Abbess of Kildare and one of Ireland's three patron saints. Her monastery was a double house of women and men, unusual anywhere in Europe, and a perpetual fire burned there in her honour — tended by nuns for centuries until the Reformation, relit in 1993, and burning still. Her feast falls on Imbolc, the old first day of spring, and the goddess Brigid whose day it was governed poetry, smithcraft and healing. Where one ends and the other begins is a question scholars have never settled.
Worth knowing
Since 2023 her feast has been a public holiday in the Republic — the first Irish public holiday named for a woman.
The same day
This feast falls on Imbolc, one of the four
quarter days of the old Irish year — spring begins.
