Bridget: Saint, Goddess, Myth

The Irish Passport

Society & Culture

4.8 • 673 Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2026

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This month marks the official start of spring in Ireland and to mark it Naomi and Tim discuss the figure of Bridget, Brigid or Bríd. A goddess in Gaelic times who became Christianised into Saint Bridget, the stories about this figure reveal fascinating details about the society that produced them. A bonus Halfpint debrief episode is available here for Patreon supporters: https://www.patreon.com/posts/halfpint-debrief-151451289 Here are links to some podcasts we mentioned in the episode that have delived into Bridget and her legacy in Ireland: The Irish History Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7frXuuvcxGMDnDdim5Wv20?si=77qeFMbERYSyD5yP-crldw Talking History: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7LY4tBxJRYSfM6VIwJ3eyn?si=MBNVncl0SuqBjCppl0miww

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome to Irish Passport.
0:02.3	Let's do it.
0:03.1	Welcome to the Irish Passport.
0:04.8	I'm Tim McInerney.
0:06.0	I'm Naomi O'Leary.
0:07.0	We're friends.
0:07.7	Can you both to Naomi?
0:08.5	Anwarfad, Tim.
0:09.9	This is your passport to Irish culture, history and politics.
0:13.2	Uh-huh.
0:13.4	I'm recording.
0:14.2	One, two, two, three.
0:16.6	Okay.
0:43.0	Hello, everyone and welcome back to the Irish Passport podcast, a very special Fiaura episode, Naomi,
0:48.4	where today we are looking at the enigmatic figure of St. Bridget, one of Ireland's patron saints.
0:55.5	Fantastic. And about time we got round to her, to be honest, to give her her her Jew. So we're going to be digging deep here because perhaps more than any other figure in Irish Christianity, St. Brigid provides a particularly
1:01.3	vivid glimpse into the Christianisation of Gaelic Ireland and how that happened around the 5th century.
1:07.4	And also the weird kind of merging of Christian and pre-Christian rituals in Irish traditions ever since.
1:14.6	Yes, indeed. Bridget herself, as we will see, is in many ways a strange kind of amalgam of an ancient Gaelic goddess
1:22.7	and a possibly allegorical Christian heroine, possibly very real person. We'll discuss that in a little bit.
1:29.2	While the celebrations associated with her combine also a festival of fire,
1:33.8	which is, of course, in bulk, with the solemn reverence of Ireland's second patron saint
	...

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