The Blindboy Podcast - Saint Brigid Solvent Abuse and Irish Mythology

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

I speak about the pagan goddess Brigid and the Christian Saint Brigid Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Play the ten-foot flute, you brooding unas. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. It's the 1st of February, and I've been noticing the promise of sunlight. Climate change can't fuck with sunlight. The evenings are ever so slightly longer. Just a little bit longer,

but even better than the length of the day is the quality of the day, is the quality of light. It feels like someone opened the curtains a little bit. The purple darkness of winter is leaving and there's a fluorescent sparkle to the evenings which just makes me feel optimistic. That's what spring is supposed to do.

That's what the 1st of February is. It's spring. Spring is all about optimism and hope. And the biggest symbol of spring, in Ireland for sure, is the cross of St. Bridget. And I saw my first one yesterday in the door of a shop.

The cross of St. Brid Brigid it's handmade from straw and it doesn't look like a cross like a crucifix technically it's technically it's a swastika it's a cross on its side it's kind of diagonal and when I say swastika there

you might immediately think of Hitler. The Nazis ruined the swastika. The Nazis didn't come up with the swastika, they appropriated it and made it a symbol of hate. But swastikas have been around for a thousand years. They're present in eastern religions to mean rebirth. And St. Bridget's Cross is the Irish swastika, really. And we make them, and I say we, because every Irish schoolchild had to make St. Bridget's Crosses at this time of year. When you were six or seven in school, the teacher would bring in a lot of straw and you'd learn how to fold and make a St. Bridget's cross.

But we would have been told about this in Christian context. Like I remember our teacher told us, even though I think this might have been wrong. You're making a St. Bridget's cross today because St. Bridget used this cross to teach the Irish about Christianity in the way that St. Patrick used a shamrock to teach the Irish about Christianity. But the symbol of the St. Bridget's cross, it's most likely way before Christianity.

It's a pagan pre-Christian thing that the Irish would make. And in February and around St. Bridget's Day people would hang a St. Bridget's cross over their door to protect the house from fire or to protect it from evil spirits and to reflect and wish in the optimism of the new year but I was thinking back today. When was the last time I made a St. Bridget's cross? I must have been six or seven years of age.

And then a memory came back to me. So, in my school, we were about 15, 15 or 16, secondary school. So at this point, I'm not interested in school at all. I'm interested in being a bald boy. So, solvent abuse was quite popular when I was a teenager. Now I'm not advocating for solvent abuse.

I'm not saying it's a good thing. I'm just saying when I was a teenager solvent abuse was in vogue. Whether that be sniffing deodorant, lighter fluid or petrol. But if you were a teenager and you were trying to rebel and you wanted to communicate this rebelliousness to other people to show how crazy you are, how hard you are. You would abuse solvents, which is an incredibly dangerous thing to do. And as a result of peer pressure, I would have went along with it. Now, I was never really into abusing solvents. I'd be the person who would pretend if the other lads were passing around

lighter fluid or petrol inside in a coke bottle. I'd pretend to sniff it. I really didn't want to fully inhale solvent and become inebriated. It was frightening to me and it didn't smell nice and it just seemed dangerous and wrong. But I was 15 and to say no would have meant getting picked on or getting called names. So I had to figure out a middle ground. How do I pretend? Because I'd see some of the other lads after sniffing petrol and it wasn't pretty. They'd go unconscious for a little time. It was quite like a very extreme drunkness.

And then once they came out of it, after about 10 minutes, they'd report the auditory or visual hallucinations they had. And if there was no solvents, then you'd have to do a thing called the American Dream. The American Dream was weird. That was where you'd try to get high off your own brain by holding your breath while someone punched you into the chest. Now, when it came to the American Dream, that's when I flat out chickened out. That's when I chickened. I never did it.

I was like, no this seems because I was mad anxious you see this doesn't seem right I don't think making myself faint and then hello snitting off my own brain while you punch me into the chest that might sound like crack tea that I don't like the sound of this I'm just gonna chicken to chicken out of this. And you're going to have to call me names. I'm not doing the American dream. And then of course there was poppers. Very rare. But someone managed to get a bottle of poppers.

And poppers. And I guarantee you. If you went to an all boys school. This experience was replicated. Poppers never lasted long. As a social phenomenon. Because then someone would say. do you know what poppers are for? Gay men

used those to make their arseholes massive. So then poppers became gay and everyone would go back to sniffing deodorant or choking each other. And I'd love to know why it was called the American Dream. There's nothing on the internet for that.

That's pre-internet Irish oral culture. I'm guessing some teenage boy in his bedroom was incredibly bored. Unbelievably bored because the internet didn't exist yet. So he decided, I've nothing to do so I'm going to choke myself until I faint and hallucinate and he did it and woke up and in a moment of divine inspiration decided to call it the American dream there was no tiktok there was no internet so this is what teenage boys did in the early 2000s to occupy their time. They abused solvents or made each other faint. And again, I have to say, even though most of you are adults, I'm not advocating for any

of this. This is dumb, stupid, dangerous shit. I'm just recounting a cultural artifact. It's like talking about chicken fillet rolls, except they're not handing out any 2FM radio shows for talking about solvent abuse and choking yourself so one day in school when I was 15 or 16 and it must have been this time

it must have been right now the beginning of February and I'll tell you why one day we decided we're not coming in after lunch. We don't want to go into class after lunch.

We want to go mitching. Mitching means because I think it might be limerick specific bunking off school playing hockey whatever the fuck you want to call it. Me and a few of the lads decided

we don't want to go back to school. But the thing is you can't go home because you're 15 or 16 your parents will be like why are you home from school you can't really walk around the streets because you're clearly 15 or 16 in your school uniform so if someone sees you they'll ring the school so when you're at that age when you want a Mitch from school you have to find a place to hide you don't want to be in class so you have to go and hide so in my school the tradition was if you were 15 or 16 and you wanted to bunk off school you went to a barge sanctuary and sniffed petrol that's what you did because there was a

barge sanctuary quite close to the school and loads of bushes and trees that you could hide in and there was nothing to do there so you went there to abuse solvents so one day that's what we did me and three or four of the lads went to this

barge sanctuary to hide in reeds in a marsh and sniff lighter fluid or petrol or whatever it was. Now, I didn't, again, I didn't want to do the solvent abuse bit. I wasn't there for that. I was just simply glad to not be in the classroom learning business studies or maths or whatever so we would have went to the barge sanctuary and then everyone was passing around

the bottle of petrol or whatever it was the other lads would have been out of their minds hoofing and I was just pretending but the thing is we thought we were pure clever oh we're hiding in the bard sanctuary no one's ever going to find us but like teachers are smart the teachers knew this is what

happens if if if someone's missing from class especially if they have a reputation for being poorly behaved if they're missing from class we we know where they are. They're in the Bard Sanctuary, sniffing petrol. That's where they are. So we're there, hiding in all these fucking reeds and bulrushes, getting the bottoms of our school pants wet. And we hear the sound of our vice-principal, who happened to be called Ducks, because when he spoke, he sounded like a duck quacking

lads lads where are you going lads lads lads where are you lads he sounded like that and that's why he was called ducks and the thing is if you're a teenager wildly hallucinating on petrol in a bird sanctuary surrounded by actual ducks and your vice principal is called ducks and sounds like a duck and you're having full on solvent induced auditory hallucinations

that's very complex cognitive gymnastics there to try and rationalise all that so we're there hiding in bushes and we can hear, lads, lads, we know

that, alright, Dux is here and he's shouting for us. We're gonna get fucking caught. What are we gonna do? We're gonna get caught. Now the lads I was with were high on petrol but I wasn't. And to be honest, it didn't matter if we all got caught.

As far as my parents would be concerned, I was on petrol too. We were all on petrol. And you're not afraid of getting caught mitching from school. You're afraid of getting caught mitching from school to sniff petrol because that's expulsion behavior That would get you expelled. So I'm fully sober. And then I start thinking. Fuck.

Fuck. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? We're going to get caught. Because he's here. He knows we're here. We can only hide in these reeds for so long before he finds us. So he's going to find us.

I've already accepted this. So I get thinking and I look around and I look around at all the reeds and I say to the lads, let's start making St. Bridget's crosses. Let's start making St. Bridget's crosses so that when he catches us, when the vice principal catches us and says, you're down here in the bard sanctuary sniffing petrol we'll say no we're not okay we're Mitch in school but we only came here to get bulrushes to make Saint Bridget's crosses so we start frantically grabbing reeds and rushes and tearing them apart start wrapping them around each other and I'm trying to remember back fuck it they taught me this in school

they taught me this when I was seven and I managed to make a a half it was shit a half convincing St. Bridget's Cross and I'm looking at it in my hands going okay it's terrible but clearly

I'm trying to make a St. Bridget's Cross here and then I looked up at the two lads and let me tell you this you cannot make a St. Bridget's cross if you've been inhaling petrol they looked like puppets with someone moving their hands with the fluffy bits from the top of the bulrush

the bit that looks like a sausage the fluff from all that all over their faces and hair but we didn't get caught we didn't get caught Doc We didn't get caught. Docs gave up. He didn't find us. But it was a pretty good solution. And I reckon if we did get caught,

at least me, having that shit attempt at a St. Bridget's cross in my hand would have been a good enough excuse to explain why I was in the Bard Sanctuary and I wasn't in school. And that would have been the difference between an expulsion and a suspension so that must have been this time it must have been at this time of year

if I was thinking of St Bridget's Crosses actually earlier there I said they don't bring you an RTE for talking about solvent abuse but I just remembered there like fucking 14 years ago 2009 one of the first ever sketches

that I wrote for television called The Rubber Bandit's Guide to Hedge Shops I was filming around that area with an RTE crew and we actually shot that sketch which is me and Mr. Chrome in a hedge taking drugs that don't exist yet and we actually filmed this in the solvent abuse bird sanctuary and I'd imagine we would have chosen that location in the moment for that very reason

because of the mythology of this bird sanctuary and its relationship with solvent abuse so i take it back talking about solvent abuse will get you on rte and a final disclaimer just in case someone's listening to this who's under the age of 18 like i believe in the decriminalization of drugs i think like how they do it in portugal or in portland in amer. I think that's the right way to do it. Decriminalize all drug use and take a health-based approach to drug use. There's never ever a reason or excuse to abuse solvents. Genuinely. Petrol, lighter fluid, whatever you can literally die it can literally kill you

just doing it once you can die and the American dream and these are legal solvents and choking yourself are legal but they both cut off oxygen to the brain I wish when I was a teenager someone educated us about this

but yeah you can literally die on the spot from abuse and solvents. Forget about it. Go for a run. There's some free head chemicals. Go for a run. But this episode, I want to speak about St. Bridget.

I want to speak about St. Bridget because she's utterly fascinating. And what excites me about St. Bridget because she's utterly fascinating. And what excites me about St. Bridget is, like, it's St. Bridget's Day next week, next Monday. And in 2023, this is the first year that we're making it a bank holiday, that we're making it a public holiday in 2023. making it a public holiday in 2023. But what I adore about Bridget is, when I say Saint Bridget, you'd assume, oh a saint, a Christian saint.

But Bridget goes back way before Christianity. The celebration of Bridget might be between four and six thousand years old. Bridget is both a pagan goddess and a Christian saint. And she's like a superposition between the two. Not strictly Christian, not strictly pagan. The lines are blurred.

A lot like St. Bridget's cross, which conveniently works as a Christian symbol for the stations of the cross and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, but it existed before that as a pagan symbol. Now I'm not a historian or a folklorist. I'm an artist who is Irish and I'm absolutely fascinated with Irish mythology. I'm fascinated. Not because of reasons of nationality. I'm fascinated with Irish mythology for environmental reasons.

Here are stories that come from the landscape. That come from the grass and the air and the animals and the environment of Ireland. And the story of St. Bridget is a mythology about springtime. It's about exactly what I mentioned at the start of this podcast. I'm starting to notice the quality of light change. Things are a little bit brighter. The buds will start appearing on trees. Little animals will start getting born. The days get longer. The optimism of new life. Springtime. Springtime in Ireland. That's what St. Bridget is about. And of course then the sad thing is like it's 2023

and this is the first time we're making St. Bridget's Day a bank holiday but here's this mythology that's thousands of years old this story about the cycle of spring, nature which repeats itself perfectly every single year as identical

as the year before, the fucking cycle of life now we're getting to the point where that's being interrupted by climate change the frogs woke up a month ago I should be hearing the dawn chorus of the birds

in a couple of weeks I've been hearing the dawn chorus of birds at six in the morning intermittently throughout winter because it's been warmer and the bards get confused. The only thing I can trust is the light. Climate change isn't going to fuck with the rotation of the earth and the length of the days but it fucks with the behavior of the world of biodiversity. It fucks with animals behavior. It interrupts the temperature

of the soil, how things things grow i don't know what spring is going to be like in 20 years time these irish mythological stories that are told around the predictability of seasons won't resonate as perfectly when the seasons get fucked up so today the 1st of february is when the pagan Irish festival of Imbolc begins. It means the start of spring. And it's a very optimistic festival. Now, we don't celebrate Imbolc now, because it's forgotten. We celebrate St. Bridget's Day.

But Imbolc in Ireland, we don't know how old it is it could be 6,000 years old here's what I do know up in the hill of Tara in County Meath there's a Neolithic passage tomb it's a large mound of earth which looks similar to Newgrange

it's near it but it's smaller than Newgrange it's near it but it's smaller than Newgrange and this passage tomb is called the mound of the hostages so this is a structure that was built by humans up in County Meath and they reckon it was built around 3000 BC so that's 5,000 old. That's older than the pyramids of Egypt. And this structure, the Mound of the Hostages, demonstrates an understanding of astrology. Like Newgrange, which lets light in in the winter solstice,

the Mound of the Hostages lets light in today, February 1st. So there's a little hole in the ceiling, which has been perfectly calculated. So when the sun shines today, it lets light into the central tomb. So 5,000 years ago, to the people of Ireland then, that would have let people know, today is the first day of spring, because this building that we have lets light in today and it illuminates a central bowl in this passage tomb. So today begins the festival of Imbolc. And what we do know about St. Bridget's crosses, these Irish swastika things that are made out of reeds and straw, we know that these are pagan. So they're pre-Christian.

and straw. We know that these are pagan, so they're pre-Christian. So the tradition of making these little crosses or the reeds, that could be five, six thousand years old. And people made these things to protect themselves against the optimism of spring. Winters were very hard five thousand years ago. People didn't have fridges people didn't have central heating the food that you ate during winter was what you had saved from the harvest of august so people were running out of food and when spring came it meant new life there's going to be new crops growing there's going to be new animals being born there's going to be new crops growing there's going to be new animals being born there's going to be milk that comes from the animals that are giving birth we're going to have food and prosperity and sunshine and long days spring is here this is good so people would make little

crosses from straw and hang them above their houses or put them in the thatch of their roofs to protect against evil spirits or bad luck, to protect their lambs, to protect their crops, to solidify the predictability of seasons. To say it's spring, I hope it's the exact same as the spring before and the spring before that. I need to know that spring is going to be the exact same so I can predict my environment and the animals that live in it and the plants that live in it. I want to predict it exactly. The shit that we're losing right now because of climate change and something I find quite charming looking back now. Even that story about the abuse and solvents in the bird sanctuary which is quite a depressing story

if we're being honest I love the fact that unbeknownst to myself I made a St. Bridget's cross to protect me not to protect me from getting expelled for sniffing petrol but still

it was serving its purpose 5,000 years on and still being used appropriately as a little object of protection. But the Festival of Imbolc, which begins on the 1st of February, the reason it begins on the 1st of February is that it's the festival of the goddess Bridget

from Irish mythology. So I'm going back thousands of years now. And Brigid the goddess was born on the 1st of February. And her father was a Dagda, which was like a very powerful god. And her mother was the Morrigan, which is a goddess of war that took the form of a crow. And Bridget wasn't human. She was a member of a supernatural race called the Tuatha Dé Danann,

which were supernatural beings from another dimension, from a separate dimension, like the other reflection of a mirror they were from the other world the other world was like a parallel universe here's the thing when you're talking about 5 000 years ago and the the world that people would have lived in you might necessarily be talking about a world where linear time exists. Now I've done an entire podcast on linear time but linear time is kind of a social construct that you can trace to eschatological Christianity like end times Christianity. The world began and the world will end. That's linear time. The

people of pagan Ireland might not have taught about time that way. They might have viewed time as cyclical or eternal. They might have gotten their concepts and lived experience of time from the cycle of the seasons or the cycle of the stars in the sky and this is where they built passage tombs where the light shines through at certain points in the year time to these people might have been a forever revolving moving thing so the other world was like a parallel time, outside of time. A different universe that exists underneath or above us at the exact same time. And the Tuatha Dé Danann were this race of supernatural people that existed in the other world.

The other world was also known as Tírna Nóga, the land of eternal youth. And all around Ireland, wherever there was what was considered a holy well, a natural spring of water, this was considered a passage to the other world. That the spring and the minerals that would come up in the water,

that this was knowledge and health passing through from the parallel universe underneath. And when figures from the other world would present themselves in our world, they had to shape shift. So as I mentioned, Bridget's mother was the Morrigan. So when the Morrigan would present itself in our world, it would be a crow. Same with the fairies that came from the other world. You'd rarely see a fairy. Instead, you'd see a fairy taking the form of an animal. Or of course

you had the changelings which is a lot more sad. When maybe an infant died a few thousand years ago or even up until recently if an infant died and someone someone's infant was dead they would say to themselves this isn't my infant this is a changeling from the other world a fairy from the other world has come and stolen my infant and taken it to the other world and left here instead this strange little fairy baby and this isn't my dead infant it's a fairy or if a loved one becomes severely mentally ill that's not my brother that's not my sister my real brother and sister has traveled to the other world and a fairy has come and replaced them and left a changeling here with us but when Bridget was born the goddess on

the 1st of February where the festival in bulk comes from She wasn't born here on earth, she was born in the other world but her mother Morrigan wasn't that interested in her so Bridget was suckled by a cow so she got her breast milk from a cow that was white that had red ears and when Bridget was a child she used to tend to bees, she used to keep beehives but the beehive was on the other world and her bees used to be able to travel between dimensions. So Bridget has all these beehives in the other world and they're passing over to our world. And then they're pollinating these orchards and pollinating all the flowers. So this is what the farmers would have told themselves at the time. They're marveling at these wonderful insects that arrive on their flowers. So this is what the farmers would have told themselves at the time. They're

marveling at these wonderful insects that arrive on their flowers and suddenly when the insects arrive on their flowers a few months later fruit grows and they're trying to understand what the fuck is happening here. This is amazing. So the mythology that they come up with is that Bridget is in the other world tending to our bees and these are interdimensional bees that come to our world with the knowledge and magic and wisdom of the parallel dimension and they make fruit happen in our trees which I think is just beautiful. I have a story in my last book and the story is called Letter to the Irish Times. And it's about a scientist called Dr. Marie Gaffney who writes to the Irish Times because she has a theory about why all the bees are disappearing. Because of climate change, bees are dying, like the bees are dying all around us. So in my story this scientist writes to the Irish Times and

posits a theory that in 2012 when the Large Hadron Collider was turned on it actually caused tiny little black holes which are rips in the fabric of space and time which is what people were afraid of when they turned on the Large Hadron Collider. But in my story it caused little black holes to appear on the inside of flowers and what's happening to the bees is that since 2012 every time a bee goes to a flower it disappears through the flower into another dimension. So the bees still exist, they're just interdimensional bees. But sometimes they travel back to this dimension and sting people. And when you get stung by an interdimensional bee,

the sight of the sting causes a miniature black hole to appear on your own skin. And then your body sucks into itself. And you travel to another dimension. Except when you're in the other dimension, you're completely inside out with all your organs on the outside and you're forced to wander eternity inside out. So now you know where I was inspired for that idea. I got it from Irish mythology from the story of the goddess Brigid and her bees, her interdimensional bees. It's not just me being autistic. Deliberate intertextual

dialogue. And when Brigget the goddess got older because she was from the other world and creatures from the other world or people from the other world had the knowledge of the other world she had followers and she would teach them all how to tend to livestock how to heal each other from herbs that you could find growing how to be farmers how to live at one with nature she brought this knowledge from the other world and gave it to humans because she's the goddess of spring she's the goddess of life and also Brigid she wasn't married to a fella but she was riding a fella who was a king called Breas but this king aligned himself with a group of people called the Fomorians. Now in the other world there was the

Tuatha Dé Danann which were like the goodies and then there was the Fomorians who were also otherworldly people but they were like the baddies and the Fomorians and the Tuatha Dé Danann used to have battles. Well when Brigid was riding this king who was a worldly king, he was of this world, they had a son called Ruan and then Ruan joined the Fomorians in battle against the Tuatha Dé Danann and he died on the battlefield and Brigid went to his body and she cried over his body and when she cried she sang the tears and there's a type of really really old type of Irish singing called keening and keening still exists it still exists in in funerals in rural Ireland but this is an ancient type of Irish singing which is sung by women at funerals. When a person would die women in Ireland would cane

this very specific type of Irish singing. A sad singing which is only done at funerals when someone dies. It's very breathy. You could look up examples of it on youtube but the closest example i always like to give is dolores o'rearden from the cranberries who's from limerick when you listen to how dolores sang and that unique thing in her voice that made the Cranberries music. Famous worldwide, Dolores sings a little bit like the Irish tradition of keening. Sometimes you'll hear keening in the voice of Enya when Enya sings. Sinead O'Connor does it a little bit too. It's a breathiness. It's a way of pulling the breath whereby that breath causes the notes to vibrate almost like a melisma. So Brigid is credited with in mythology the goddess Brigid is credited with inventing the ancient Irish singing tradition of keening

when she sang over her dead son's body during the battle between the Fomorians and the Tuatha Dé Danann. Brigid and her followers maintained an eternal flame. This flame that, and all her followers were women, and they'd light this fire and you could never let the fire go out. It would stay there for eternity. And this fire would give inspiration to poets and musicians. And she'd protect women in childbirth. And she'd protect animals in childbirth. So my point is that Brigid is a pagan goddess. A pagan goddess that's present in Irish mythology that could be several thousand years old. And this Brigid

is kind of separate but also the same to Saint Brigid. And I'll speak about that now after the ocarina pause. So it's time now for the ocarina. I'm in my office. I don't have an Ocarina, but I do have my Puerto Rican Guero.

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The 4th of March, I'm in the Waterfront, Belfast. Wednesday the 22nd of March, I'm in the waterfront Belfast Wednesday the 22nd of March I'm in Vicar Street Friday the 24th of March I'm in Vicar Street Dublin and then April 1st TLT Theatre Drogheda all those other gigs there's not a huge amount of tickets left but Drogheda is the one where I'm under pressure from the promoter to move a few tickets so if you're near Drogheda is the one where I'm under pressure from the promoter to move a few tickets so if you're near Drogheda on the 1st of April please come along to that gig in the TLT theatre and then I'm in Canada in April on the 24th and 20th I think that's nearly fucking sold out is it

Toronto and Vancouver in Canada in April so Saintget. I spent the first half of the podcast speaking about the goddess Bridget, whose festival in bulk starts at the 1st of February. And then next week we've got St. Bridget's Day. But who is Bridget and St. Bridget? Well, they're more or less the same person. Now, in my opinion, now I'm not a, I'm just a fan of Irish mythology. I'm not an academic. In my opinion, Saint Bridget is the most pagan of all the saints. Of all the Irish Christian traditions, the most fucking pagan saint that we have is Saint Bridget. Now, Saint Bridget, or Bridget of Kildare, as she's known, she's from Saint Brigid. Now Saint Brigid or Brigid of Kildare as she's known, she's from the 5th century. Now for a long time a lot of people said

Saint Brigid never existed, that there was no woman called Saint Brigid in Kildare who became a saint, that she was just made up. It's a fake person that got made up to personify the goddess Bridget. But there's a really fascinating academic up in Maynooth University called Dr. Niamh Wykerley. I think that's how you pronounce her name. Apologies if it's wrong, but Dr. Niamh Wykerley, who has dedicated her academic career to studying Bridget and St. Bridget. And she reckons that St. Bridget was a real person, a real woman that existed in the 5th century.

She argues that this idea that Bridget wasn't real is a patriarchal narrative. And by looking at the evidence, there was a family in the 5 fifth century from around offaly called the fourth and that a woman founded a church and killed there that became incredibly powerful for like a thousand years and you can trace the lineage and yes saint bridget existed and she founded a church now back to back to how does someone like bridget the goddess become Saint Bridget and this is now back to my own research that I'm doing as just an artist who loves Irish mythology holy wells were really important

to the pagan Irish and I spoke about this before about the Glen of Madness down in Kerry but holy wells were just natural springs. And natural springs brought water up from under the earth. And they were associated with health and healing. And people thousands of years ago in Ireland would gather around these holy wells for their restorative properties. Like down in Clownagelt in Kerry.

for the restorative properties. Like down in Clownagelt in Kerry, there was the holy well that apparently cured people of mental illness. And then they found traces of lithium in that well, so it's possible that people with bipolar disorder were getting little bits of lithium from this water and living better lives. Also, there's other wells where sulfur is present in the water. And this was helpful to people's skin if they had skin conditions.

So natural springs bring minerals and nutrients up from the bottom of the earth to the surface water of this spring. And if you're living a couple of thousand years ago, where you mightn't have full nutrition from your diet a natural spring will bring you health so people would gather around these natural springs and worship them because they thought that this spring was a portal to the other world to the other dimension and the bubbles that would come up from this natural spring was wisdom and health from the other world and then this would transfer to all the trees and the bushes that go around that spring so the earliest christian missionaries in ireland in the 500s they would teach about christ around springs because this is where pagan people were

going for their spirituality so the Christian teachers would just find people gathering around these areas and convert them to Christianity and not only convert them to Christianity but bring elements of their pagan beliefs into the new Christian belief and this is what made Irish Christianity so unique and so fucking brilliant. Like I'm talking about before the Norman invasion of the 1100s. When the Brits invaded us in the 1100s, part of that was to make Irish Christianity be more in line with Roman teachings. be more in line with Roman teachings. Because for the previous 600 years,

Irish Christianity really incorporated a lot of Irish paganism. And Irish Christianity in the golden age of Irish Christianity, it was fucking mad. It was hilarious. The stories of all the saints contained these wild supernatural stories and they took bits from Irish mythology and Christianity in Ireland was treated as an art form. You could worship through acts of creativity, through storytelling, illuminated gospels. Irish monasteries became famous all over the known world at the time. We were the land of saints and scholars. People would come to Ireland from European countries or from the caliphate, the Islamic caliphate of Spain, would come to Ireland to study in our monasteries. It was a time of

learning and creativity and art, which in my opinion brought in the silliness and flexibility and fun of the Irish oral tradition of storytelling. And that's how you get mad shit like the story of Brendan and the whale meeting Judas Iscariot on an island and giving communion wafer to a whale. And when you have stories of the saints, like a story about St. Bridget, which contained the wonderful hyperbole that you find in Irish mythology. Hyperbole being ridiculous, hilarious exaggerations. It's a story that in the 5th

century when Brigid was founding her monastery in Kildare, she went to the King of Leinster and asked the King of Leinster for some land to found her monastery. And the King of Leinster and asked the king of Leinster for some land to found her monastery and the king of Leinster says fuck off I'm a pagan I don't I don't give you're not getting any land to found a monastery and then Bridget goes back to him and she says okay will you give me land for my monastery but only as much land as my cloak will cover so the king of Leinster looks at St. Bridget and he sees that she's wearing a tiny little cloak and he laughs and he goes, all right, so lay your cloak on the ground

and I'll give you that land. And then Bridget takes off her cloak and as she unrolls it, it stretches out for fucking miles, this big, long, magical cloak. And then she goes, there's my land. And the King of Leinster witnesses this miracle and converts to Christianity and gives St. Bridget all that land.

But what you have there is an example of hyperbole. Great exaggeration of a hero's abilities, which is something you see a lot in the Irish mythological storytelling tradition and what you get with the story of Saint Bridget is on the one hand you have these clearly Christian stories that are about her generosity and about how kind she is and there's stories of miracles she performs that are quite similar to like Christ with the loaves and the fishes like she could turn water into beer and then everyone would have beer

and she can create endless amounts of butter for people who are hungry and if someone is sick she can cure them and these miracles that you hear they sound quite Christian we're familiar with this type of Christian miracle from the Bible. But then you have other stories about St. Bridget that have that obscure, ridiculous, surreal madness that you find in Irish mythology. So you go from loaves and fishes to one story where St. Bridget's father tries to marry her off to a man. She's like, no, I don't want to be married off to some man. I'm St. Bridget. I've got a higher calling. I want to to a man. She's like, no, I don't want to be married off to some man. I'm St. Bridget, I've got a higher calling.

I want to found a monastery. I don't want to be married off to some lad. So what St. Bridget does on the altar when she's about to get married, she rips out her eye to make herself unattractive so that the man won't marry her. So she rips the eye out of her head. The man runs off. He goes, I'm not fucking, I'm not marrying this woman she rips the eye out of her head. The man runs off.

He goes, I'm not fucking, I'm not marrying this woman who just ripped her eye out at the altar. And the man's gone. And Bridget performs a miracle. And her eye grows back into her head. And that story's from an illuminated manuscript called the Book of Lismore. And then there's another story where St. Bridget is there

in Kildare in her monastery. And Brendan the Navigator, the fellow who went off sailing all around the world. Brendan the Navigator comes to Kildare to visit Bridget. And he's jealous. And she's like, why are you jealous Brendan? Because I was out travelling the seas. And I met a sea monster. And the sea monster was talking about you and not me.

So that's what you get from the wonderful story of St. Bridget. The very Christian, compassionate messages that we know from the Bible about generosity and healing and caring for the poor and then these other fucking batshit mad stories that you get from Irish mythology all mixed into the one figure and that's Saint Bridget who's also the goddess Bridget from 6,000 years ago who's also a real person that definitely

founded a monastery in Kildare who's a very important person in Irish history who we celebrate Saint Bridget's day for and I'm not into Catholicism. I'm certainly not into the institution of the Catholic Church who caused great fucking harm in Ireland, enabled by the state, with, you know, clerical fucking abuse, abuse of children, mistreatment, oppression.

I'm no fucking fan of that shit. And I'm pissed off and angry that Catholic teaching was a part of my childhood in school for so many years but through my love of art and storytelling and history I can certainly find a way to love and respect and cherish something like the tradition of Bridget and how relevant it is today particularly with Bridget and Saint Bridget being so entwined with spring and the predictability and the cyclical nature of spring and how that's now disappearing how seasons are changing in a six thousand year old history a six thousand year old narrative now we're here at the end and the seasons are changing. In a 6,000 year old history. A 6,000 year old narrative.

Now we're here at the end. And the seasons are changing before our eyes. So I like to. Embrace Bridget in that way. From an ecological point of view. From a nature point of view. From something that's much more. About art that I can feel between my fingers.

When I stick my hands into the fucking ground here in Limerick. So that was my little podcast about Bridget and Irish mythology. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope I did it justice. I hope I did Bridget justice. I'll be back next week with probably another hot take. I don't know. Wink at a crow. Lick a worm. Give nuts to a squirrel. Go fuck yourselves. Dog bless.

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