Canty - Flame of Ireland

'You compel me, brethren, to undertake to record in writing, after the fashion of learned men, the miracles of the virgin Brigit of holy and blessed memory.' Thus wrote Cogitosus of Kildare in his biography of the 5th-century abbess St Brigit, penned at the end of the 7th century: just one among a number of ancient literary sources of information about this most mysterious and intriguing of saints, in this brief note there is not the space to enter into a full discussion about Brigit's true identity (or identities). To begin, there is the basic question: is she a Christianised Pagan goddess or an historic figure? If the Abbess Brigit was, indeed, an historical person, it is indisputable that many of her attributes and a significant number of the stories about her have their roots in the Pagan beliefs of pre-Christian Britain. Many possible versions of her name abound across the British Isles and beyond, both as a saint and as a goddess: Brigit, Brighid. Bride, Breed, Bridh, Brid, Breo-Saighit, Brigando, Brigantia, Bhgandu and more. It is far from certain that these all refer to the same figure, however, as the root 'brig' has the meaning 'high' or 'exalted', and thus might be applied to a number of revered persons. 'Britain' - even this name may have come from 'Brigantia' (Britannia), the female Celtic deity revered by the northern tribes of England. From the earliest sources we find pagan and Christian traditions about her (or them) woven together, and now the warp and weft are inseparable.

The simplest explanation for this may be the best. The early Church had a canny knack of taking Pagan festivals and figures and absorbing them into Christian practices. One of the biggest indicators that this was a conscious process in Brigit's case is the fact that her Feast Day, 1 February, has been chosen to sit alongside the Feast of Candlemas (2 February) to coincide with the ancient Celtic festival of Imbolc. This double Christian celebration was no doubt intended to expunge all thoughts of Pagan practices from people's minds. Imbolc was the early Spring festival celebrating the lactating of ewes as the first animals of the year gave birth: it had to do with renewal of life, and a number of symbolic acts occurred, including the smothering and re-lighting of hearth fires. Candlemas, too, includes symbols of flame and light, and these resonate powerfully with the extraordinary sequence of fire miracles which occur in Brigit's hagiography.

The Pagan Brigit is thought to be the daughter of the principal Celtic god. The Dagda, known as the 'good god' not because of his goodwill but because he was reputedly good at everything. She took three forms: Maiden, Mother and Crone. 'Their' principal symbol is fire, but they are also associated with smiths and metalcraft, fertility, poetry and language, springs of water and healing. She is sometimes depicted as a warrior with a spear, and her name is sometimes translated as 'fiery arrow', suggestive of power and authority.

The Christian saint, as you will hear from the Lections, was believed to be the illegitimate daughter of a chieftain. Some sources suggest that the druid to whom her mother was sold was female, but mostly he is recorded as male. Her various early biographies list a colourful and original collection of actions and miracles alongside some more standard hagiographical material which might have belonged to the vitae of any number of saints (healing lepers, raising the dead, making small amounts of food feed vast numbers etc, etc), based on those told of Christ in the Gospels. One of her symbols is the laurel (laurus nobilis). She is particularly associated with miracles of increase: beer, butter and bacon being three favourites (and, no doubt, most welcome to the recipients). She is also supposed to have disfigured herself in order to escape marriage, only to have had her beauty miraculously restored once she took the veil. One of the more controversial legends insists that she was 'accidentally" ordained as a bishop:

'It came to pass then, through the grace of the Holy Ghost, that the form of ordaining a bishop was read out over Brigit. Mac-caille said that a bishop's order should not be conferred on a woman. Said Bishop Mel: No power have I in this matter. That dignity hath been given by God unto Brigit' (Book of Lismore)

Of much interest to us as a Scottish ensemble are those legends of a distinctly Celtic nature which coincide with the hagiography of one of our local saints, Kentigern (or Mungo), patron saint of Glasgow. He, too, has a remarkably pagan-seeming fire miracle attributed to him, and both Kentigern and Brigit are reputed to have performed a miracle of the type which is a Celtic cliche, in which a valuable object is cast into water as the result of a sexual misdemeanour, eaten by a fish (usually a salmon) and subsequently miraculously recovered due to he intervention of the saint.

Brigit's title 'Mary of the Gael', arising from the prophecy of a holy man at the synod by the Liffy (as told in Lectio IX), has caused much confusion, leading to a fable that she was in some way miraculously present at the birth of Christ, acting as his nurse. It is much more likely, however, that this title was intended solely to signify the greatest possible honour in a society which revered the Blessed Virgin Mary above all other women. The historic Brigit lived c453 to c524. She is known as Brigit of Kildare in honour of the small oratory she founded in Cill-Dara, c468, which became a famous spiritual centre and grew into a cathedral city. She is believed to have founded a typically Celtic monastic foundation, including both men and women, and is reputed to have chosen St Conleth as bishop. This assumption of ecclesiastical authority, along with her own ordination legend, has subsequently been played down by the Church.

Centres for the veneration of Brigit have included a number of wells, some of which are still visited for this purpose today and, for several centuries, a perpetual flame tended by the nuns at Kildare. Both of these phenomena are distinctly Pagan, so we should not be surprised that the flame was eventually suppressed by the order of an English bishop in 1220, subsequently rekindled, and finally quenched in the early 16th century Equally unsurprising is the adoption of both the wells and the flame by new-age and Pagan groups today, seeking to rediscover Brigit's pre-Christian identity.

We have one favourite miracle that does not appear in this Office, nor in any of the most ancient sources. It was included in O'Hanlon's 'Lives of the Irish Saints' (1800), however, and we would like to think that it belongs to an earlier tradition. When St Brigit was on a visit to Limerick, she called at a chief's house only to find him away from home. Seeing harps hanging on the walls, she asked the young men of the house to play for her. They explained that there were no harpists present, but attempted to play when Brigit's nuns jokingly suggested that the saint would bless their hands. At that point, they suddenly became able to play like trained musicians. Afterwards they became professional harpists, and their descendants played for the kings of Ireland.

'Almighty and everlasting God, who choosest the weak things of this world that thou mayest overthrow the strong, give us in this feast of St Brigit strength of mind and body, that we may with all our heart run to thee. and serve thee in body always.' (Prayer at the end of the Office for the Feast of St Brigit)

Our programme mostly consists of material for thr Office of Matins for the Feast of St Brigit. Matins was the longest and most 'entertaining' of the Offices including a series of nine lections and responsories focussing on the life and attributes of the saint. The full Office would probably be more than two hours in length, so we present a formal, but truncated, version which includes the original lections, but cuts nine of the ten Psalms which would have been sung. The one remaining Psalm is the Venite which forms a delightful structure with its antiphon (Invitatory), alternately whole or in part, appearing between each verse.

The Responsories for such an important Office would be expected to have a doubie response at the end of each Octave, as part of Responsories III. VI and IX, with the second versus taking the form of a Gloria. Only one of these gloria settings survives (after Responsory III in TCD 78), so I have reconstructed the two others using this, and other similar material from Celtic sources, as a model.

The date of the manuscript might have tempted us to perform this material using late-Medieval techniques such as applied measures and improvised harmonies. We have steadfastly resisted doing this, wishing to present the Office in a much more archaic manner, befitting the great antiquity of the sources of the Brigit legends.

The texts take two forms: the rhyming verses used for Antiphons, Responsories and Hymns, and the prose Lections- We are profoundly grateful to Dr Jamie Reid-Baxter for his translations of what was often somewhat obscure material. He has corrected the most serious errors in the Latin, allowing some minor quirks to stand in order not entirely to lose the flavour of the original. He has also identified the source of the Lections as the Vita Quarta, including the section thereof now missing. This version of Brigit's life has been shown by Richard Sharpe (Medieval Irish Saints' Lives: OUP, 1991) to be a Medieval re-working of the vita prima of c665.

I am extremely grateful to Dr Greta-Mary Hair for her invaluable advice regarding the reciting-tone for the Lections and its use, and for the shining example she has created through her ground-breaking work on similar Scottish material. Her patience and kindness are much appreciated, and any infelicities that appear in the final version are entirely my own. When setting the Lections to the reciting-tone, I have used the pointing and punctuation in the MS as much as possible. There are places, however, where the sense is compromised by the pointing, or lack of it, so I have moved or added punctuation occasionally to restore clarity. It is interesting to note the places where the punctuation speeds up as if to indicate the dramatic re-telling of action in moments such as the 'house on fire' scene in Lectio V. There is a great deal of activity and incident in the stories, and there is evidence that they were 'performed' - perhaps in a manner which harks back to bardic traditions - so they should be listened to while following the text, and viewed as story-telling rather than pure music.

The harp accompaniments, improvised by Bill Taylor, pay tribute to a growing body of evidence supporting the view that harps were used in Celtic religious foundations- I should also mention to those who may still be unaware of the ancient tradition of female religious chanting that this form of music-making is very far from being the preserve of men!

Manuscript 80, from the library of Trinity College Dublin, is the main source relied upon for this recording. It is a fifteenth-century noted breviary, i.e., one which includes notation for the chant melodies. Although we do not know the details of its provenance, it was compiled probably in the fifteenth century and is believed to have been used in the parish of Kilmoone, Co- Meath, from at least 1470 until 1604.

This breviary is one of a number of Sarum Divine Office sources from Anglo-Norman Ireland. In other words, it conforms to the standard Sarum Rite, but is regionally distinctive by virtue of the presence of Irish saints in its Calendar (which lists the date and rank of feasts celebrated in the course of the fiturgical year), and Sanctorale (the section containing special - i.e., 'proper' as distinct from 'ordinary' - prayers for the veneration of individual saints on their feastdays). Unfortunately, much of the Calendar of MS 80 has been lost: only the months of May to August survive. There are references to Colm Cille (or Columba, as he is known in Scotland - feastday 9 June), and to the Translation of Patraic, Brigit and Colm Cille (10 June), but since if does not include either February or March, we can only assume that the feastdays of Brigit (1 February) and Patraic (17 March) were listed also in the original. The Sanctorale, however, contains sung offices for both Brigit and Patraic, but not for Colm Cille. while Ciaran's name occurs in the litany.

This version of the office for Brigit exists also in two other manuscripts: TCD 78, an antiphonal, and TCD 88, another breviary. However, MS 80 has the most complete version. The readings are not included in MS 78, while MS 88 has no music notation and so lies outside of our concerns here.

MS 78 is a Sarum Divine Office antiphonal which, like MS 80, was adapted for Irish use by the addition of materials for local saints. This is a large manuscript used most likely by the choir. It dates probably to between 1488 and 1500, and its Irish element is particularly strong In that it contains references to some saints not found elsewhere in Irish sources. As well as Brigit, Ciaran of Saighir, Patraic, and the Translation of Patraic, Brigit and Colm Cille, there are Fintan (erased), Mucna, Lachtan, Laisren (Laserian or Molaise), Brendan, Coemgen (Kevin), Lorcan Ua Tuathail (Laurence O'Toole), and Finnian of Cionard. Although usually known as the 'Clondalkin' breviary, the presence of a notated office for Cainnech (Canice), patron saint of Kilkenny, and references to a number of saints from the diocese of Kilkenny, suggests that it was first used at St Canice's Cathedral, Kilkenny, and only later in the diocese of Dublin, most likely Clondalkin, during the second half of the sixteenth century.

Notated offices for Brigit, Patraic (incomplete, owing to missing folios) and Cainnech are included in the Sanctorale, as well as prayers and references to Mucna, Ciaran, and Audoen (the Norman French St Ouen) who, though not Irish, was much venerated In Dublin and had a church dedicated to him which still exists to this day. The Brigit and Patraic materials are more or less identical with those in MS 80 (with the exception of the omission of readings), but MS 78 is a unique source for Cainnech.

The wire-strung clairseach was the essential art Instrument of Medieval Ireland. This ancient harp was characterised by a sound box carved from a single block of timber, a substantial arm reinforced with thick metal bands, a stout forepiltar, and brass wire strings. Played with the fingernails, the strings gave a satisfying sustain, which ancient writers described as sounding like bells. Such harps were played in Ireland at least as early as the 10th century, and they appear to have been used in liturgical settings to provide an intoning pitch for the singing of plainsong, to give instrumental preludes or interludes, and to accompany the performance of devotional poetry. As an accompanist, my role is to support both the tonal centre and the emotion of the music. During the Responsories I provide a gentle line of counter-melody which moves in the same direction as the plainsong, but which also offers a subtle. independent commentary on the text. The Lections give an ideal opportunity to accompany a singer as a Medieval storyteller, to present the miracles of the saint's life in a dramatic way, with moments which range from furious decorative filigree to sections of serene, introspective solemnity.