Got Milk?: The Food Miracles of St. Brigit of Kildare

Kerry Noonan

Published in Brigit: Sun of Womanhood, ed by Patricia Monaghan & Michael

McDermott, Goddess Ink Press, 2013

Oiche Shamhna gan bía Samhain Eve without foodOiche Nollag Mór gan arán Christmas Night without breadOiche Fheile Bríde gan im St. Brigit’s Eve without butterIs é sin an gearán tinn That is a sorry complaint (O Catháin 1995: 12).

St. Brigit of Kildare once blessed water for a sick woman,

which then took on the flavor of whatever the woman desired,

including milk; when caught short by visitors to her monastery,

Brigit’s cows could be milked three times in one day to make food

for the guests; a small amount of Brigit’s butter miraculously

fed many guests; when St. Brigit wanted to give honey to a

beggar, honey appeared within her house. These are just a

sampling of some of the miracles performed by St. Brigit,

chronicled in the several accounts of her life written in the

centuries after her death. When examining the many miracles

attributed to Brigit of Kildare in these popular accounts, the

predominance of miracles dealing with food or food-producing

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animals is striking, especially when compared to the Lives of

other Irish saints or those of other contemporary female saints

from continental Europe. What can this tell us about Brigit, both

the 5th – 6th century Irish saint and the older Celtic goddess of

the same name, and about ancient Irish culture?

The Vita Prima of St. Brigit, a Life of the Irish saint written

in Latin sometime between the 7th and 9th centuries, describes an

incident in which Brigit and her nuns visit Bishop Ibor during

Lent in order to obtain some grain. However, Ibor has no food to

offer them except pork and dry bread, presenting the nuns with a

quandary: should they obey the rules of hospitality and eat the

pork set in front of them, although it is forbidden to them

during Lent, or should they obey the rules of the Lenten fast and

refuse the meat, although this might offend their host? Brigit

chooses to eat the pork and not offend their host. Several of

her nuns choose to abstain from it, and their pork turns into

serpents on their plates. Upon seeing this, Brigit, Ibor and the

nuns fast and pray, and the serpents turn into pure white bread,

which is then used for the Eucharist.

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What are we to make of this episode? It tells us something

about the politics of Irish guest and host relations,

particularly within and between monasteries, as described by Lisa

Bitel in Isle of the Saints (Bitel 1990). It implies that Brigit set

Irish hospitality customs over Christian observance, and was

rewarded by God for it. But it also illustrates St. Brigit's

concern with food -- with hospitality and the female realm of

food provision and processing.

The food miracles of St. Brigit, between a third to a half

of the miracles recorded in her various Lives, are a unique

indication of her sanctity, and are essential to who and what

Brigit is. While many of them are direct descendants of the

miracles performed by Christ in the Gospels, such as turning

water into other beverages or multiplying existing food supplies

to feed a multitude, others do not fit so neatly into this

category. Caroline Walker Bynum, in Holy Feast, Holy Fast, discusses

the religious significance of food to late medieval female

mystics in their own religious imagery and in their extreme

fasting behavior and food distribution, describing it as

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sanctification of the flesh and glorification of God who is

consumed as flesh (Bynum 1987). However, Brigit's dealings with

food are not characteristic of those thirteenth and fourteenth

century fasting saints documented by Bynum, who eschewed physical

food, often going so far as drinking pus or living solely on the

Eucharist. St. Brigit distributed food to the needy, as many

women saints were wont to do throughout the centuries, food being

the one resource that women controlled and so could distribute.

Yet the kinds of food she provided, and the numerous times she

did so, set her apart from this group as well. I wish here to

emphasize St. Brigit as a miraculous version of a good Irish ban

a tigh, or housekeeper. She is the apotheosis of good housewifery

in her provision of abundant food for her dependents, even in the

face of shortages, making her an ideal hostess. She provides

miraculous solutions to common household problems, such as the

feeding of unexpected guests, the replacement of lost stores, the

care of milch cows and other food animals, and the successful

production of dairy products. St. Brigit's always got milk, if

you need it.

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At the end of this article is a list of Brigit's food

miracles compiled from the four Lives at which I looked during my

research: the Life by Cogitosus, the Vita Prima, the Old Irish Bethu

Brigte, and the Life contained in the Book of Lismore. I have defined

"food miracle" as a miracle which either directly affects or

relates to food, or one which affects animals which produce or

will become food (cows, pigs, etc.). In each of these Lives,

Brigit's food miracles are prominent. In the Life by Cogitosus,

she performs a total of 32 miracles, 15 of which have to do with

food or food-producing animals. The Old Irish Life describes 42

miracles, 17 of which are related to food. The Book of Lismore

Life details 62 miracles, 24 of which have to do with food. The

food miracles in the Vita Prima make up 36% of all the miracles.

While Dorothy Bray has written about Brigit as a producer of

miraculous ale (Bray 1992:210), I am much more struck by the

preponderance of food and hospitality miracles in general, and in

particular the dairy miracles performed by the saint.

From her early childhood onward, Brigit gave food to the

poor. In one instance, she was working in the dairy making

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butter. After dividing the yield into twelve portions (for each

of the apostles) plus a larger one for Christ, she gave the

butter to the poor instead of taking it into the household. When

she had to bring in the fruits of her labors and had nothing to

show for her work, the butter was divinely restored to her in

great abundance (Connolly 1987:§1; O'hAodha 1978:22; Stokes

1890:186-7). This incident is typical of many of Brigit's

miracles in that it involves not only food distribution, but also

food multiplication, and dairy products. Other episodes of food

distribution have Brigit giving bacon intended for guests to a

dog (Connolly 1987:§3; O'hAodha 1978:21; Stokes 1890:185-186),

and apples received as a gift to some lepers (O'hAodha 1978:29;

Stokes 1890:190). The saint causes a honeycomb to appear under

the floor of a beggar's home, who wished for honey (Connolly

1987:§29). Brigit also regularly distributes food-producing

animals to the poor: she gives sheep to a boy (Connolly 1987:§7),

a cow and calf to an "unpleasant leper" (variously translated as

a "haughty" leper) (Connolly 1987:§15; Stokes 1890:194-195), and

a cow and calf given to her by another woman to her bishop

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(O'hAodha 1978:25). These latter two incidents both involve the

miraculous finding of a lost calf which the saint causes to

follow its mother. Food preservation is also sometimes in her

power, as in the miracle of a piece of bacon, taken by a dog

while Brigit was meditating, which is found uneaten and fresh a

month later (Connolly 1987:§13). Another event which might be

included in this last category is the miracle of the meat thrown

into the saint's cloak to be given to the poor. Instead of

cooked meat, a servant mistakenly puts uncooked meat into her

cloak, which miraculously does not stain her mantle with blood

(Connolly 1987:§14).

These miracles all fall within the larger category of

charitable almsgiving. As Bynum notes, women saints typically

give food to the poor, as women are most often in charge of food

production and food preparation. This sort of distribution of

food, while not exclusive to women, still makes up a good deal of

the charity practiced by women saints. St. Elizabeth of

Hungary's most famous miracle, that of the roses substituted for

the food she had intended to give away, is an indicator of this

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sort of charity, particularly as practiced by wealthy or noble

women. While the Frankish saintly queens and royal ladies, such

as St. Radegund or St. Clotild, also gave buildings or gold to

the Church, Brigit gave cows, which indeed in Ireland at that

time were considered a form of tradeable wealth (McNamara &

Halborg 1992; Patterson 1994:73). In this way, cows are both a

form of wealth and a source of food, combining both sorts of

charitable offerings.

Brigit also performed many miracles of food multiplication

and transformation. These miracles may be read as an imitation

of Christ's miracles of the loaves and fishes, or of the wedding

at Cana, with Brigit standing in for the figure of Christ. She

may also be considered to be imitating Mary in the latter

episode, being a woman who arranges for Christ to transform food

items for the benefit of humans. In direct imitation of the Cana

miracle, she transforms water into ale and also into milk, stone

into salt (and in one version salt into stone), meat into bread,

and poisoned ale into healthful ale (Connolly 1987:§§8, 9;

O'hAodha 1978:21, 24, 25, 26-7; Stokes 1890: 188-9, 195, 196,

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198). On some of these occasions, she performs the

transformation in order to effect the healing of a supplicant,

turning water into ale for a sick woman, and water into milk for

a sick nun. The miraculously transformed drink heals the sick

person, as well as satisfying a craving they had. Other

transformations are intended, as in the Cana miracle, to conceal

an embarrassing lack of drink or food for guests, as in the

miracle of the water turned to ale in order to serve a bishop on

Low Easter, or the miracle in which twelve loaves, some milk and

a lamb are sufficient to feed the companies of both Brigit and

Patrick (O'hAodha 1978: 24-5,32; Stokes 1890:188-9, 191-2). She

also covers for the neglect of one of her servingmen when she

causes empty vessels to fill with mead for a visiting king and

his company (Stokes 1890:197). Just as Christ provides

miraculous catches of fish for his apostles, Brigit provides a

seal catch for her fisherman in order to provision some guests.

Her fisherman has a harder time of it than the apostles, however.

They may have broken their nets under their abundant catch, but

he is dragged by the seal all the way to Britain, where he spends

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the night, returning the next day to give Brigit and her guests

their seafood (Stokes 1890:196).

Other multiplication miracles found in the Lives are not as

directly modeled on Biblical precedents, being more concerned

with abundance in general. Among these are the spring Brigit

causes to appear in a dry land, and the bread she turns into meat

(O'hAodha 1978:24). The dairy churnings which are miraculously

restored to her are increased so that from only one and a half

churnings she fills many vessels with butter (Connolly 1987:§1;

O'hAodha 1978: 22). One sack of malt makes eighteen vats of ale.

Under Brigit's supervision, the bread supply is always sufficient

for her foster mother's guests (O'hAodha 1978:21). Cows give

more than their usual yield, both in the butter miracle described

above, and in the ability of her cows to be milked three times in

a day. In the Book of Lismore, the additional milking of her

cows in order to feed guests is recounted twice (Stokes

1890:197). In both incidents, the third milking is overly

abundant, contrary to normal expectation. Angels tell Brigit to

milk the cows a third time in one episode, and the milk is not

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only in greater supply than previous milkings, it fills all her

vessels and goes on to make a lake of milk. Brigit also restores

items given to her in charity, so that the giver does not

experience any lack. A woman kills her cow and burns her loom in

order to feed Brigit when she was visiting. The saint restores

the cow and the loom the next day, replenishing the woman's goods

(Stokes 1890:197).

Charity is rewarded with abundance and miserliness is

punished in several of Brigit's miracles. A man who refuses to

give her any ale from his feast in order to succor a sick woman

finds that all of his ale has disappeared (Stokes 1890:185). In

the Book of Lismore, a woman who gives Brigit a gift of apples

from her garden is angered when Brigit in turn gives them to some

lepers. In return for the woman's anger, Brigit curses her

garden so that it bears no more fruit. In a similar incident

from the Old Irish Life, Brigit not only curses the garden of a

nun who resents the Brigit bestowing on some lepers the gift of

fruit she gave to Brigit, she also blesses the garden of another

nun who is contented with the same charitable redistribution of

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her own gift of fruit to Brigit. Ingratitude for charity is also

punished by the saint, as in the episode in which an ungrateful

leper receives a cow from Brigit, but is drowned in a river

because of his bad attitude (Stokes 1890:194-5). Celtic saints

often give way to sacred rage, which is considered one of the

signs of their divine power, and true to form, Brigit’s holy

wrath is unleashed in these episodes.

Brigit protects crops and maintains herds, both of which are

sources of food. She protects the harvest of her fields from

rain, and stills the wind and rain so that sheep may be pastured

(Connolly 1987:§4; O'hAodha 1978:32-3; Stokes 1890:197). She

maintains the number of animals in the flocks under her care,

even when they had been diminished either by her own charitable

giving or by theft. When thieves steal cattle under her

protection, a river rises and drowns the thieves and the cattle

return to her (Connolly 1987:§16; Stokes 1890:192). She also

gives food to animals, as in the incidents involving dogs and

bacon. Brigit even transforms wild beasts into tame, food-

producing animals, and enlists wild animals as herd dogs. Swine

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given to her are herded by compliant wolves, and a wild boar

tamely joins her pig herd instead of dispersing it (Connolly

1987:§§18, 19).

All these miracles point to St. Brigit as a provider, as a

generous, efficient and miraculous manager of her household's

food. Her charity, a mark of Christian piety in most saints’

lives, consists mainly of food distribution, rather than other

sorts of almsgiving. There are a few instances of her charity

involving items which are not food: she gives away her father's

sword, some silver vessels, and the church vestments belonging to

her bishop. But mainly she gives food or cows to the poor, and

hospitality to the traveler. Brigit's very words are described

as food: Cogitosus, author of one of her Lives, describes them as

seasoned with "divine salt" (Connolly 1987:§12). Nor should we

be surprised at the preponderance of dairy products in her

miracles, since she was born when her mother had a vessel of milk

in her hand, and the holy babe was washed in the new milk after

her birth, according to the Book of Lismore and the Vita Prima. In

the Irish folk traditions surrounding her February 1st feast day,

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she wanders the land with her cow the night before, blessing

house and barn. In some areas, an effigy of Brigit is made out

of a butter churn handle, and taken from house to house. “Milk

foods and milk products, principally butter” are featured

foodstuffs (O’ Catháin 1995:12). Kevin Danaher, in The Year in

Ireland, states that on this feast day "butter always formed part

of the meal and fresh butter was sure to be churned on the same

day. The more prosperous farmer gave presents of butter and

buttermilk to poor neighbors" (Danaher 1972). Food is left out

for the saint and her cow. An extra place is set at the table

for passing guests. Sometimes a cloth is set out for Brigit to

bless, and later this cloth is laid on the backs of cows to heal

them and to ensure a good milk supply. How can we explain this

strong emphasis on food in both her legends and the customs of

her feast day?

One possible influence has been mentioned, the relationship

between female saints and food, as Bynum has highlighted for

medieval women saints in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries

(Bynum 1987). Although Bynum's study is useful in thinking

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about the religious meanings of food for women in the high Middle

Ages, her examples, drawn from late medieval saints engaged in

extreme fasting, do not explain St. Brigit and her miracles of

abundance. Brigit is not described as engaging in habitual

abstinence from food. However, she is described as abstaining

from food in a few interesting incidents. These seem to involve

the refusal of impure food or the exchange of supernatural foods.

As a baby, Brigit will not eat the druid's food. Instead, she is

provided with the milk of a white, red-eared cow (O'hAodha 1978:

21; Stokes 1890:185). Animals with this coloring are usually

associated with the Otherworld or the supernatural in Celtic myth

(Ford 1977:35). This incident appears to involve an exchange of

one form of supernatural food for another, almost like the pork-

to-snake-to-Eucharist exchange in the miracle described above. In

another episode of fasting, Brigit refuses to eat the food of a

heathen man who has invited her into his house, until he is

converted. Both the druid and the heathen man are converted

because of her holiness immediately after her refusal to eat

their food. Yet these cases appear to have more in common with

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the Irish custom of "fasting to distrain" (i.e., to discourage or

change someone’s behavior, rather like Gandhi) than with the

extreme religious fasts undertaken by women saints of the

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Is there a parallel emphasis on food found in female saints

who were St. Brigit’s contemporaries? Looking at the Lives of some

Continental saints of roughly the same time period as Brigit

might shed some light on these food miracles. St. Genovefa of

Gaul, too, transforms water into alcoholic drink, and saves the

harvest in her fields from rain. She also distributes food to

the needy. However, the majority of her miracles have nothing

to do with food. She is, however, described as practicing

austerities, including fasting, in ways that Brigit is not. In

fact, her most famous miracle, turning Attila the Hun aside from

Paris, is accomplished through fasting. After reading the Lives

of Brigit, it is remarkable to note the comparative lack of food-

related miracles in Genovefa's Life. St. Radegund, a Merovingian

French female saint, also performs some charitable acts of food

distribution, though none of them are described as miraculous.

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Much of her charity, however, consists of giving away her jewels

and gold, as well as her sumptuous clothing, rather than her

food. She performs only one food multiplication miracle, in

which she gives drinks of wine to those in need from a small cask

that never empties. She, like later female saints, assiduously

engages in periods of fasting, and even when not fasting eats

very abstemiously. Unlike Brigit, she does not continuously

perform miracles to provide food for her convent, her guests or

the poor.

But perhaps Brigit's preoccupation with food will find

counterparts in the Lives of other Irish saints. According to

Dorothy Bray's List of Motifs in the Lives of the Early Irish Saints (Bray:1992),

St. Patrick does perform some food miracles, but nowhere near the

number of those performed by Brigit. The percentages of food

miracles in his five Lives are 8%, 16%, 19% and 29%, compared to

Brigit's 36%, 39%, 41% and 47%. Only two of his miracles have to

do with dairy products, and in those cases Patrick is not turning

stone to cheese, but cheese to stone. Adomnán's Life of St.

Columba contains descriptions of 118 miracles, only 11 of which

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have to do with food. St. Ita, called a "second Brigit," is not

known for her food or dairy miracles. However, she is associated

with a kind of miraculous milk: in the poem Iusucán, her prayer

for the favor of nursing the Christ child at her breast is

granted, and she extols his beauty and her joy at nursing him

from her virgin breasts. As she was the foster mother of many

young male saints, this nursing imagery is rather appropriate for

her role in the Irish church, yet not comparable to Brigit’s

miracles. Several male saints are miraculously nursed by a doe,

but this does not mean that they perform many food or animal

miracles later in life. If Brigit does not quite fit into Bynum's

model of the medieval female saint, and does not greatly resemble

some of her own contemporaries, where does the particular

treatment of food in her Lives come from?

Two possibilities suggest themselves. One is the conflation

of St. Brigit with an earlier Celtic goddess who was concerned

with fertility, and another is the native Irish tradition

regarding food and hospitality. Scholars such as Mac Cana,

Charles Plummer and R.A.S. Macalister have described St. Brigit

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as a Christianization of a prior Irish or even pan-Celtic

goddess, probably called Brigit or Brigantia, and have cited evidence

from continental Celts as well as Irish and British sources (Mac

Cana 1970; Plummer1910/1968; Macalister 1919). The existence of

literary sources that mention a figure called Brigit who is the

daughter of the mythic figure The Dagda (“the good god”) gives

weight to this theory. Gerald of Wales' description of the

perpetual fire at the convent at Kildare, tended by the nineteen

virgins, seems to reveal survival of pre-Christian practices into

the Christian era (Kenney 1979: 357). Cormac mac Cuillenáin in

the tenth century describes her thus:

Brigit i.e. a learned woman, daughter of the Dagda. That is Brigit woman of learning i.e. a goddess whom filid [poets] worshipped. For her protecting care was very great and very wonderful.So they called her goddess of poets. Her sisters were Brigit woman of healing and Brigit woman of smith-work, daughters of the Dagda from whose names among all the Irish a goddess used to be called Brigit (Kenney 1979:357-8).

Here is evidence of a goddess Brigit who ruled over healing,

smithcraft, and poetic inspiration. Yet the strong emphasis in

her Lives on her protection of herd animals and production of

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miraculous food may also be legacies from a goddess of fertility

as well. She herself seems to be an embodiment of a supernatural

cauldron of plenty, a common motif in Celtic literature and

legend, and her refusal of the food of an impure man is similar

to the refusal of supernatural cauldrons to boil the meat of

cowards, as in the Welsh poem The Spoils of Annwfn. And certainly

the large number of holy wells, a symbolic kind of natural

cauldron, dedicated to Brigit throughout Ireland also lends

credence to this claim, as well as testifying to her skill at

healing. In addition, her identity as a virgin who lived within a

community of women may not just be a Christian reference:

Classical ethnographic evidence pertaining to female religious practices, albeit

spotty and not remarkably useful for gaining a precise understanding of the goddess *Briganti-/Brigit or of pre-Christian Celtic religion, does at least establish some precedents for pagan female religious communities that were,if not always virginalat least uni-sexual, isolated, associated with oaks, associated with fertility of the land, and reputed to practice divination, prophecy, or other formsof magic (Powers Coe 1988: 7-8).

Macalister goes so far as to argue that the 5th/6th century St.

Brigit was a priestess of the goddess Brigit who converted to

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Christianity and transformed the pagan college of priestesses to

a convent of nuns (Macalister 1919: 340-341).

Whether this be so or not, there manifestly are connections

between the earlier goddess and the later saint. Both had their

feasts on February 1, which is one of the pre-Christian Celtic

cross-quarter feast days. Known as Imbolc or Oimelc, this feast

is variously associated with the start of the lactation of the

ewes and with purification. Candlemas, the Christian feast which

occurs the next day, celebrates the purification of the Virgin

Mary after her childbirth. Since Brigit was considered Mary's

midwife in folklore tradition (Carmichael 1992: 164-165,

O’Catháin 1995: 146-7), the equation of the two feasts does not

seem unnatural. Mac Cana clearly sees St. Brigit as a

continuation of the earlier goddess: "For if the historical

element in the legend of St. Brighid is slight, the mythological

element is correspondingly extensive, and it is clear beyond

question that the saint has usurped the role of the goddess and

much of her mythological tradition" (Mac Cana 197 34). Yet,

although St. Brigit performs many fire miracles, consistent with

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her description by mac Cuillenáin just cited, the large numbers

of food miracles with which I am concerned are not explained by

her attributes as poetic inspiration, smith or healer. These

food and milk miracles can be seen as the provenance of a

fertility goddess, and the saint seems to have inherited some

attributes and legends associated with a goddess of cows, herds,

and fruitfulness in general.

Hospitality, or feeding and sheltering guests, was an

important feature of the Irish social fabric. Obligations to

provide hospitality were legislated in the law tracts of the

eighth century C.E., and the Irish patron-client system also

brought with it obligations to host and feed guests. The

similarity between the Roman patron-client system and the system

of relationship between Christian patron saints and their

followers has been remarked upon by Peter Brown (Brown 1981: 63).

The Irish client system dovetailed neatly into this paradigm as

well. In this light, the reiteration of Brigit's hospitality to

her guests, to her people, in the Lives might have served to

remind the readers or auditors of the advantages of being the

Noonan 23

client of such a patron saint.

Food is a commodity. It is one of the bases of social

relationships. The importance of food in Irish culture,

especially dairy products, can be seen in such Irish literary

examples as the Aislinge Meic Con Glinne, which is almost an

apotheosis of the physical and visceral aspects of "whitemeats"

(dairy products) as well as other taste treats. Nevertheless,

the exchange of food, while intended to cement ties and create

reciprocal indebtedness, often gets out of hand. Hospitality as

the duty of a host can be seen in the Irish stories of Mac Da Tho's

Pig and Bricriu's Feast. In these two tales, however, the provision

of food for guests does not result in harmony, as it does at

Brigit's feasts. Yet the importance of the food provided for

guests can be seen as a common thread.

Bitel discusses the intricate nuances of rank and status

inherent in the hospitality demanded and provided by monastic

communities for each other. It is no coincidence that Brigit is

often confronted by unexpected guests from neighboring religious

communities. The appearance of St. Patrick and his retinue in

Noonan 24

many tales within her Lives is not only to show St. Brigit

consorting with the influential figures of her time; it also

highlights the tension and competition between the paruchia of

Patrick, based in Armagh, and that of Brigit, based in Kildare.

This explains several of the miracles in which Brigit is able to

perform a feat that Patrick cannot, such as converting the man

who invites them to dinner. This competition also brings out the

importance of being able to provide for important guests, even

when caught unawares and understocked. Bitel remarks: "important

guests enhanced the status of hosts in two ways: Hosts gained by

receiving major saints as guests, and by placing such guests

temporarily in a position inferior to their own" (Bitel

1990:204). Even the literary glorification of dairy products and

other foods in Aislinge Meic Con Glinne starts off with the failure of

monastic hospitality rules. Mac Conglinne, a traveling monk, is

refused proper hospitality by the monks of Corcach. He then

satirizes the monks, and is granted of a vision of a marvelous

land of food, primarily dairy products.

Cows, milk and milk products have been an important part of

Noonan 25

the Irish economy and food supply for centuries, and have been

featured in chronicles, hagiographic writings, poems and tales.

Cows are ubiquitous in Irish tales: one only need look at the

Táin Bo Cuilinge to see their importance as a source of wealth,

status and food. The law tracts of the early medieval period

mentioned a variety of dairy products. Butter and cheese were

important not only locally, in each particular household, but

also for their trade value. In his book about the modern-day town

of Ballymenone in County Fermanagh, Henry Glassie indicates the

importance of butter as a sort of social glue: "Since the flow of

milk into butter was uneven from farm to farm and from time to

time, butter was passed around among the neighbors as the most

common counter of reciprocity, the most frequent material gift to

community. It took hard work and gave an essential pleasure"

(Glassie 1982:531). Milk itself is symbolically a female concern,

a female product. If woman “is food” as Bynum contends, the most

visible sign of this is the milk she herself produces.

Accordingly, milk, milk products and milk production were seen to

be naturally part of women's domain. Patricia Lysaght, in

Noonan 26

"Women, Milk and Magic at the Boundary Feast of May," claims:

Traditionally, it was the woman or women of the household, who had responsibility for milking, butter-making and associated utensils, as well as the care of milch cows especially after calving, and the calves too. In the Irish context there is abundant evidence of the importance of the woman's role in the production of dairy produce, ranging from the ancient law tracts of about the eighth century, to the personal experiences of some Irish farmers' wives in modern times. It was the woman's responsibility to ensure that there was a plentiful supply of milk and dairy produce,both for household use and, also, perhaps for the market (Lysaght 1994:222).

If this was true of the ordinary housekeeper, how much more so

for the female head of a monastic community?

Brigit's food miracles place her at a juncture of roles:

abbess and housekeeper, saint and woman, human and Goddess. She

is not only the point of intersection between heaven and earth,

as Peter Brown tells us a saint is (Brown 1981), but also the

locus where pagan and Christian patterns intersect, and where

native Irish and Continental traditions meet. She brings the

divine into the human, and infuses the human with the divine, as

a good saint should, and at the same time stands in two places at

one time: the pagan, Irish past and the Christian present. Brigit

Noonan 27

performs feats that no ordinary woman could: she ranges about the

countryside by herself in a chariot, she is ordained as a bishop

(apparently by mistake), she is in charge of both monks and nuns

at her double monastery, and she performs miracles. Yet in her

food miracles she proclaims herself as a holy and hospitable

housekeeper par excellence. Her stores never run out, her butter

always turns out in abundance, she cares for her cows and pigs,

feeds her guests, and produces marvelous amounts of the milk that

has been the provenance of Irish women for so many centuries.

Need milk? No worries, Brigit’s got enough for you and all who

enter her domain.

Noonan 28

Works Cited

Bitel, Lisa. 1990. Isle of the Saints: Monastic Settlement and Christian Community in Early

Ireland . Ithaca : Cornell University Press.

Bray, Dorothy. 1992. "A List of Motifs in the Lives of the Early Irish Saints." Folklore Fellows Communications v. CIX, no. 252.

Bynum, Caroline Walker. 1987. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Brown, Peter. 1982. The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.

Carmichael, Alexander. 1992. Carmina Gadelica. Edinburgh: Lindisfarne Press.

Coe, Paula Powers. 1988. The Goddess Persistent: a Study of Traditions Surrounding Saint Brigit. (Senior Thesis, unpublished).

Conolly, Sean. 1987. "Vita Prima Sanctae Brigitae: Background and Historical Value," Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 119: 5-49.

--- and J.-M. Picard. 1987. "Cogitosus' Life of St. Brigit: Content andValue," Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 117:5-27.

Danaher, Kevin. 1972. The Year in Ireland. Cork: The Mercier Press.

Ford, Patrick K. (trans.). 1977. The Mabinogi and Other Welsh Tales. Berkeley:University of California Press

Noonan 29

Glassie, Henry. 1982. Passing the Time in Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Ulster Community. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Kenney, James F. 1979 (rev. ed.) (orig. 1929). The Sources for the Early History of Ireland: Ecclesiastical: An Introduction and Guide. Dublin: Padraic O Tailliuir.

Lysaght, Patricia. 1994. "Women, Milk and Magic at the Boundary Feast of May," in Lysaght, ed., Milk and Milk Products from Medieval toModern Times: Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Ethnological Food Research, Ireland, 1992. Edinburgh: Canongate Academic.

Macalister, R.A.S. 1919. "Temair Breg: A Study of the Remains and Traditions of Tara." Proceedings of the Royal Irish Acadamy ,Vol. XXIV.C. Nos. 10-11.

Mac Cana, Prionsias. 1970. Celtic Mythology. London: Hamlyn.

McNamara, Jo Ann and Halborg, John E. with Whatley, E. Gordon. 1992. Sainted Women of the Dark Ages. Durham: Duke University Press.

O’ Catháin, Séamas. 1995. The Festival of Brigit: Celtic Goddess and Holy Woman. Blackrock,

Co. Dublin: DBA Publications.

O'hAodha, Donncha, ed. 1978. Bethu Brigte. Dublin: Dublin Institutefor Advanced Studies

Plummer, The Rev. Charles. 1910 (reprint 1968). Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Quin, E. G. 1981. "The Early Irish Poem Isucán." Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, 1:39-52.

Stokes, Whitley, ed. 1890. Anecdota Oxoniensia: Lives of Saints from the Bookof Lismore. Oxford: Clarendon Press

Noonan 30

Noonan 31

The Food Miracles of St. Brigit(numbers correspond to chapter numbers in the originals)

Vita Brigitae -Cogitosus (Connolly & Picard translation):(Total food miracles: 15 out of 32):

miracles directly dealing with food 1. churning and butter given to poor, miraculously restored to her3. bacon given to a dog, miraculously restored4. rain does not ruin her harvest5. cow milked three times in one day8. water turned to ale9. stone turned to salt13. bacon taken by dog, found uneaten and fresh14. portion of uncooked meat thrown into her cloak to give to poor, does not stain her cloak29. honeycomb appears in house when Brigit wants to give beggar honey

miracles having to do with food-producing animals: 7. seven sheep given to boy, flock miraculously restored to full numbers15. cow and calf given to unpleasantleper, calf miraculously follows cow18. wild boar among pigs is miraculously tamed19. pigs given to Brigit as a gift are driven by wild wolves16. cattle stolen, but returned

because river drowned thieves

miracle dealing with unnatural appetite23. Brigit heals man of unnaturally large appetite, but he miraculously retains the enormous strength his previous food consumption had given him

Vita Prima (Connolly translation):(Total food miracles: 47 out of 129) * Brigit born when mother had vessel of milk in hand, and she was washed in that milk after her birth

miracles directly dealing with food:11. Brigit vomits up druid's food. Fed on milk of white cow. Food her hand touched or eye saw multiplied13. Brigit turns well water into beer for sick woman's request. Woman is healed14. bacon given to a dog miraculously restored17. butter divided into thirteen parts, for Christ and apostles, and given to poor.Small amount of butter left miraculously multiplied to fill large vessel18. bacon turned into bread for

Noonan 32

pilgrims who did not eat bacon19. single vat of beer miraculouslyenough for 18 churches for Easter week.20. Brigit turns glass of water into new, warm milk for sick nun and cures her28. water turned to beer for use inEaster feast for visiting clerics32. Nun begrudges Brigit giving hergift of apples to lepers. Brigit curses the nun's garden so it gives no more fruit 33. Brigit creates spring to quenchtraveling company's thirst, and that of St. Patrick's household40. Brigit will not eat in the house of a man who is not Christian, so he consents to baptism, though Patrick could not convert him.42. Brigit multiplies 12 loaves, milk and a sheep so that it feeds all of St. Patrick's people and her own.43. Brigit sprinkles with blessed water the food, drink, house and bed of man whose wife hates him. Wife subsequently loves husband47. Brigit gives banquet food to poor. Rich man carrying a banquet for the kingshows up and gives the food to Brigit for her community instead.51. charioteer goes on errand for

two days for Brigit and leaves his food cooking in a cauldron. No time passes and when he returns, food is still cooking52. bishop gives Brigit and her nuns pork to eat during Lent. Pork of nuns who refused to eat turns into serpents. Brigit, bishop & nuns fast and pray. Serpents turn into pure white bread, later used for Eucharist. Brigit multiplies grain of bishop.53. arrogant leper refuses to eat food unless he received king's spear. Brigit also fasted with him. King's men miraculously had notgone far, though travelling fast, and give spear.54. Brigit's dream: 4 ploughs ploughing Ireland, sowers sowing seed which grows and ripens while streams of new milk filled furrows, sowers clothed in white.

Vita Prima (continued): 57. Bread shortage at Brigit's convent. Thieves steal Brigit's horses, steal grain from a neighbor, and return to the convent as if to their own home. When found in the morning, they repent. The grain is given to Brigit for her convent.

Noonan 33

58. Vessel in which is water blessed by Brigit does not break or spill water when dropped. Patrick uses water for the Eucharist and to heal the sick70. Brigit and a bishop with his party suffer from hunger and thirst as they travel. Church people come by and give them alms of food as foretold by Brigit, and she causes a spring of water to appear, for the quenching of their thirst.82. Guests arrive and there is no food. Brigit tells the cook to shut the kitchen door, prays, and the cook then finds butter and bread andonions in abundance, enough for 7 days.83. Guests arrive, and there are nocresses for them to eat, as is their custom. Brigit prays, and the wells were filled with the herbs, some of which never grew in those parts before.87. Brigit blesses water for sick woman, and her angel companion blesses it, too, so that it had the flavor of whatever the woman desired (honey, wine, beer, milk).92. Brigit sees goat's head in chalice at mass, Because altar boy had eaten goat.96. Brigit's nuns are short of bread, and go to fetch grain. Brigit calms a river so

that they may cross and get it.98. Rain does not ruin her harvest99. Brigit milks a cow three times in one day to provide for guests. All her cows become so able.102. Brigit turns water into beer for some lepers104. Brigit makes salt from a stone.105. Bacon taken by dog, found uneaten and fresh.106. Portion of uncooked meat thrown into her cloak to give to poor, does not stainher cloak110. Woman kills cow and burns her loom to feed the visiting Brigit. The next day both are restored119. To feed guests, Brigit turns nettles to butter and tree bark to bacon.120. In answer to prayer, honey is found in the floor of her house.

miracles to do with food-producing animals: 27. cow intended as gift for Brigitloses calf and refuses to move. Through prayer to Brigit, calf is found and cow becomes docile.38. Brigit has her nuns milk afflicted man's cows. Brigit fasts instead of eating dinner he prepares, blesses his house. 45. Cattle stolen from a female disciple come to Brigit instead of going with thieves46. Time does not pass for female disciple's cows or her aged father when she spends

Noonan 34

time with Brigit (cows don't need to be milked, and father doesn't need to be fed)51. Calf given to leper "adopted" by cow given to him 73. Brigit's fisherman, fishing to provide for her guests, harpoons a seal, which drags him to Britain and back all in a twenty-four hour period 78-79. Arrogant leper demands a cowof his own; Brigit curses him so that he cannot drive the cow, and so that it will be of no useto him. He and another leper drive their cows into a river, which drowns the arrogant leper but spares the other leper and his cow.101. Seven sheep given to boy, flock miraculously restored to full numbers107. Wild boar among pigs is miraculously tamed124. Wild ducks fly tamely to her hand126. Pigs given to Brigit as a gift are driven by wild wolves

miracle dealing with unnatural appetite108. Brigit heals man of unnaturallylarge appetite, but he miraculously retains theenormous strength his previous food consumption had given him

Bethu Brigte (O' hAodha translation): (Total food miracles: 17 out of 42)

miracles directly dealing with food:5. would not eat druid's food, butwould only eat milk of white, red-eared cow7. Brigit was cook for fostermother, bread supply always sufficient for guests8. Brigit turns water into ale forsick woman, which heals her.10. Brigit gives dog two fifths of bacon, miraculously restored.12. Brigit divides all her churning into 13 portions, the last greater than the others: representing apostles and Christ. Does not store it. From 1 1/2 churnings she filled three baskets to feed guests.20. She causes a spring in dry land,turns bread into meat21. One sack of malt makes 18 vats of aleBethu Brigte (continued) 23. She turns water into milk for healing of sick nun28. She turns water into ale for bishop on Low Easter, one churnful served allthe guests and the convent32. Nun begrudges Brigit giving her gift of apples & sloes to lepers. Brigit curses the nun's garden so it gives no more fruit

Noonan 35

33. Another nun gave her apples & sloes and does not mind when Brigit gave them to lepers. Brigit blessed her garden with abundance41. Brigit will not eat in the houseof a man who is not Christian, so he consents to baptism, though Patrick could not convert him.44. 12 loaves, a little blessed milkand a lamb are sufficient to feed Brigit's andPatrick's companies

miracles to do with food-producing animals:9. While she was pigherding, two boars were stolen. Her father chides her but pigs were replaced in the herd (number was correct, though two boars were missing)22. Woman and daughter lose calf they were going to give to Brigit along with thecow. Calf miraculously find its mother when B gives the cow to bishop25. Cow brought to Brigit for healing of sick man is slyly exchanged for another cow. Brigit knows this, prophesies wolves will eat it. Sick man gives seven more in reparation and ishealed46. Brigit stills wind and rain forpasturage of sheep

Book of Lismore:* Brigit born when mother had vesselof milk in hand, and she was washed in that milk after her birth(Total food miracles: 24 out of 62)

miracles directly dealing with food:1225. She would not eat impure foodof wizard but ate milk of white, red-eared cow.1231. She turned water into ale to heal nurse. Also man who refused her any ale from his feast - she caused his ale to disappear1259. Two fifths of bacon given to dog, bacon restored for guests.1266-7. When doing mother's dairy work, she divided churning into 13 portions - forapostles and Christ. Christ's portion was larger andused to feed poor & guests. From 1 1/2 churnings she filled huge hampers.1355. One sieve of malt is enough for troughs of ale for a week.1368. She turned water into milk for healing of nun.1377. She turned water into ale after Easter, given to bishop and nuns1424. Woman begrudges Brigit givingher gift of apples to lepers. Brigit cursesthe woman's garden so it bears no more fruit1460. Brigit will not eat food of heathen man nor

Noonan 36

consecrate his house so he becomes baptized1470. One sheep, 12 loaves and somemilk are enough to feed Brigit's company and Patrick's when she blesses the food. Leftovers are more than original amount.1614. She turns salt into stones, stones into salt.1637. Brigit's fisherman, fishing to provide for her guests, harpoons a seal, which drags him to Britain and back all in a twenty-four hour period 1651. She turns stones into salt, which heals nun1659. Her cows are milked three times in one day, third time greater than others,to feed guests1665. Woman kills cow and burns herloom to feed visiting Brigit. The next day both are restored1676. Brigit blessed empty mead vessels and they are filled for king's company, thus saving a man of her household1680. Guests come, but there is no food. Angels tell Brigit to milk cows for the third time that day. It filled all her vessels and madea lake1711. After her death: three of hermen go to Rome, are given poisoned ale. They pray to Brigit and no harm came to them, maiden (Brigit) seen with them

miracles to do with food-producing animals: 1244. Stolen pigs from herd she waswatching do not decrease the number of the herd.1492. Friends of Brigit's has oxen stolen, river rises to thwart thieves, oxen returnto Brigit1579. Haughty, ungrateful leper given a cow, falls into river and drowns1630. Brigit sees goat's head in chalice at mass, because altar boy had eaten goat.1662. No rain on harvest being reaped in her field1673. Robber steals seven sheep from Brigit's herd while she watched it. Herd is restored.