serve these poor persons, which he did, and had his faculties ever after.
In a time of famine she went with some of her nuns and asked for provisions from Bishop Ybar. He had no bread, so he set before her a stone with some lard. The stone became bread, and Brigid and the bishop were satisfied to make a meal of it, but two of the virgins, desiring to eat flesh, hid it, and they found it turned into serpents. Brigid rebuked them, and on their repentance the serpents again became bread.
She had power over wild beasts. Once when a wolf had killed a sheep-dog, she made him take the place of his victim, and drive the sheep without frightening them.
Cows, calves, milk, and butter figure largely in the legends of this saint. A number of strangers arrived at her home, and as she had nothing to give them but what she could get from one cow, she milked it three times, and it gave as much as three cows. It is in allusion to this legend that she appears in some pictures holding a large bowl.
She seems to have shown severity or inflicted punishment only when the objects of her anger were guilty of unkindness. For instance, when a woman refused to wash a leper whom Brigid intended to heal, she transferred the leprosy to the unkind one, but afterwards prayed for her, and thereby healed her. One day two lepers came begging, and she gave them a calf. One of them said he did not want half a calf, and did not care to have it unless he might have it all to himself. Brigid bade him take the animal, and said to the other, “Wait with me a little while, and see if God will send you anything to make up for your share of the calf.” She procured another calf for him, and be went and overtook the ungrateful leper. They soon came to a great river, and the good leper and his calf arrived safely at the other side, but the thankless one and his calf were washed away and drowned.
Her hospitality and charity were unbounded. The fame of her holiness, her miracles, and her prophetic powers extended to Scotland. It is said that King Nectan, being driven out of Scotland, went to Ireland, and there visited Brigid, and asked for her prayers. She promised that if he went back to his own country God would have mercy upon him, and he should possess the kingdom of the Picts in peace.
She was upwards of seventy when she died. She was buried at Kildare, and translated to Downpatrick, where she was laid beside St. Patrick and St. Columba.
It is a mistake to identify her with St. Brigid of Glastonbury or St. Brigid of Abernethy. Several other saints of the same name, contemporary with her, or nearly so, are mentioned by Colgan. She is honoured in many places and calendars on the Continent, but is perhaps not so universally known there as St. Brigid of Sweden.
After her death, the sacred fire, which she had kept perpetually burning, and which caused the church of Kildare to be called the house of fire, was kept up on her tomb until 1220, when sundry accusations of superstition and heathenism having arisen against the custom, Henry London, archbishop of Dublin, ordered it to be put out to avert scandal. It was relighted and kept burning until the time of Henry VIII., when the nuns were banished from Kildare, their goods confiscated, and the churches desecrated.
Her Life was written immediately after her death by Brogan (called also Cloen). Another biography of her was written in the same century, another in the following, and so on. Five Lives are given in the Bollandist collection. B. M. Bede, Mart. Colgan, AA. SS. Hiberniæ Forbes, Kalendars Montalembert, Monks of the West Butler. Cahier.
For other stories of St. Brigid, see Briga (3), Dardulagha, Hinna, Lasrea.
St. Brigid (3) of Abernethy. Bishop Forbes, Scottish Calendars, thinks it is probable there was a Scotch saint of the name of Brigid, whose relics were kept at Abernethy. The Aberdeen Breviary, in the story of St. Mazota, says that St. Brigid of Abernethy was cousin of Graverdus, king of the Picts, who during his wars with the Britons was admonished by supernatural means to send to
