This was a facebook post from a friend, that made me look into it more.
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Looking further into it, I found out that it involved St Brigid. Which I then found this story;
Comes from Bard
Brigid
Overview:
The character of Brigid is extremely interesting in that she seems to have been both a pagan goddess and a Christian saint, with a smooth transition over time. As a goddess she was the patron of healing, crafts and poetry. Although venerated all over Ireland, Brigid had special territorial power over Leinster. She was an expert in prophecy and she was invoked by women in childbirth. This fertility aspect of her character is strong, and her pagan feast day was the feast of Imbolc, which was a season al fertility feat celebrating the lactating of ewes.
The character of Brigid is extremely interesting in that she seems to have been both a pagan goddess and a Christian saint, with a smooth transition over time. As a goddess she was the patron of healing, crafts and poetry. Although venerated all over Ireland, Brigid had special territorial power over Leinster. She was an expert in prophecy and she was invoked by women in childbirth. This fertility aspect of her character is strong, and her pagan feast day was the feast of Imbolc, which was a season al fertility feat celebrating the lactating of ewes.
Stories of Brigid:
The Christian story of Brigid tells of her growing up in a pagan, perhaps druidic house. She was surrounded by magic, being fed by the milk of Otherworld cows. Her father was enraged at his daughter’s profession of Christianity. And was even more angry when s he said she wished to live a celibate life tending to the poor and needy. Brigid is admired for her strength in standing up to her Father, and she became the first Irish nun. In spite of her celibacy, Brigid remained strongly connected to images of fertility. She had a food store that never decreased, and from her cloak she could provide a lake of milk. A story tells of how she and a small band of followers wished to establish a convent for themselves somewhere in Kildare. Brigid sent a request to the local, pagan, land owner asking for a portion of land on which to build this convent. The reply came back that she could have whatever land her cloak covered when laid on the ground. Not daunted by this rebuff, Brigid laid her cloak on the ground and it grew to a size big enough for a convent and a substantial farm besides. The Brigid’s cross which is so popular in Irish country homes today came into being when Brigid visited a sick man in her locality. While she tended him he asked her the nature of her Christian God, and while telling him the story of Christ, Brigid picked up the rushes from the floor and started to weave them into a cross, fastening the points together. The sick man asked what she was doing. She began to explain the cross, and as she talked, his delirium quieted and he questioned her with growing interest. Through her weaving, he converted and was baptized at the point of death. Since then, the cross of rushes has been venerated in Ireland.
The Christian story of Brigid tells of her growing up in a pagan, perhaps druidic house. She was surrounded by magic, being fed by the milk of Otherworld cows. Her father was enraged at his daughter’s profession of Christianity. And was even more angry when s he said she wished to live a celibate life tending to the poor and needy. Brigid is admired for her strength in standing up to her Father, and she became the first Irish nun. In spite of her celibacy, Brigid remained strongly connected to images of fertility. She had a food store that never decreased, and from her cloak she could provide a lake of milk. A story tells of how she and a small band of followers wished to establish a convent for themselves somewhere in Kildare. Brigid sent a request to the local, pagan, land owner asking for a portion of land on which to build this convent. The reply came back that she could have whatever land her cloak covered when laid on the ground. Not daunted by this rebuff, Brigid laid her cloak on the ground and it grew to a size big enough for a convent and a substantial farm besides. The Brigid’s cross which is so popular in Irish country homes today came into being when Brigid visited a sick man in her locality. While she tended him he asked her the nature of her Christian God, and while telling him the story of Christ, Brigid picked up the rushes from the floor and started to weave them into a cross, fastening the points together. The sick man asked what she was doing. She began to explain the cross, and as she talked, his delirium quieted and he questioned her with growing interest. Through her weaving, he converted and was baptized at the point of death. Since then, the cross of rushes has been venerated in Ireland.
Conclusion:
Brigid as a female was a gentle, cultured woman, with strong powers of healing and providing. In her guise as a Christian woman she had the strength of her convictions and pursued her aims, but in a quiet, determined way, and not with harshness or stridency. She is surrounded by magic and mystery, and it is impossible to say where paganism stops and Christianity begins.
Brigid as a female was a gentle, cultured woman, with strong powers of healing and providing. In her guise as a Christian woman she had the strength of her convictions and pursued her aims, but in a quiet, determined way, and not with harshness or stridency. She is surrounded by magic and mystery, and it is impossible to say where paganism stops and Christianity begins.
Lastly the best that I could find was Wikipedia. This is a cut and paste of it.
Brigid
Brigit, Brigid or Bríg (/ˈbrɪdʒɪd,
It has been suggested that Brigid is a continuation of the Indo-European dawn goddess.[1] She is associated with the spring season, fertility, healing, poetry and smithcraft. Cormac's Glossary, written in the 10th century by Christian monks, says that Brigid was "the goddess whom poets adored" and that she had two sisters: Brigid the healer and Brigid the smith.[2][3] This suggests she may have been a triple deity.[4]
Saint Brigid shares many of the goddess's attributes and her feast day on 1 February was originally a pagan festival (Imbolc) marking the beginning of spring. It has thus been argued that the saint is a Christianization of the goddess.[5]
Overview
In Cath Maige Tuireadh, Bríg invents keening, a combination of weeping and singing, while mourning for her son Ruadán, after he is slain while fighting for the Fomorians. She is credited in the same passage with inventing a whistle used for night travel.[8]
Brigid is considered the patroness of poetry, smithing, medicine, arts and crafts, cattle and other livestock, sacred wells, serpents (in Scotland) and the arrival of early spring.[9][10] In the Christian era, nineteen nuns at Kildare tended a perpetual flame for the Saint, which is widely believed to be a continuation of a pre-Christian practice of women tending a flame in her honour.[11][12] Her festival day, Imbolc is traditionally a time for weather prognostication:
Thig an nathair as an toll
Là donn Brìde, Ged robh trì troighean dhen t-sneachd Air leac an làir. |
The serpent will come from the hole
On the brown Day of Bríde, Though there should be three feet of snow On the flat surface of the ground.[9] |
In her English retellings of Irish myth, Lady Augusta Gregory describes Brigit as "a woman of poetry, and poets worshipped her, for her sway was very great and very noble. And she was a woman of healing along with that, and a woman of smith's work, and it was she first made the whistle for calling one to another through the night."[13]
A possible British and continental counterpart Brigantia[citation needed] seems to have been the Celtic equivalent of the Roman Minerva and the Greek Athena [14] goddesses with very similar functions and apparently embodying the same concept of elevated state, whether physical or psychological.[citation needed]
She is the goddess of all things perceived to be of relatively high dimensions such as high-rising flames, highlands, hill-forts and upland areas; and of activities and states conceived as psychologically lofty and elevated, such as wisdom, excellence, perfection, high intelligence, poetic eloquence, craftsmanship (especially blacksmithing), healing ability, druidic knowledge and skill in warfare. In the living traditions, whether seen as goddess or saint, she is largely associated with the home and hearth and is a favorite of both Polytheists and Catholics. A number of these associations are attested in Cormac's Glossary.[citation needed]
Brigid and Saint Brigid
In the Middle Ages, the goddess Brigid was syncretized with the Christian saint of the same name. According to medievalist Pamela Berger, Christian "monks took the ancient figure of the mother goddess and grafted her name and functions onto her Christian counterpart," St. Brigid of Kildare.[5]
St. Brigid is associated with perpetual, sacred flames, such as the one maintained by 19 nuns at her sanctuary in Kildare, Ireland. The sacred flame at Kildare was said by Giraldus Cambrensis and other chroniclers to have been surrounded by a hedge, which no man could cross. Men who attempted to cross the hedge were said to have been cursed to go insane, die or be crippled.[11][12]
The tradition of female priestesses tending sacred, naturally occurring eternal flames is a feature of ancient Indo-European pre-Christian spirituality. Other examples include the Roman goddess Vesta, and other hearth-goddesses, such as Hestia.
Both the goddess and saint are associated with holy wells, at Kildare and many other sites in the Celtic lands. Well dressing, the tying of clooties to the trees next to healing wells, and other methods of petitioning or honoring Brigid still take place in some of the Celtic lands and the diaspora.[15][16]
Festivals
Saint Brigid's feast day is on 1 February celebrated as St Brigid's Day in the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and by the Anglican Communion. The Gaelic festival coincides with Imbolc, which is a pagan festival associated with the goddess Brigid.[17]
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