Happy St. Bridget's Day!

To mark the day, here's an interesting blog post by one of my colleagues in UCD.

https://ucdculturalheritagecollections.com/2025/01/23/a-crown-of-lighted-candles/

I had somehow never heard of "Biddy Boys" before, but I already want to revive them.

St. Bridget's Day has become a much bigger phenomenon in Ireland recently, especially with the introduction of the bank holiday. This is a wonderful thing. It's true that contemporary Ireland has big difficulties with celebrating a Christian saint, so it does it's best to repackage her as a pagan goddess or some kind of feminist symbol. What the heck. I've always been inclined to think that any festival is better than no festival, unless it's celebrating pure evil. The theme of this year's "Brigit Festival" is "celebrating women", and I can certainly get behind that, even if I might celebrate women differently (that is, celebrating their femininity and their glorious differences from men, as well as all their achievements in arts, culture, science, and so on).

My favourite poem that mentions St. Bridget's Day is this wonderful translation by Frank O'Connor of a famous old Gaelic poem by Anthony Raftery, "the last of the wandering bards". O'Connor's version has a marvellous vernal gusto it, that seems to mirror the return of life to the winter-wearied world. Of course, St. Bridget's Day is traditionally the first day of spring in Ireland.

As with all my favourite poems, lines from this one frequently come into my mind unbidden. Generally, it's the very first words "Now with St. Bride's Day the days will go longer", and I think of it whenever I hope things are on the up in some way or other.

"I give you my word that the heart in my rises" is a wonderful line, and there's an immense poignancy in the phrase: "Could I but stand in the heart of my people". I'm increasingly of the view that "nationalism" is a stupid and even objectional word. It's like having a formal term for the social philosophy that people should wear clothes, or that children should be innocent, or that human beings should occasionally laugh. To be a member of a people has been so much the universal experience of humankind that it was a very crafty and nasty trick to claim that this idea first came into currency among German intellectuals in the nineteenth century. (Yes, the poet is talking about his local people here, rather than his nation, but we tend to have concentric circles of "peoples". Globalism and international wants to eliminate them all.)

Anyway, here it is. I could only find the Frank O'Connor version in one place on the internet, and there were some significant differences from how I remembered it. I've "corrected" it to my own recollection of it, unapologetically. The poetry of the place-names in it is also very beautiful.

Now with the springtime the days will grow longer,

And after St. Bride’s day my sail I’ll let go,

I'll put my mind to it and never will linger 

Till I find myself back in the County Mayo

'Tis in Claremorris I’ll stop the first evening,

And at Balla beneath it I’ll first take the floor;

I’ll go to Kiltimagh and have a month’s peace there, 

And that’s not two miles from Ballinamore. 

I give you my word that the heart in me rises 

As when the wind rises and all the mists go, 

Thinking of Carra and Gallen beneath it, 

Scahaveela and all the wide plains of Mayo; 

Killeadan’s the village where everything pleases, 

Of berries and all kinds of fruit there's no lack, 

And could I but stand in the heart of my people 

Old age would drop from me and youth would come back.

My own poem on St. Bridgit is one of my better efforts and got some traction last year.