Just over a year ago, on 1 February, the Irish population gathered, with bundles of straw “Brigid crosses”, to celebrate the first formalised feast day of Saint Brigid, patron and “mother saint” of Ireland. It was the first time the country had dedicated a public holiday to a woman, and festivals opened as schools were closed. Trinity College Dublin even installed four portrait busts of women in its Old Library: scientist Rosalind Franklin, dramatist Augusta Gregory, mathematician Ada Lovelace and feminist rights activist Mary Wollstonecraft. This marked the first time that women had ever been honoured in the barrel-ceilinged colonnade, which, since 1743, had exclusively housed 40 portrait busts of men.
I only heard about this saint, and her celebrated feast day, when I read Emma Dabiri’s powerful essay Disobedient Bodies, which delves into the patriarchy’s impact on women’s beauty. Dabiri noted that Brigid was a woman who lived –in the fifth and sixth century – on her own terms, fought against forced marriage, brewed beer from lakes and cared for the land. While Dabiri was taught about Brigid at school in the 80s, it was never in this light. So what was her story?
