Macha, Brighid, The Ancient Goddess of Ireland

The Goddess Fires at Candlemas

Notes on the Poem.

by Jani Farrell-Roberts, a woman of Ulster,

Who was raised with the rebel songs, whose mother's father was born on Falls Road.

Over the ages our mental picture of the Goddess has evolved to meet our changing needs - and in particular the changing needs and status of womenfolk.

LINES 1-9

In the days of hunter-gathering and in the early days of agriculture, the prevalent divine image seems to have been that of the Goddess of fertility and of harvest. In Ulster this Goddess was known as Macha. Macha was also the Sun, warming the earth, making it fertile, bringing us our food ("mast" meant the food of both humans and animals). In other places the Sun Goddess was known as Epona. In this time the Goddess shone in her own right as the Sun, - and so too did the women stand in their own right without need for men to give them status.

(This for me is also reflected in the customs of the hunter-gatherer Aboriginal Tribes of Central Australia, where I once lived. There, in customs formed in similar economic circumstances to those prevailing in the early days of Macha, women and men have their own sacred laws and are of equal status.)

The kings of Ulster in what seem to be the oldest legends had to honour the rights of women. They had to pledge that the harvest (mast) should be provided every year, that there should be no lack of supplies to the women cloth dyers and that no women should die in child birth. Women could also be the ruler. A legend about Macha of the Red Hair told how she defeated the king's son to become the ruler herself.

The memory of Macha is still alive in Ulster. Armagh is named after hills dedicated to the Goddess Macha. An image of Macha is still preserved in its cathedral. Epona who was similarly imaged, may be depicted in the images of a running white horse found cut in the turf on English chalk hills

LINES 10-32

The story of how Macha outraced the King's horses then cursed the men of Ulster is from an ancient Irish legend known as "Pangs of the Men of Ulster." This is part of the preamble to Ireland's epic saga the "Tain". This story arose around the time when the ancient Goddess was being challenged in her role by the rising class of warrior Celtic men. Macha demonstrates in it that she is still supreme in speed, magic and skill but the very fact that a king could force her to race shows that her position in society (and that of women) was becoming weaker.

LINE 25 - 32

She was made to share some of her female knowledge with men by being forced into giving birth in public. The curse suggests that taking over female knowledge (and taking from the women the respect they are due as mothers) will weaken the men. The time given for men to feel weak is roughly equivalent to the length of a menstruation period.

LINE 41-42

The male warriors now were collecting the severed heads of enemies and would sleep with a head placed between their thighs in a crude imitation of the role of a woman in childbirth - they may have seen this as giving them than the power of the mothers.

LINES 45

Women often had to fight in the wars. They needed a Goddess of the Battlefield as did the men (thus their talk of heads being "the mast of Macha) - and so grew the myth of the Morrigan into which the kinder harvest Goddess Macha was subsumed as part of a triple Goddess with her two sisters, Badb and Morrigan. In Britain she was probably Morgan. The Morrigan however came to be hated by men who dreaded the female power she represented - so men tended to depict her as a hag - or as three hags (perhaps as reflected in Shakespeare's Macbeth).

LINE 46

But in the old sagas her role is much more that of the healer of the wounded and of the taker of the spirits of the dead into the next world. For example, Macha is depicted in these myths as the Sacred Cow whose milk is an antidote to the poison of weapons. She had become the Mother on the Battlefield.

LINE 47-48

The Morrigan does not normally use the normal war weapons of which the Gods were so proud, but instead uses the powers of magic. These powers were usually deployed to defeat the plans of the men of war, to trick them into doing the will of the Goddess, to demoralise the armies or to force an army to kill its own men. She never fought alongside the men as far as I can see.

LINE 49-50

Irish myths of this period are full of accounts of Goddesses that have been tamed - and even raped. The Goddess Tlachtga was pack-raped by the three sons of a man she had gone to in order to learn magic - and she then died giving birth to male warriors. The Goddesses are described as the wives or sisters of Gods and as inferior to these Gods. In one story Macha is demoted to being the wife of Nemed and is powerless to prevent the slaughter that she has foreseen. As part of the Morrigan she is of even lower status as a daughter of the son of the god Neid rather than his consort. This demotion probably went along with the lower social status of women at this time. Some say women lost their status as mothers partly because men had a great difficulty in coming to terms with their own fertility. All women knew who were their own children - but the only way for men to be certain of who were their children was to take away the freedom of women to move around and love whom they will.

LINES 51-57

Brigit, or Brighid or Bride, then replaces the earlier image of the triple Goddess of the battle field. This image is more appropriate for an artistic society where Bards sung at courts. The three aspects of Brigid are all known as Brigit . They are Brigit, Goddess of Poets; Brigit , Goddess of Smithwork and Brigit, Goddess of Healing.

LINE 58

Her fame becomes international - as needed by a more interlocked international society - that has to defend itself against more widespread dangers such as that posed by the legions of Rome. The Brigantes of Gaul called themselves after her sons. Julius Caesar called her the "Gaulish Minerva".

LINE 62

Brigit is not just the White Mare and Cow. She is also the Crow, mistress of foretelling, and the Serpent. The Serpent with its shedding of its skin, was for long a very sacred image signifying the circle of life. When St Patrick is said to have driven all snakes from island, this is a boast that he has driven from Ireland the power of Brigit. (Likewise in England St George kills the serpent-like dragon.)

LINES 63- 64

Brigit as the Sun Goddess was honoured at sanctuaries where priestesses minded an everlasting flame. Brigit was also linked to the oak - a Sacred Oak stood by the fire sanctuary.

LINE 64

The anti-war role of the Goddess continued at this sanctuary. All weapons of war were banned from the vicinity of the Sacred Oak. It also became a boast of the sanctuary that Brigit had forced the dismantling of a nearby warlike centre Dun Ailinne "Ailinn's proud citadel has perished along with its warlike hosts. Great is the victorious Brigit"......

LINE 67

Brigit's fire sanctuary was in the City of Brigit now renamed Kildare in honour of her sacred oak (from Cill Dara meaning the Church of Oak ) Kildare remained a major spiritual centre for centuries after the arrival of Christianity. From it Brigit was said to rule the women, leaving the men to Patrick. Brigit was declared the patron saint of Kildare while Patrick became that of Armagh. Today there are many more places named after Brigit in Ireland than there are named after Patrick.

LINE 65

After the rise of Christianity in Ireland, Brigid was even said to have been made a Bishop - that is Christian monks in their accounts of Irish history accorded her a rank that made her not a Goddess but a priestess with power equal to that of the Christian authorities. She was reported to be frequently visited by bishops and to appoint the local bishop. This probably reflects the high power of the Abbess and Nuns who seemingly took over the role of her high priestess and priestesses (or who were the same women with a new title). These stories of female bishops show that women in the name of the Goddess had a higher sacred role here than in any other part of Christianity.

LINE 65 to 67.

The Kildare nuns tended the everlasting flame of Brigit while banning the sight of the flame from all men - as had Brigit's priestesses. Their abbess also kept the ancient anti-war aspect of the Goddess alive for among her titles was "She who turned back the tide of war." It was only about 500 years later that the fall of the Abbess from power was marked in the horrid ancient fashion also suffered by Goddesses by her being raped by a soldier in 1132 to render her unfit for office so she might be replaced by a woman chosen by the local king.. But the fires of Brigit in Kildare carried on being tended into the 13th Century. When in 1220 the Papal envoy Henry of London ordered the extinction of the fire, the enraged population forced the Bishop to order the relighting of the flames. This was not long after the English pope Adrian IV had granted Ireland to England.

Although the sanctuary and convent of Brigit at Kildare survived until 1540-41 when Henry VIII closed the monasteries, images of Christ's mother Mary showed her having a crushed serpent beneath her feet - i.e. to have triumphed over Brigit and the old magic. But in reality Mary took on aspects of Brigit and became the protective female spirit to whom people liked to pray, asking her to intercede for them with the all powerful and somewhat forbidding judgmental God.

LINE 70

Female heads at one time were a favourite trophy for male warriors. Some 7th century accounts depict the women as being forced to battle as warriors for the kings. The initiation ritual for kings of Ulster came to include the slaying of a white mare, the emblem of Macha. The king had to bathe in and drink of the blood of this mare.

LINES 71-73

The status of women at this time was depicted in an account of the 7th Century Saint Adamnan entitled Cain Adamnain (The Law of Adamnan) in which pre-Christian and Christian beliefs are melded and mothers are shown as powerful. In this story Ronnat, the mother of Adamnan, tells him of his duties; "you should free women for me from encounter, from camping, from fighting, from wounding, from slaying, from the bondage of the cauldron." They go together to view a battlefield where the bodies of women lie heaped. Ronnat commands him to raise one of these from the dead. He raised Smirgat, wife of the king of the Lunigni of Tara, who immediately binds him: " Well now, Adamnan, to thee henceforward it is given to free the women of the Western world. Neither drink nor food shall go into your mouth until women have been freed by thee." His mother then, to make sure he keeps this binding, puts a chain around his neck and a flintstone in his mouth. When he still had not succeeded after 8 months he is instead locked inside a chest. After several years of this, he is freed and goes to the kings to free the women - who at first refuse saying they will kill anyone who says that women should not be "in everlasting bondage to the brink of Doom" But Adamnan instead threatens the kings and gets his way.

But in return the Law of Adamnan lists the payments the women must make to the church (LINE 75). Queens were to deliver horses every three months and others tithes of harvest or of money. If they failed to deliver, the saint threatened "the offspring ye bear shall decay." In another story an angel instructs Adamnan to establish a law in Ireland and Britain "for the sake of the mother of each one." This echoes the plea made by Macha to the king of Ulster because "a mother bore each one of you."

LINES 78 - 88

Brigit has had a long association with the festival of Imbulc. On this day, the first of the Celtic spring, she was said to "breathe life into the mouth of the dead winter." As the serpent Goddess, she was also linked to the serpent. An old poem stated; "Today is the day of Bride, The Serpent shall come from the hole." An effigy of the serpent was often honoured in the ceremonies of this day.

(Author's note - in this account I am greatly indebted to Mary Condren for sharing her research in her highly recommendable book : "The Serpent and the Goddess: Women religion and power in Celtic Ireland", Harper Collins 1989.)

To my earlier shorter Samhain version

END

By Jani Farrell- Roberts - c98 Imbulc.

Notes. Samhain is the feast at the end of the Celtic year. It is now more commonly known as Halloween. Macha's curse is from an ancient Irish legend known as "Pangs of the Men of Ulster." This is part of the preamble to Ireland's epic saga the "Tain". (Also "The Serpent and the Goddess: Women religion and power in Celtic Ireland" by Mary Condren, Harper Collins 1989.)

An image of Macha is preserved in the cathedral in Armagh. She was the female aspect of the Godhead for many. The horse was an emblem of the sun goddess - it seems she could have been a celtic Epona. Later she became one of the triple Goddess, the Morrigan, with her two sisters, Badb and Morrigan. In Britain she was probably Morgan. As a war goddess she did not participate in battle but rather in curing the wounded, in demoralizing or confusing the male armies.

Brighid was also seen as a triple Goddess - of poetry, of healing and of smithwork. One of her main symbols was that of the serpent. (Thus Patrick was said by Christians to have driven the serpent from Ireland.) However, after the rise of Christianity in Ireland, Brigid became Saint Brigid and it was her nuns that tended the everlasting flame kept at Kildare - the original symbol of a sun goddess. Her feastday is Imbolc, February 1st, a major feast of the Celtic year.