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OF all the Irish saints, Brigid and Columkille are, next after St. Patrick, the most loved and revered by the people of Ireland.
Like many others of our early saints, Brigid came of a noble family. Her father Dubthach [Duffa] was a distinguished Leinster chief descended from the kings of Ireland. For some reason which we do not know he and his wife lived for a time at Faughart near Dundalk, which was then a part of Ulster: and at Faughart Brigid was born about the year 455. The family must have soon returned however to their own district, for we know that Brigid passed her childhood with her parents in the neighbourhood of Kildare. She was baptised and carefully instructed and trained both in general education and in religion: for her father and mother were Christians. As she grew up, her quiet gentle modest ways pleased all that knew her. At the time of her birth, St. Patrick was in the midst of his glorious career; and some say that while she was still a child she met him, and that when he died she made with her own hands a winding sheet in which his body was laid in the grave; which may have happened, as she was ten or twelve years of age at the time of his death.
When Brigid came of an age to choose her way of life, she resolved to be a nun, to which her parents made no objection. After due preparation she went to a holy bishop of the neighbourhood, who at her request received her and placed a white robe on her shoulders and a white veil over her head. Here she remained for some time in companionship with eight other maidens who had been received with her, and who placed themselves under her guidance. As time went on she became so beloved for her piety and sweetness of disposition that many young women asked to be admitted; so that though she by no means desired that people should be speaking in her praise, the fame of her community began to spread through the country.
This first establishment was conducted strictly under a set of Rules drawn up by Brigid herself: and now, bishops in various parts of Ireland began to apply to her to establish convents in their several districts under the same rules. She was glad of this, and she did what she could to meet their wishes. She visited Longford, Tipperary, Limerick, South Leinster, and Roscommon, one after another; and in all these places she founded convents.
At last the people of her own province of Leinster, considering that they had the best right to her services, sent a number of leading persons to request that she would fix her permanent residence among them. She was probably pleased to go back to live in the place where she had spent her childhood; and she returned to Leinster where she was welcomed with great joy. The Leinster people gave her a piece of land chosen by herself on the edge of a beautiful level grassy plain well known as the Curragh of Kildare. Here, on a low ridge overlooking the plain, she built a little church under the shade of a wide-spreading oak tree, whence it got the name of Kill-dara, the Church of the Oak, or as we now call it, Kildare. This tree continued to flourish long after Brigid's death, and it was regarded with great veneration by the people of the place. A writer of the tenth century—four hundred years after the foundation of the church—tells us that in his time it was a mere branchless withered trunk; but the people had such reverence for it that no one dared to cut or chip it.
We are not quite sure of the exact year of Brigid's settlement here; but it probably occurred about 485, when she was thirty years of age. Hard by the church she also built a dwelling for herself and her community. We are told in the Irish Life of St. Brigid that this first house was built of wood like the houses of the people in general; and the little church under the oak was probably of wood also, like most churches of the time. As the number of applicants for admission continued to increase, both church and dwelling had to be enlarged from time to time; and the wood was replaced by stone and mortar. Such was the respect in which the good abbess was held, that visitors came from all parts of the country to see her and ask her advice and blessing: and many of them settled down in the place, so that a town gradually grew up near the convent, which was the beginning of the town of Kildare.
