Brigit, mother of my high King,

Of the kingdom of heaven best she was born

Brigit mathair mo rurech

nime flatha ferr cinis

(the 7th c St Broccan’s Hymn to Brigit)

(This may be referring to a concept based on a reference to Matthew xii, 50: 'Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother.')

There is a story that in order to divert Herod’s men away from Jesus so that he could make his escape to Egypt with his mother, Mary, Brigit put a crown of candles on her head and dancing away, led them in another direction. Another story from Ireland told that Brigit walked in front of Mary with a lighted candle in each hand when she went up to the temple for Purification. In spite of strong winds the candles did not flicker or go out.

So Brigit helped at the birth of Jesus and protected him and Mary afterwards. She was Jesus’ foster-mother, his god-mother (or perhaps his goddess-mother) and his protector.

Now there are multiple interpretations of how this story might have come about. If you believe in the reality of Brigit as goddess, she may have chosen to express herself through the new religion. Or perhaps you prefer to think that the people had known a goddess Brigit (perhaps particularly associated with Leinster where Ptolemy’s map shows a tribe called the Brigantes) and did not wish to abandon her when they took on Christianity. There again there could have been a nun called Brigit whom the folk simply equated with the goddess of the same name or perhaps the fathers of the new religion in Ireland wanted to make it more palatable to the people by making this link with the much-loved goddess of the older religion. But whatever interpretation you put on its genesis, the cult of Brigit chose to accept and nurture Christianity and the implicit meaning of this narrative, the truth that is being expressed through it, is that Brigit existed before the birth of Christianity and assisted in bringing it into the world.

Why would Brigit take Jesus as her foster-son?

Thinking of Jesus as the foster-son of Brigit made me consider him differently and I began to look at what is positive about the story of Jesus and why Brigit or her people would have wanted to embrace it. What did Christianity bring that was an improvement on what had gone before?

Meditating on what I like about the Christian story was an interesting exercise. As a child I liked the story of Jesus, responding to its underlying mythic patterns: the magical child whose birth is foretold and who shows wisdom at an early age; the dying and rising god, the sacrificed god: Jesus himself describes himself  as a grain of wheat which by dying bears fruit (John 12: 24):

'Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit'.

I found very attractive the idea of the child born in the humblest of surroundings who went on to champion the poor and sick and offer the promise of healing and forgiveness to all and I also particularly liked the facility Jesus had with words, the clarity and acuity of his thought. So that when, for instance, he was put in a tight spot when he was asked whether the Jews should pay taxes to the Romans he said ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what belongs to God’. This prevented him being arrested by the Romans for advocating that the people should not pay tribute while the Jews would have understood the deeper message, implicit rather than explicit, that everything belongs to God. He was saying something but not saying it - which is potent speech.

Again, with the woman taken in adultery, his challengers tell him that according to the Law of Moses she should be stoned. If he agrees with this, he would become responsible for the act of execution but if he does not he will be seen not to uphold Mosaic Law. The way he deals with this test is skilful. He says: 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone'. This takes the responsibility for any murderous act away from himself as well as commanding the crowd to look at themselves and their sins and take responsibility for them. When the people leave he tells the woman he does not condemn her and enjoins her to go away and ‘sin no more’. Presumably he thinks that she is guilty of adultery but he effectively forgives her and offers her a second chance; he is merciful. And he is clearly not anti-women in this encounter.

This story appears only in John, whose gospel is later than the other three and differs from them since it puts forward a theology of Christ which was based on Greek philosophy, especially Stoicism. John refers to Jesus as the ‘logos’, which is usually translated as ‘the Word’ but is a Stoic idea which has a wider meaning, denoting also ‘meaning’ or ‘pattern’ – the divine animating principle pervading the Universe. So Jesus is the incarnation of this principle – of the way of heaven on earth.

Rightly or wrongly I can’t help but associate this idea with the Vedic idea of the rita, which, similarly is a vital force which underlies the Universe and human and divine behaviour; the ‘cosmic order or law’ - and also with the Irish concept of fir flathemon, the principle of the truth of the ruler which, means that when the king rules in accord with the rightness of things, being just and righteous, he ensures peace and prosperity for the land and the people. When he forsakes this principle however chaos ensues –the weather is erratic, crops fail and so on.

John also records that Jesus brought grace and truth and that he said that he was ’the way, the truth and the life’ and that no-one could come to God except through him. Rather than meaning that Christianity is the only religion which promises reconciliation with the divine, to me this means that only by following the way of truth, embodied by Jesus, can one achieve the kingdom of heaven – not necessarily in the after-life but in this one – the kingdom of heaven is inside us, not outside us, and therefore accessible to everyone so that “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” as the Lord's prayer puts it. And what God wills, as Jesus sees it, is a kingdom in which compassion, truth, justice and non-violence reign and which give everlasting life to the spirit.

In their book The Last Week, Borg and Crossan point out that it was the passion of Jesus for this kind of kingdom that led to his death since it came into conflict with the domination system of the Roman Empire – a system which is, in fact, pretty much the norm even in the world today. So it was the injustice of the domination systems that killed him because he was upholding an antithetical system of peace and compassion. He was killed not so much for the sins of the world but by the sins of the world.(5)

This Jesus is then the embodiment of the way of truth, the divine order that upholds the universe; a speaker of truth to power; an advocate of non-violent opposition to domination systems by believing in and acting in accordance with a system which depends on compassion, mercy, justice, love. In many ways then, he is the ideal of the king in the Irish sense – he upholds fir flathemon, he may even be to some extent the ideal that the concept is built on since the Irish texts which refer to it were written down in the Christian period.

How easy was it for the Irish people to accept Christianity?

One particular problem was that the honour price (the system of payment for injuries suffered depending on one’s wealth and position in the clan) was antithetical to the Christian teaching of merit based on spiritual achievement not material possessions or status.(6) Another, significantly, seems to have been the Christian doctrine of Mercy.

In the Pseudohistorical Prologue to the Senchas Már, dating from the early eighth century, there is a story in which the men of Ireland, after the arrival of Patrick and Christianity, met up with their king, Lóegaire, who asked them what would be the most difficult thing about converting to the new religion. They replied that the Christian doctrine of Mercy would mean that they wouldn’t be able to put murderers to death as was their usual practice and so the social fabric would be destroyed. A compromise was reached and the men of Ireland converted to Christianity. Lóegaire then ordered that the whole of the oral native tradition of law and poetry was to be examined, reviewed and edited so that it conformed to Christian standards.(7) (It is implied that there is much to keep and that in some way the native, oral lore of Ireland prefigures the Christian law.)

The reason why this story seems significant to me is that in the Life of Brigit in the Lebar Brecc, when she is consecrated Brigit chooses, out of the eight beatitudes, the beatitude of Mercy. By doing so, if the Pseudohistorical Prologue is to be believed, she is putting herself at the heart of a fundamental early opposition between Christianity and Paganism and choosing to espouse a way of Mercy rather than one of retribution.

Certainly, by the end of the 7th century/ beginning of the 8th Mercy had become a desirable quality. The Audacht Morainn (Testament of Morann) is an Old Irish text which belongs to the medieval genre of Speculum Principis or Mirror for Princes. These texts were instructions to kings or princes on aspects of rule and behaviour. The text mentions fifteen virtues proper to a ruler appearing in this order: Mercy, Justice, Impartiality, Conscience, Firmness, Generosity, Hospitality, Honour, Stability, Beneficence, Capability, Honesty, Eloquence, Steadiness and Truth in Judging. ‘Let him exalt mercy/ it will exalt him’ (Ocbath trócairi, cotnocéba) announces the judge Morann Mac Moín and so it has exalted St Brigit, herself the exalted one.(8)

Portia’s speech on Mercy from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (late 16th century) is relevant here and a good description of the workings and blessings of mercy:

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd,

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown:

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

But mercy is above this sceptred sway,

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's,

When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,

Though justice be thy plea, consider this,

That in the course of justice none of us

Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy.

Brigit's foster-son

So, to recap, my research and meditation on Jesus as the foster-son of Brigit led me to consider him in this way: as an example of the deep mythic patterns of the divine child, the dying and rising god, (wheat and fruit), the sacrificed god; as a prophet who spoke truth to power, who had a facility with language and sharpness of thought, who advocated non-violence but challenged the power structures of his day, who was seen as the way of truth, like the ideal of Irish kingship, the embodiment of the logos, the divine power pervading the Universe, and who preached that this logos, this way, is a way of compassion, love, justice and mercy. What is unique and radical about his story of course, is that he advocated loving one’s enemies as well as oneself and one’s neighbour and that he himself suffered the worst of torments and still retained his ability to love and forgive.

This figure seems to be a fitting foster-son of Brigit – both of the culture goddess, with his facility for thought, language and the Word, and of the saint with his advocacy of mercy and compassion. His actions as a conveyer of abundance e.g. (the loaves and fishes) and of celebration (turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana, his first miracle) makes him a figure consistent with Brigit as goddess of fruitfulness and abundance as she appears in many of the stories of the saint and in folklore. In her Life in the Book of Lismore she refers to him as Mary’s son, her friend, and asks him to bless her kitchen with abundance:

May Mary’s son, my Friend, come

to bless my kitchen!

The Prince of the world to the border,

May we have abundance by Him!

Ti Mac Mare mo chara

do benna chad mo chule!

fiaith in domain co immel

ro[n] be immed la sude.

Perhaps during the missing years of Jesus’ life he was being taught by Brigit, as would be consistent with her role as his foster-mother! That might account for the more enlightened view he had of women. Not only did he effectively defend the woman taken in adultery, Mary of Magdala was one of his close circle and in Thomas’s Gospel (114) Simon Peter said to Jesus, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of Life." Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven." I take this to mean that Jesus taught her as men were taught so that she became enlightened – an unusual perspective and action for his time.

Christianity and interpretation

This Jesus I have outlined feels like a person I can connect with Brigit and can relate to when I visit the church of Llansantffraed. Of course I have ‘cherry-picked’ the parts of the Christian story which appeal to me, make sense to me and are consistent with my values and aspirations. But there is a long and honoured tradition of such cherry-picking or spinning. Paul and the writers of the gospels had their own way of seeing and shaping the story and its meaning. Before 200 ce early Christian groups held different beliefs but in the 3rd century Christianity became an institution with a hierarchy and fixed set of beliefs, other forms becoming heresy but still existing.
Christianity also took on attributes of other religions apart from the Jewish from the outset: the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism, the Roman (and maybe originally Persian) religion of Mithraism and Greek Stoicism. The story was further interpreted by the Church Fathers such as Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine of Hippo and other leaders, theologians and bishops who formulated the dogma and doctrine and seemed to have added to it the obsession with sex and the vileness of the body and made sure it was a patriarchal religion. Of course the biggest distortion of the Christian message in the West occurred when the Roman emperor Constantine became a Christian and then made it the official religion of the Empire, effectively turning the religion from one whose followers were brutally persecuted to one which itself became an instrument of imperial oppression; a practice continued by some of the popes down the ages as they sought to use it for temporal power and wealth, turning on its head Jesus’ message.

To an extent as well Christianity took on some of the practices and beliefs of the people who inhabited the lands which became Christian (known as contextualisation or inculturation). Famously, Pope Gregory the Great decreed in a letter to Abbot Mellitus in 601 AD that pagan sites in England should be built upon so that they would still be used by the people who worshipped there:

"To his most beloved son, the Abbot Mellitus; Gregory, the servant of the servants of God. We have been much concerned, since the departure of our people that are with you, because we have received no account of the success of your journey. Howbeit, when Almighty God has led, you to the most reverend Bishop Augustine, our brother, tell him what I have long been considering in my own mind concerning the matter of the English people; to wit, that the temples of the idols in that nation ought not to be destroyed; but let the idols that are in them be destroyed; let water be consecrated and sprinkled in the said temples, let altars be erected, and relics placed there. For if those temples are well built, it is requisite that they be converted from the worship of devils to the service of the true God; that the nation, seeing that their temples are not destroyed, may remove error from their hearts, and knowing and adoring the true God, may the more freely resort to the places to which they have been accustomed. And because they are used to slaughter many oxen in sacrifice to devils, some solemnity must be given them in exchange for this, as that on the day of the dedication, or the nativities of the holy martyrs, whose relics are there deposited, they should build themselves huts of the boughs of trees about those churches which have been turned to that use from being temples, and celebrate the solemnity with religious feasting, and no more offer animals to the Devil, but kill cattle and glorify God in their feast, and return thanks to the Giver of all things for their abundance; to the end that, whilst some outward gratifications are retained, they may the more easily consent to the inward joys. For there is no doubt that it is impossible to cut off every thing at once from their rude natures; because he who endeavours to ascend to the highest place rises by degrees or steps, and not by leaps. Thus the Lord made Himself known to the people of Israel in Egypt; and yet He allowed them the use, in His own worship, of the sacrifices which they were wont to offer to the Devil, commanding them in His sacrifice to kill animals, to the end that, with changed hearts, they might lay aside one part of the sacrifice, whilst they retained another; and although the animals were the same as those which they were wont to offer, they should offer them to the true God, and not to idols; and thus they would no longer be the same sacrifices. This then, dearly beloved, it behoves you to communicate to our aforesaid brother, that he, being placed where he is at present, may consider how he is to order all things. God preserve you in safety, most beloved son.
"Given the 17th of June, in the nineteenth year of the reign of our most religious lord, Mauritius Tiberius Augustus, the eighteenth year after the consulship of our said lord, and the fourth indiction."
Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, 731 CE, (book 1, chapter 30)

So I have no qualms then in spinning the story of Jesus and weaving my own interpretation of it; after all, it is a function of story-telling as opposed to dogma, that one finds oneself and one’s truth within it.

A post-Christian paganism

This process of reading and researching and meditating on these things has been a fruitful one for me. I moved to a Welsh-speaking area of Wales in 1977 when it was very strongly a Christian country, church and chapel, though it is less so now as secularisation creeps in. Anyone living in a Celtic country and wishing to engage in some way with the tradition, cannot do so without encountering Christianity. It is, on the whole, the medium through which the folk as well as many writers, poets and artists have expressed their understanding of a deeper spiritual reality for nearly 1500 years.

The Celtic lands are covered not only with dolmens and standing stones and stone circles but with churches which, as we have seen were often built on the sites of earlier pagan sites, and holy wells dedicated to the saints who took on some of the functions of earlier deities. So it is difficult to separate out the ingredients in the landscape as well as those in the early Welsh and Irish literature (which the scholar Kim McCone described as ‘a textual omelette’) in order to apportion with a hundred percent accuracy what is pagan and what is Christian.

It is also difficult to determine to what extent our world-view and ethics in the West have been determined by Christianity. It may be that the concept of a benign deity, rather than a capricious deity who has to be propitiated, which many modern pagans - though not all - ascribe to, is itself Christian in origin. And virtues, such as those in the Audacht Morainn which Alexei Kondratiev, a leading participant in the Celtic Reconstructionist movement, put forward for the basis of a Celtic moral philosophy for the movement, are very probably an amalgamation of pagan and Christian virtues devised after the oral native lore was synchronised with Christian law. While I agree enthusiastically with seeking to research and recover as much as possible about early pagan Celtic religion, I understand the limitations of doing so and, as I started by saying, I recognise that the spirituality of various communities in Celtic-speaking countries, has been expressed through Christianity as well as through paganism and to ignore that and marginalize it seems a grave oversight if one is at all interested in honouring the Celtic inheritance.

The Celtic Reconstructionist FAQ states that CR seeks to try ‘to envision what different Celtic Paganisms might look like today if they had been uninterrupted by Christianity, much as Hinduism has changed over the centuries, remaining the same religion but changing in form with the changing times’. I think my perspective is more pragmatic, taking Christianity in the Celtic lands as not so much a break in the Celtic religious or spiritual tradition but as a part of its development and evolution.Therefore a re-emergent pagan or polytheist approach may, to my mind, be inevitably coloured by Christianity just as Christianity was, to some extent, coloured by Celtic paganism.

Resolution

In conclusion, my exploration of the story of Brigit as goddess and saint and the meaning of the relationship between the two has led me to a path which may possibly be described as syncretic. I have not become a Christian, nor like the pagan Romans have I hedged my bets by including an altar to the Christian god in my shrine, but I have developed a way of honouring Jesus as the foster-son of Brigit so that when I visit her church by Llanon, I shall walk into it and be able to  greet him more whole-heartedly as I make my way to my special place, the pew beside the window depicting Sant Ffraid.

Of course, while I have entitled this post The Way of Brigit, it is naturally, my particular path and each of us will find our own.


 

The east window at Llansantffraed, Llanon

References

1. Carmichael, Alexander, FlorisBooks, Edinburgh, 1992 p. 119, pp. 601-2, p. 154 

This is part of the Fishing Blessing:

Thou King of deeds and powers above,
Thy fishing blessing pour down on us.
I will sit me down with an oar in my grasp,
I will row me seven hundred and seven strokes.
I will cast down my hook,
The first fish which I bring up
In the name of Christ, King of the elements,
The poor shall have it at his wish.


2. See Henken, Elissa, The Welsh Saints: A Study in Patterned Lives, D.S. Brewer, Cambridge, 1991 and also Henken, Elissa, Traditions of the Welsh Saints, D.S. Brewer, Cambridge, 1987

3. Conze, Edward, Buddhist Scriptures, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1959, p. 11

4. Nagy, Joseph Falaky, Conversing with Angels and Ancients, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 1997, p.165

5. Borg, Marcus and Dominic Crossan, The Last Week, SPK, London, 2008, pp.162-3

6. Patterson, Cattle Lords and Clansmen, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame and London, 1994

7. Nagy, Joseph Falaky, Conversing with Angels and Ancients, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 1997, p.201-202

8. Mary Condren, author of The Serpent and The Goddess, has been inspired by Brigit and by the benefits of Mercy rather than Sacrifice as a basis for modern society.

May and Canu Haf/Summer Carols

Verses of the Months 

The month of May, the ploughman is extravagant;

every dyke is shelter to the destitute;

joyful is the lightly clad old man;

the wood is leafy, the wanton is glad;

reconciliation is easy where there is love;

tuneful are the cuckoo and the hound;

Mis Mai, difrodus geilwad,

klyd pob klawdd i ddigarad;

llawen hen diarchenad;

hyddail koed, hyfryd anllad;

hawdd kymod lle bo kariad;

llafar koc a bytheiad;

Welsh, c. 15th century

Canu Haf/Summer Carols

The Middle English word 'carol ' comes from Old French 'carole', meaning 'a dance in a ring' or a 'joyous song' and it wasn't until 1502 that it was first noted to mean a Christmas hymn. Summer carols seem to have been more popular in Wales than in England and were sung in houses as well as churches and chapels; some of the old carols call on friends and neighbours to sing together a song of thanksgiving for summer days.

Here's a summer carol called Mwynder Mai/the Sweetness of May. The tune was first published in The Welsh Harper in1848.  T. Gwynn Jones wrote a song to go with it:

(I've just realised that the second note should be a C and not a D!  Unfortunately I don't have the software to change it any more. Click to enlarge.)

 

The Sweetness of May

The wizard of May is out riding unseen,
He captures the land with a network of green;
Soft waves of bright sunlight sweep over the leas,
And summer-time songbirds make merry the trees.

Though summer must languish and winter be long,
Though brief be the season of sunshine and song,
Though sorrow still tarries when happiness dies,
Sweet May is the promise of God's Paradise.


Mwynder Mai

Daw dewin y Mai heb ei weled, fin nos,
Gan wasgar ei liwiau ar weirglodd a rhos;
Bydd heulwen y bore yn dawsnio ar dwyn,
A daw ar adenydd lawenydd i lwyn.

Er oered fo'r eira, er garwed fo'r gwynt,
Er byrred ei rwysg fydd yr haf ar ei hynt,
Mewn byd sy mor gymysg o fethiant neu fai,
Rhyw awr o Baradwys yw mwynder Mai.

Written and translated by T. Gwynn Jones

April, Hares and St Melangell

Leaping Hare: original limited edition print  © Jenny Fell
prints and cards available from the artist

from The Verses of the Months

The month of April, the upland is misty,

the oxen are weary, the earth is bare,

feeble is the stag, playful the long-eared (hare);

Mis Ebrill, wybraidd gorthir,

lluddedig ychen, llwm tir,

gwael hydd, gwareus clusthir...

Verses of the Months, Welsh c.15th century

North Wales Wildlife Trust

St Melangell's Church

excerpt from Pilgrimage to Melangell's Healing Centre by Noragh Jones

Third day -  arriving at Melangell's shrine and Cancer Help Centre, nestling at the head of a green valley. The church stands in a pre-christian circular enclosure. There was a healing well nearby, but now it's been fenced off and privatised by a new owner.

This is the end of my solitary pilgrimage. I meet friends and talk too much the way you do when you've been alone. Then we catch ourselves out and sit quietly in the church for an hour - praying or not praying according to our lights.

On the oak rood screen Melangell is saving a hare from the Prince of Powys's hunting party. All around the church are carvings of happy hares finding sanctuary under the saint's cloak. (The locals call hares wyn bach Melangell - Melangell's lambs).

I read in the visitor's book a moving record of hundreds of pilgrims who have come here and found the help they needed - to go on living or to face dying. I am lost for words. I go and sit in silence at Melangell's shrine.

ar ei allor                                   (on her shrine

hen gath yn eisted                       an ancient cat sits

ac yn canu grwndi                       purring)

Later we go out into the churchyard. The yew trees they say are two thousand years old. Their broken trunks bleed red sap. But they go on offering shelter to whoever comes - faith or no faith.

rym ni'n cymry ein tro                 (we take it in turns

profi tragwyddoldeb                     trying on eternity

yn yrywen gau                               in the hollow yew)

From Stone Circles: Haiku and Haiku Prose by Noragh Jones;

also included in Another Country: Haiku and Haiku Prose from Wales

True Poetry and Ecology: The White Goddess Revisited

The first time I came across mention of Brigit, goddess of poetry, healing and smithcraft, was in Robert Graves’ book, The White Goddess, which I happened upon in the library of the six-form college I went to. This book was to have a huge influence in shaping my subsequent life and my spine still tingles reading the sentence “My thesis is that the language of poetic myth anciently current in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe was a magical language bound up with popular religious ceremonies in honour of the Moon-goddess, or Muse, some of them dating from the Old Stone Age, and that this remains the language of true poetry – ‘true’ in the nostalgic modern sense of ‘the uninprovable original, not a synthetic substitute’.”

Graves’ thesis was that ‘true poetry’ is that which is loyal to the Theme, namely the story of the birth, life, death and resurrection of the God of the Waxing Year. This God fights with his rival, his twin or other self, for the love of the Three-fold Goddess, “their mother, bride and layer-out”. The God of the Waxing Year becomes the God of the Waning Year, is beaten by his rival/twin and dies but is reborn as his other self. This theme was borrowed from The Golden Bough by the Scottish anthropologist, James Frazer, and adapted by Graves to express his own personal mythology in which the Goddess is the Muse and the poet is the God of the Waxing Year. All true poetry expresses some part of this story (which Graves believed was a fundamental part of our psychic inheritance) or evokes the presence of the Goddess when “owls hoot, the moon rides like a ship through scudding cloud, trees sway slowly together above a rushing waterfall, and a distant barking of dogs is heard; or when a peal of bells in frosty weather suddenly announces the birth of the New Year”.

In the Golden Bough this cycle represented the religious beliefs of fertility cults, in which the god mated with the earth goddess, died at the harvest and was reincarnated in the spring. Graves lived on the north-west coast of the island of Mallorca where life was still ruled by the old agricultural cycle and he commented that what he wrote would read “very perversely and irrelevantly” to people who were attuned to a more industrial way of life. He had an instinctive mistrust for the growth of industry in the West and its associated values:

“…we have come to be governed, in practice, by the unholy triumdivate of Pluto, god of wealth, Apollo, god of science, and Mercury, god of thieves. To make matters worse, dissension and jealousy rage openly between these three, with Mercury and Pluto black-guarding each other, while Apollo wields the atomic bomb as if it were a thunderbolt…”

According to Graves, the function of true poetry is the religious invocation of the Muse; its use is “the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites”. He saw this as having been once a warning to man that he must “keep in harmony with the living creatures among which he was born, by obedience to the wishes of the lady of the house” but in his day (he was writing in 1960), the warning had been ignored so that the “prime emblems” of poetry were being dishonoured. Nowadays, he said, “serpent, lion and eagle belong to the circus-tent; ox, salmon and boar to the cannery; racehorse and greyhound to the betting ring; and the sacred grove to the saw-mill… the Moon is despised as a burned-out satellite of the Earth and woman is reckoned as ‘auxiliary state personnel’. Money “will buy almost anything but truth, and almost anyone but the truth-obsessed poet.”

In the last chapter of the book he talks about the suppressed desire of Western people for the return of the goddess and foretells ecological disaster if it is postponed, for the longer it is:

"… and therefore the more exhausted by man’s irreligious improvidence the natural resources of the soil and sea become, the less merciful will her five-fold mask be, and the narrower the scope of action that she grants to whichever demi-god she chooses to take as her temporary consort in godhead."

True poet that he is, he placates her with a poem, the last stanza of which warns:

At dawn you shall appear,
A gaunt, red-wattled crane,
She whom they know too well for fear,
Lunging your beak down like a spear
To fetch them home again.

***

To me the White Goddess is an extraordinary book, filled with power and inspiration. A lot of the scholarship has been shown to be flawed and Robert Graves’ intuitions and theories have given rise to some popular misconceptions which have become part of neo-pagan lore – such as the ogham tree calendar and the image of a triple moon-goddess, maiden, mother and crone, as a basic goddess underlying all European – and therefore Celtic - goddesses. It is not taken seriously by scholars and has become discredited now among many Celtic pagans, particularly Reconstructionists. To be fair to Graves, he himself said that he didn’t trust his historical intuitions any further than they could be accurately checked. (He appealed for feedback from Celtic scholars but was disappointed not to receive any.)

Robert Graves burial place in the churchyard in Deià (Click to see detail)

However it has been a hugely influential book, perhaps, as a single source, the most important for encouraging the return of the goddess and bringing the treasures of Welsh and Irish mythological and poetic sources to a generation hungry for their sacred insights and practices. The book was double-edged in propagating misconceptions about Celtic texts but at the same time encouraging many to learn more, promoting Celtic studies, and I would argue that its legacy is positive rather than negative in this respect. Alexei Kondratiev, rather to my surprise, agreed with me and I notice that in his book The Apple Branch, he concurs with Graves’ intuition that the thirteen lines of Irish Song of Amergin relates to the thirteen moons of the lunar year and the imagery of each line describes some attribute of the different moons.

So as well as giving credence and form to my perception of nature and the land as sacred, The White Goddess was the first book to introduce me to an ecological awareness as well as to Irish and Welsh mythology in general and Brigit in particular. The book also enhanced my perception of poetry as a magical language.

After six-form college I went on to university to read English and, having taken the poetry module, wrote a dissertation on ‘The White Goddess in the Poetry of Robert Graves'. I decided to hitch-hike to the island of Mallorca where he lived to visit him in the summer break before my final year and talk to him about it. He was away in London when I arrived but I eventually came across him at the post office and we went back to his study, talked about the dissertation and he showed me his latest poems – a wonderful encounter. I visited many times subsequently but that first meeting as the proverbial snotty-nosed undergraduate was, of course, the most precious.

I fell in love with the village of Deià where he lived: its turquoise-blue sea, mountains rosy in the evening light, the tinkling of bells as the sheep wandered among the olive groves on the hillside going down to the cove, the church perched on the hill at the top of the village which Robert believed was originally the site of a temple to Diana… it seemed like paradise to a girl raised on the flat lands of East Yorkshire, knowing only the great North Sea which was completely different in character to the Mediterranean, being cold and grey and inhospitable.

The hilltop church at Deià



I wasn’t the only person to be attracted to the village by Robert and The White Goddess – I remember in particular an American girl arriving on the rickety bus from Palma one afternoon. As she came down the steps of the rickety old bus, her small brown suitcase fell open and the contents spilled out onto the road – there among her jumbled clothes was the small Everyman copy of the Mabinogion, identical to the one I had at home. I returned to the village after finishing at university and lived there for a few years before going back to England to join my partner in London and have a child. I visited rarely and haven’t been back for over 20 years although I still sometimes dream about it. After a few years in London - not being a city girl - I moved to Wales, inspired again by The White Goddess, and have been here ever since.

Women and poetry

Graves’ Theme is, as I have said, a personal theme which is suited to a hetero-sexual male and leaves rather open to question the role of the woman poet. Woman is not a poet, he declared at one point, “she is either a Muse or she is nothing”! But then he seemed to relent and said that this didn’t mean a woman shouldn’t write poems but that she should write as a woman, “not as if she were an honorary man”. Although good advice this still meant, for him, writing as he thought a woman should be: “A woman who concerns herself with poetry should…either be a silent Muse… or she should be the Muse in a complete sense: she should be in turn Arianrhod, Blodeuedd and the Old Sow of Maenawr Penardd who eats her farrow…She should be the visible moon: impartial, loving, severe, wise”. He thought that domesticity was anathema to the poet and the Muse and that the White Goddess was always ‘the other woman’. As for motherhood: "...if a woman-poet can get a healthy child in exchange for the gift of poetry, why not?" So his view of the Goddess and the woman poet might be said to be rather prescriptive!

Naturally, for all his vision and insight, he couldn’t totally escape being a product of his time, his upbringing and his experiences. He was gracious enough to recognise that one’s relationship with the Goddess was none of his business and for me, what is important is his recognition that the marginalisation and exclusion of the feminine was a cause of great harm and danger to us and the ecosystem of which we are a part, his weaving together of mythology and poetry and his understanding of the magical nature of poetry:

“True poetic practice implies a mind so miraculously attuned and illuminated that it can form words, by a chain of more-than-coincidences, into a living entity – a poem that goes about on its own (for centuries after the author’s death, perhaps) affecting readers with its stored magic…the source of poetry’s creative power is not scientific intelligence, but inspiration…”

So I celebrate The White Goddess and think it deserves more credit than it gets these days. It is perhaps not the best book to read if you want an introduction to Celtic Studies or Celtic Reconstructionism but if you want to explore mythology, poetry and many ancient Irish and Welsh texts in the company of someone with an extensive knowledge of them, a formidable intelligence, poetic vision and iconoclastic ideas, then I recommend it thoroughly.

March and Dewi Sant

Ploughed Field by Mark Fisher

from The Verses of the Months

The month of March, great is the pride of birds,

bitter is the cold wind over the end of the ploughed field;

Mis Mawrth, mawr rhyfic adar,

chwerw oerwynt ar ben talar;

Welsh, c 15th century

Dewi Sant

Mosaic in Westminster Abbey

March 1st, the day of his death, is the feast day of St David or Dewi Sant - the patron saint of Wales. Tradition states that his birth was foretold to his father, Sant, by an angel while he was out hunting one day. The angel prophesied that he would find a stag, a salmon and a hive of bees by the river Teifi. He was told to take these to Maucannus’ monastery where they would be kept for David. In the Latin lives, the interpretation of this is that they signify David’s power over ancient serpents, his wisdom and his abstinence. Linked with this is the story that Patrick wanted to settle in Glyn Rhosyn but was told by an angel that he must, in the words of a cywydd by Ieuan ap Rhydderch, “leave the land which was kept by holy God for blessed Dewi” (gadu’r tir a gadwyd/ O Dduw lân I Ddewi lwyd). Patrick departed in tears but was given the care of Ireland instead.

No-one is sure how David came to be patron saint of Wales but it is recorded in his Lives that he was chosen as the chief saint at the Synod of Brefi. This Synod was attended by the great and good, religious and secular, and it was decided that each of the clergy would preach in turn and the one who could be heard by everybody would become the chief and would be made archbishop. David didn’t attend at first, but after repeated messages and the threat of fasting, he went. None of the others had been able to be heard by the crowd, in spite of standing on a pile of garments. David merely stood upon a handkerchief (or perhaps a shroud) belonging to a young boy he had raised from the dead and the land rose under him, forming the hill in Llanddewi Brefi where the church now stands. He was renowned as a preacher and being raised up, everyone could hear him. A dove sat on his shoulder while he preached at the Synod and doves had taught him his books. Not surprisingly, the Dove is one of his symbols.

In the Armes Prydein or the Prophecy of Britain, an early 10th century Welsh poem from the Book of Taliesin, David is the only saint to be named. The poem relates how the Brythonic people allied themselves with the Scots, Irish and Dublin Vikings and, under the Welsh leaders Cadwallon and Cadwaladr, vanquished the Anglo-Saxons from Britain. The author is thought to have been a member of one of St David’s monasteries so this may be why David is given such prominence. Possibly this poem helped to place him in a leading position in Wales.

Leeks are another symbol of St David and have been associated with Wales since at least the time of Henry VIII. There is a tradition that David told the Welsh soldiers to wear a leek in their hats when they fought a battle against the Saxons and were victorious. Another tradition says that the Black Prince gave them to the Welsh soldiers to wear at the battle of Crécy. (I am sure that I have read an account, possibly in a herbal or medical text, that leeks worn in battle would make the warrior invisible or impervious to injury. As yet I’ve been unable to locate it but if I have remembered correctly, it might explain this use of them. I’ll keep searching.)

When he decides where to settle in Wales, David has an encounter with a prince called Boya which is somewhat reminiscent of Patrick’s confrontation with the druids at Tara in Ireland. It is said that David lit a fire and the smoke encircled the whole of the island, extending even to Ireland. Lighting a fire in this way was a recognised way of staking a claim to land. The Welsh laws call the right to dwell on inherited land dadannudd, the uncovering of the fire, and into comparatively recent times, someone who could build a house overnight, a tŷ unos, and light a fire in it making smoke rise out of the chimney by dawn, would have the right to the land. In Ireland too, the lighting of a fire on the land was a prerequisite to claiming ownership of it.

A new mosaic of St David, by Welsh artist Ifor Davies, at Westminster Cathedral was blessed by Pope Benedict XVI when he visited the UK in September. The stone at the bottom of the mosaic is from Llanddewi Brefi, the spot where the miracle of the rising of the land is supposed to have happened.

The Pope, who had been unable to visit Wales, blessed the mosaic with water from the holy well of St Non, David’s mother, and had this to say about St David:

Saint David was one of the greatest saints of the 6th century, that golden age of saints and missionaries in these isles, and he was thus a founder of the Christian culture which lies at the root of modern Europe. David's preaching was simple yet profound: his dying words to his monks were, 'Be joyful, keep the faith and do the little things'. It is the little things that reveal our love for the one who loved us first and that bind people into a community of faith, love and service. May Saint David's message, in all its simplicity and richness, continue to resound in Wales today, drawing the hearts of its people to renewed love for Christ and his Church.

He ended with a few words of Welsh: Bendith Duw ar bobol Cymru! God bless the people of Wales!

Germaine Greer, writing about the mosaic in the Guardian, was not happy. She lamented that church art is now “feeble, derivative and kitsch” and thought that people “who are capable of the heroic acts of faith required of today's Catholics should not be mocked by being fed such meretricious pap.” I won’t comment on the art (except to say that I’m a sucker for things that sparkle!) but it’s nice to see a young St David with a contemporary face.

There’s a rather lovely Green Man carving in St David’s Cathedral in Pembrokeshire, under one of the choir seats.

And to end, as I've mentioned before, there's a picture of Dewi as a boy with St Non, his mother, in the double window in the church of Llansantffraed in Llanon, alongside Ffraed. (Click on any of these pictures to enlarge them.)





February and an Irish Imbolc poem

St Bride by Margaret Tarrant

                                       

The month of February, a feast is rare,

the spade and the wheel are hard at work...

Mis Chwefrol, anaml ankwyn,

llafurus pal ac olwyn...

The Verses of the Months, Welsh, circa 15th century

 Imbolc

Tasting every food in order

This is what behoves at Imbolc

Washing of hand and feet and head

It is thus I say.

Fromad cach bíd iar n-urd,

issed dlegair i n-Imbulc,

díunnach laime is coissi is cinn,

is amlaid sin atberim.

(From an Irish calendar poem in Hibernica Minora, edited by Kuno Meyer,translation by Kenneth Jackson.)

Urthona: the arts and the sacred

  

I came across Urthona [if you get diverted repeatedly, as I did, to a Dharma Link website, scroll down to the Urthona link] when the editors were doing an issue on Celtic Connections and asked if they could use an article of mine on Brigit. Urthona describes itself as a journal of Buddhism and the arts but has much to offer those who aren't Buddhist but are interested in the arts and the sacred; I think it deserves to be better known than it is.

The name is taken from Blakes's spirit of the Imagination, Urthona, one of the four Zoas. Information in the front of the journal tells us that "In his temporal form Los, Urthona is the archetypal blacksmith who labours in his forge to beat out forms which will awaken mankind from spiritual slumber and remind us that this world is 'all one continued vision of Fancy or Imagination'.

"The journal seeks to present the work of artists and thinkers who:

Express the sacred dimension of the arts in ways which are relevant now.

Embody in their work the unlimited possibilities of human consciousness; its potential for insightful, sympathetic appreciation of nature, humanity and all forms of life.

Illuminate or embody the Buddhist notion of cultural disciplines as a Way, a means towards finding our true nature, that which is boundless and unconditioned.

Critical of the pervasive nihilism of our age, but aware equally of the dangers of falling into fixed systems of metaphysical views, the writers here explore (in the words of poet Peter Abbs) the 'suspended, open, precarious nature of spirituality'."

The current issue on Art, Ecology and Insight I found particularly uplifting and thought-provoking - it filled the day it arrived with beauty and inspiration. I especially enjoyed articles by:

Ratnagarbha on Buddhism, Blake and Deep Ecology

"The ancient view that the entire universe is alive, and that the worlds of mind and matter are not ultimately separate, is at the heart of the new discipline of Deep Ecology. Ratnagarbha discovers that both the cosmology of the Romantic poet William Blake and the world view of Buddhism have much to offer the ecology movement."

Vishvapani on Buddha in the Forest

"Vishvapani, author of a new book on the life of the Buddha, explores the neglected topic of the Buddha's relationship with nature" concluding that "The monks of the Theragatha... express a deep intimacy with the natural world that is born of long years spent outdoors, living beneath the stars and amid the animals and spirits. They don't sentimentalise nature and are all too aware of its perils, discomforts and snares, but neither do they reject it.

This intimacy is also the key to Gautama's changing relationship with the non-human world. he saw through his culture's terror of the wilderness by becoming intimate with his mind and finding within it the roots of terror. Then he was able to become intimate with nature itself.

His lesson to us is this: to heal our relationship with the natural world, we must heal ourselves."

Dhivan on Conscious Surrender to the Beautiful, an introduction to Sangharakshita's The Religion of Art

"In The Religion of Art, Sangharakshita explores the possibility of a unifying vision that embraces both passions [those of the Arts and of  Buddhism with its teaching of a path to liberation and truth] to find the truth in beauty and the beauty in truth." The article quotes Lama Govinda who wrote: Therefore wherever religion is a living force there it finds its natural expression in art, in fact, it becomes art itself - just as art in its highest attainments becomes religon. Art is the measure of the living quality of a religion." [my italics]

Vajradarshini on Ordinary Beauty which explores the Japanese idea of Wabi Sabi

"... this isn't a beauty which lifts us above our everyday experience but the beauty which is within our experience. This is the beauty showing us reality, showing us impermanence, imperfection and insubstantiality."

Eco-artist Ratnadevi on Living on the Edge of Uncertainty

"The explicit intention of many eco-artists is to elicit in the viewer an affinity with nature. It can be argued that this reason for art-making is as old as civilisation itself, with depiction of nature taking the place of the lost immersion in it. Contemporary eco-artists not only want to restore this sense of participation in the natural world, but also attempt to mobilise the desire to preserve and protect it, engendering the spirit of deep ecology. In that they are the brothers and sisters of many indigenous art-makers and ritualists through the ages. Deep ecology seeks a radical change of perception that views nature not from a separate standpoint, but from an embeddedness within it."

Beautifully produced, there are, as always, poems, photos, artwork and reviews as well as articles A feast for the intellect, the senses and the spirit. Well worth a look!