From the start, it was clear that Brigid was especially holy and set apart from pagan things for God’s purposes. Her father was called Dubhthach, and he was a pagan chieftain of Leinster. Her mother was a Christian, called Broicseach. Sadly, however, she was a slave owned by Dubhthach. It is hard to understand how her slavery came about, but there is one story that it happened as she was kidnapped by Irish pirates, taken to Portugal, and then somehow returned to Ireland to be sold to Dubhthach! Whatever happened, since her mother was a slave, Brigid was born as a slave too. What’s more, Brigid had been born out of wedlock, so she really did have a low status at the start of her life. But from birth, Brigid showed her pagan father that she was special.
Brigid’s father and her pregnant mother, Broicseach, were travelling in a chariot one day. They passed a druid and his servants. They could hear the druid remarking that the chariot was resounding ‘under a king’. His prophetic words spoke of the future greatness of Brigid.
Another time, the local druid, Maithgen, said of Brigid while her mother was pregnant with her, ‘Marvellous will be the child that is in her womb… The bondmaid will bring forth a daughter conspicuous and radiant, who will shine like a sun among the stars of heaven!’
Brigid was born at the foot of the Cooley mountains in Faughart, just north of Dundalk in Co. Louth. We don’t know the exact year, but it was sometime between the year 436 AD and 468 AD that Brigid was born at dawn. It is said that angels hovered over her mother’s cottage there and a bright light could be seen as far as Dundalk Bay.
Another story tells us Brigid was born at the threshold of the door of the house. Her mother Broicseach had one foot inside the house and the other outside when Brigid’s time to be born came about. This had been prophesied the day before: ‘The child born tomorrow at the rising of the sun, and who is born without being inside or outside a house, that child will surpass every other child in Ireland.’
A special thing that happened was that Dubhthach had a series of dreams about Brigid. Before a name had been given to his child, he had dreams of three Christian clerics baptising her. In the dream, one of the clerics told him, ‘Let Brigit be your name for the girl.’ Now, when Brigid was born in the fifth century, there were still many pagan people who followed the religion of the druids. Brigid was the name of a very famous Irish goddess of three sisters (each with the same name). The three Brigid goddesses were Brigid the poetess, Brigid the healer, and Brigid the smith. Dubhthach wondered to himself, ‘Why on earth does my daughter deserve such an important name?’ But, puffed up with pride, the pagan chieftain agreed. It was a sign of important things to come.
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