Saint Bridgid's day, and music

From Australia to Alaska, through all the counties that make up the island of Ireland, and across the world where Ireland's sons and daughters have made their homes, you will find churches, schools, hospitals, and children named after Saint Bridgid. Though she’s occasionally called Ireland’s second saint -- second to Saint Patrick, that is -- she is as strong is story and legend and as important to the history of Ireland -- and to the women of Ireland -- as Saint Patrick is.

She grew up in Louth, Ireland's smallest county. It is a place filled with mist and mystic landscapes, these days as much as it was in Bridgid’s firth century AD. It is a home of legends from Ireland’s ancient past, a fitting birthplace for a saint whose family included both Christians and followers of the old ways, and whose own legends as the patron of fire and of poetry would borrow from those ancient stories as well.

The first of February is the feast of Saint Bridgid. In Ireland this is marked as the beginning of spring, the turning toward light after winter’s darkness. While the weather in Ireland does not always go along with springtime ideas, there is a change in the light around the beginning of February, a welcome of bright days on the way.

For that reason, Kathleen Conneely’s recording Coming of Spring is a good one to enjoy at this season. The whistle is Conneely’s instrument, and she employs it beautifully through sets of reels and jigs, with a bit of hornpipe and slip jig thrown in, to share of the life and history of Ireland without speaking a word. Growing up in a family who brought their music over to England with them when they came from Ireland, Conneely has tradition in her family and in her heart, and the wisdom of all that comes through in her playing. All of the fourteen sets are well worth your listening -- and Conneely may have you dancing too if that’s your inclination. Standout tracks include the Bonnie Ann set of reels and the Rosemary Lane set of jigs.

There is wisdom in Cathie Ryan’s take on a hymn to Saint Bridgid, as well. On her album The Farthest Wave, she takes the ancient hymn Gabhaim Molta Brighde and has it both reach back across time and be fully present in today’s world by the clarity of her singing and the spare arrangement of the backing on accordion from Scotland’s Phil Cunningham.

you may also wish to see
Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain

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Ghosts and stories

Halloween is coming up, and it is certainly a time of year when imagination, shared or individual, plays a part.

Someone asked me the other day if I knew any songs about ghosts.

There are whole genres of ghost lover songs in folk traditions, no doubt at least in part a consequence of times not that long past when a person would set out on a journey -- down the road or across the sea -- and never be heard from again. The Bay of Biscay and She Moved Through The Fair come to mind. There are other ghosts in song too, usually of folk who have come to a bad end at some one else’s hand.

There are ghost trains and ghost ships, not to mention ghost cattle herds. The spookiest song with ghosts in it, to me, is called Greenwood Side, also known as Cruel Mother. Details vary through the traditions and I'll let you seek out the story on your own if you've a mind to, but the last verse of the way I learned it always got to me as a kid because of the years of things the woman in the song had to face as punishment for murder (the ghosts of those she murdered were the ones who let her in on this stuff, too). As an adult I’ve thought, on a more hopeful note, that this woman has great faith in the power of forgiveness.

The verse goes

...I’ll be seven years a bird in the wood
seven years a fish in the flood
seven years the tongue in the warning bell
and God save me from the flames of hell.

Update: Gretchen Peters has released a fine version of that song mentioned above. I learned it first from from the singing of Ian and Sylvia Tyson.

Then there's the story told in Wind And Rain (a fine way to hear it is sung in Gaelic and English by Julie Fowlis and Eddi Reader on Julie's album Uam)in which the murdered one's bones turn into a fiddle.

About those ghost cattle herds? Johnny Cash knew about those.

There are other ways to consider the unknown and scarier parts of life in song, though
To take a turn to another train of thought, take a look at

A song which came out of another sort of reflection in a graveyard, Audience Of Souls:

Another way to look at uncertainty, and to celebrate another season: season of grace

A different thought about Ghost Trains

[The photograph, of a twelfth century ruin in Ireland, is copyrighted, and I thank you for respecting that]

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music and connection, continued

This photograph always suggests all sors of music, ideas, and stories to me. Perhaps to you as well?

It is from a place in Louth, Republic of Ireland. The county’s tag line is, after all, land of legend.


you may also wish to see
Music Road: ceol chairlinn: sharing music in winter

Music Road: Road Trip Music: Ohio

Music Road: music and hope: Derry


and Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where travelers offer new insights to the world each Friday

-->If you'd like to support my creative work,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

patrick season: emigration

There's a recurring story in Irish legend in which a person sets out -- usually because they've been banished from the island, community, or family--in a curragh with only the night stars as guide and a knife for tool. No oars, no companions. A curragh is a small fabric framed boat. Having made the night (and day) sea journey to arrive again on land, the person is then able to accomplish great things.



photograph of the Irish Sea off the coast of Louth


you may also wish to see

Music Road: patrick season: music and mist
Music Road: Songs of the Immigrants
Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Songwriter
to explore photographs from many parts of the world, visit Delicious Baby's Photo Friday

aine minogue: winter: a meditation

Winter: a meditation

There’s always a visual component to music, whether it’s the sight of musician at work, what’s going on around you, or some totally imagined landscape that the music suggests, or a combination of all that. Aine Minogue, who plays and composes Celtic music, decided to offer a set of visions to go along with and extend her musical ideas for the winter season.

The eleven tracks on her dvd range from dancers suggesting ancient myths to landscapes both contemporary and those seeming older than time. There are forest scenes at sunset and at sunrise, and scene of snow. There’s the burning fire of the Jezebel carol, which may suggest yule logs or an even older ceremony; there are half glimpsed dancers and half heard song on the journey too, and the familiar Christmas dance melody of Noelle Nouvelle.. All this is led by Minogue’s music on the harp. well supported by fiddle, whistle, cello, and percussion. the ideas and imagery leave space for winter holiday meditation, whatever holiday you may celebrate, and invitation to walk the paths of what you may learn from this season of darkness and season of light.

you may also want to see

Boston Celtic Music Festival , coming up 9 and 10 January

Wilderness Plots: the dvd

a short film about Julie Fowlis and sending good wishes to Julie, who is up for best folk singer of the year at the BBC 2 folk awards. the awards will be announced on 2 February

Saint Bridgid's Day

There’s an accordion band named after her, hundreds of churches, dozens of schools, several colleges, a well, a sports team or two, songs and hymns, and several roads. One of her shoes is in the national museum of Ireland, and she’s got a myspace page. Today, the first of February, is the feast day of Saint Bridgid.

Bridgid was a contemporary of Saint Patrick, and as with the stories about him, over the decades and centuries her life and work have become entwined with legend, both Christian and pagan. She is, among other things, known as the patron saint of poetry, fire, and song, and there’s a cross woven of rushes with a characteristic shape of a square center that’s become a common Irish symbol and is known as Saint Bridgid’s cross. The symbol itself dates back to pre Christian days, as does the celebration of her feast day as the first day of spring in Ireland -- a day that’s more often accompanied by snow and rain than by spring like weather, but which does mark the turing of days from shorter to longer times of daylight.

Bridgid is the patron saint of Kildare, where she founded an abbey. She was born in Louth, where a well bears her name, and founded convents in Roscommon and Armagh, as well as other places. The churches, roads, schools, and sports teams are found, as the saying goes, wherever green is worn, from Australia to the Yukon.

here’s an article commenting on the pagan a Christian stories about Saint Bridgid...and did you know the word for jazz has its origins in Irish?

here, how to weave a Saint Bridgid's cross

Phil Cunnngham on accordion and Cathie Ryan on vocals on the hymn to Saint Bridgid, Gabhaim molta Bhrigide, sung in Irish.