St Brigid’s Cross, Tully…

…Pictured at the cottage near Tully Castle

 

“I would like an abundance of peace. I would like full vessels of charity. I would like rich treasures of mercy. I would like cheerfulness to preside over all.”

– St. Brigid of Kildare (451 – 523)

 

 

Image © Copyright Kenneth Allen and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Sláinte! Forty Shades of Red

Brigid – Ireland’s red-haired saint – was one of history’s liberated women.

Everyone knows that in Ireland one will encounter “forty shades of green.” Lesser realized is that another band of the spectrum also occurs in a multitude of hues: Red. While the former abounds in the lush verdant landscape, the latter crowns the heads of more than 420,000 Irish men, women and children.

Ranging in hue from strawberry blonde, burnt orange and bright copper to rich auburn and deep burgundy, red is the rarest natural hair color in humans and occurs in hardly more than one percent of the world’s population. In Ireland, however, the percentage jumps to 10 percent.

It is no wonder, then, that the ancient Irish divine pantheon included a red-haired goddess. Her name was Brid. According to myth, Brid was born full-grown at sunrise in a house ablaze with light. A fiery column reached from her flame-red curls into the heavens. Beside the cottage flowed a stream whose waters had power to cure. On its banks grew healing plants. In the pasture grazed a red-eared cow whose sweet milk never ran dry. Brid, the goddess of fire, was the patroness of hearth and home, smiths and forges, healers and herbs, poets and language…

irishamerica.com St Brigid of Ireland