be as the beasts who live in caves and holes, St. 

 or as the dark Fomor who have their habita- Bridget 

 tions in cloud and wind and the wilderness, shores 

 They refer to one whom the bards and singers 

 revered as mistress of their craft, she whose 

 breath was a flame, and that flame song : she 

 whose secret name was fire and whose inmost 

 soul was radiant air, she therefore who was 

 the divine impersonation of the divine thing 

 she stood for, Poetry. 



' St. Bride of the Kindly Fire,' of whom 

 one may hear to-day as 'oh, just Bhrighde 

 min Muim (gentle St. Bride the Foster 

 Mother), she herself an no other,' is she, 

 that ancient goddess, whom our ancestors saw 

 lighting the torches of sunrise on the brows of 

 hills, or thrusting the quenchless flame above 

 the horizons of the sea : whom the Druids 

 hailed with hymns at the turn of the year, 

 when, in the season we call February, the 

 firstcomers of the advancing Spring are to be 

 seen on the grey land or on the grey wave or 

 by the grey shores : whom every poet, from 

 the humblest wandering singer to Oisin of the 

 Songs, from Oisin of the Songs to Angus Og 

 on the rainbow or to Midir of the Under-world, 

 blessed, because of the flame she put in the 

 heart of poets as well as the red life she put 

 in the flame that springs from wood and peat. 



79 



