Brigid the Irish Goddess of Hearth and Warmth

Brigid in cold cast bronze from Veronese Design, standing about three and a half inches. Small enough for a kitchen windowsill, which is arguably where she belongs.

She is the one who got away with it. Sanas Cormaic, Cormac's Glossary, attributed to Cormac mac Cuilennain, the bishop-king of Cashel who died in 908, lists three Brigids, all daughters of the Dagda: one the goddess of poets, one of healing, one of smithcraft. Poetry, medicine and the forge, which is to say inspiration, the body, and making things out of fire. The same three keep turning up wherever she does.

Then there is Saint Brigid of Kildare, whose feast day is the first of February, which was already Imbolc, the first day of spring in the Irish reckoning. The saint shares the goddess's name, her date, her fire and her associations with healing and livestock and holy wells. The popular reading, going back to the Victorians, is that the monks did not so much replace her as file the paperwork. Be aware that specialists actually argue about this, and several current ones think the continuity has been overstated; the honest position is that it is a contested reading rather than a settled fact. What is not contested is the fire. Gerald of Wales, writing in the twelfth century, describes nineteen nuns at Kildare keeping a perpetual fire for her inside a hedge no man was allowed to cross. That is not a normal Christian arrangement.

Keep her where something is being made or mended. A kitchen, a workbench, a desk, a studio. She is a working goddess rather than a contemplative one.

Good to Know

Approximately 3.5 inches tall. Cold cast bronze by Veronese Design. Cold cast bronze means real bronze powder blended into resin and cast, rather than resin on its own. It is why the piece has weight in the hand and a surface that reads closer to metal than to plastic. Resin chips on a hard floor, so keep it back from the edge of a shelf.

Try It With

The Imbolc collection is where she comes into her own, at the start of February. White sage or a juniper bundle for the hearth, and Hekate if you are building a shelf of goddesses with real scholarship behind them. More in home decor.