SOLAS BHRIDE(Light of Brigid)
by Mike McCormack
NYS AOH Historian Emeritus & NYS AOH History District 6 Councilman
In pre-Christian times, a sacred fire burned in a shrine to the Celtic Goddess Brighid (Breeje), a triple deity who was daughter of the father God, Dagda and was the goddess of fertility, metal smithing and learning. The shrine was called Cil Dara, “Church of the Oak”. Oak was a sacred wood to the Druids. Priestesses maintained that ritual fire to Brighid for fire was the manifestation of knowledge. The area around Cil Dara later became known as County Kildare.
In the sixth century, the daughter of a chieftain was named Brigid in honor of the goddess and she grew to become one of the priestesses at the shrine. She later became a convert to Christ, and converted all the other priestesses who then turned the shrine into a monastery and church. She founded Ireland’s first order of nuns, established a center of learning and continued the custom of keeping the fire alight to represent the new light of Christianity. This holy daughter of God eventually became revered as the inspiration of poetry, song and learning and was canonized by the Catholic church as Saint Brigid – the Mary of the Gael.
When Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis) a Welsh Chronicler, visited Kildare in the 12th century, he reported that the fire was still burning and being tended by nuns of St. Brigid. It survived up to the sixteenth century when the Monastery was destroyed and the flame was extinguished by the forces of the Crown. No longer did the flame of knowledge burn at Kildare.
In 1993, the town of Kildare hosted a conference called: “Brigid: Prophetess, Earthwoman, Peacemaker.”. To open the conference, Sister Mary Teresa Cullen, then leader of the Brigidine Sisters, kindled a symbolic flame in Kildare’s Market Square. The flame was hailed as appropriate for the theme, the time and the town. At the close of the conference, the flame was brought into the Brigidine Sisters Center where it has been maintained ever since. Each year, the flame was returned to the town square on February first for Feile Bhride, “Feast of Brigid”, where it remained alight for the entire month.
The Kildare County Council commissioned an artist to create a sculpture to permanently house the flame in the town square. He created a tall twisted column of oak, which flourishes at the top into large oak leaves, nestled into which there is a bronze acorn cup holding the perpetual flame. The use of oak symbolizes both the earlier Druidic worship of the oak tree or “Dara”, the namesake of Kildare, and the Christian beliefs of St. Brigid. It is surely an apt and fitting tribute to honor this historic flame and saint.
On St. Brigid's Day, 1 February 2006, the sculpture was permanently moved to its new location in the town square and the special flame, tended in the Center for the previous fourteen years, was carried to its new place atop the sculpture. Then Irish President, Mary McAleese, opened the dedication ceremony in the Market Square saying she was "…pleased to present to the people of Ireland and the diaspora beyond, a flame that once more shines out from Kildare, with the hope it would once again be a beacon of light, hope, and peace for all the world." There it burns to this day as a symbol of a remarkable saint and a world-wide attraction for tourists to remember.