226 



lighted, and continued to bum until the suppression of the monastery 

 by Henry the eighth.* 



Cambrensis says the fire was kept up day and night in the fire- 

 house of Kildare, and yet the ashes never increased. His cu- 

 riosity being excited by this account, Holinshed went to the place, 

 '* where," says he, " I did see such a monument, like a vault, which 

 to this daie they call the fire-house." A part of this small stone- 

 roofed building, which was originally twenty feet square, still 

 remains, and is always pointed out as the fire-house of St. 

 Bridget. 



The perpetual fire was tended by vestals, in Irish called Breoc- 

 huidh, Brioghidh, or Brighia, that is, fire-keepers. The Breoghidh 

 or Inghean an Dagha, the daughters of fire, as they were frequently 

 styled, were often women of the highest birth, the daughters of chief- 

 tains. -f- St. Brighid is said to have lived in the fifth century, and that 

 she and her nuns were the immediate successors of the Druidic 

 vestals. J She is equally venerated in Scotland as in Ireland. At Aber- 

 nethy her relics received extravagant homage ; by her name was 

 sworn one of their most solemn oaths ; and on the evening of her 

 festival many ceremonies of a most strange druidical nature were 

 performed both there and in the Hebrides. So prized were her 

 remains, that the Irish of Ulster would not allow that they rested at 

 Kildare, but insisted that Down-Patrick had the honour of being 

 her burial place; whilst the Picts zealously maintained that her 

 bones reposed at Abernethy, which had been consecrated and made 

 over to her by one of their kings.§ 



* Ware's Antiquities, II. p. 237. 



f Anthologia Hibemia, III. pp. 241 — 321. 



J Ledwich's Antiquities of Inland. Grose's Antiquities of Ireland, I. p. 25. 



J Macpherson on the Antiquities of Scotland, p. 218. The Druidesses are said to have been 



