St Brigid of Kildare

Brigid stands with Patrick and Columba among the three chief saints of Ireland. According to tradition she was born of a Christian slave mother in the generation after Patrick's mission, consecrated herself to God as a young woman, and founded at Kildare — the 'church of the oak' — a great double monastery of nuns and monks that became one of the spiritual and cultural centres of early Ireland. Her hagiographies, written a century and more after her death, overflow with stories of open-handed generosity: Brigid giving away her father's sword to a leper, her stores of butter and ale multiplying for guests, her cloak spread wide. Historians caution that reliable details of her life are few and that later legend absorbed older Irish motifs; her cult, however, is ancient and vast, and her woven rush cross still marks Irish homes. The Irish called her 'Mary of the Gael.'