Played down by the Catholic Church and resurrected by modern acolytes as a pagan fire goddess, her shifting cultural meanings conceal the remarkable life of a real early medieval abbess.
In most aspects, the saint and the goddess were indistinguishable. The story goes that a pagan goddess named Brig or Brigid, was, like the saint, associated with fire and water, poetry and fertility. She had two sisters by the same name, a healer and a smith. Like the saint, the goddess was connected with holy wells and animal husbandry and, in one telling, reared on milk from a sacred cow. It is said that the goddess was so popular her traditions got absorbed by the Catholic Church, who wove her myths into a make-believe saint. In fact, the reverse is true. There is ample evidence Brigid was a real woman, albeit one with a folkloric flourish to her biography, and no evidence people worshipped such a goddess in Ireland in or before her time.