Women of the Highlands by Katharine Stewart sampler

early women – celtic times
shadow of a huge oak, the tree that was sacred to the Druids.
Her next foundation at Kildare, on the Curragh, also had a connection
to the oak; the name means ‘church of the oaks’. This
was a mixed community, with men and women living and worshipping
together as equals. It was a simple little monastery: a
few small dwelling-huts and oratories. But learning was going on
there, people were being taught to read and to chant. Brigid
became its abbess.
Sexual relationships in Celtic society were based on a realistic
acceptance of the facts of life – love of one of the opposite or the
same sex, jealousy, cruelty, divorce, multiple partners. The clergy at
this time were generally non-celibate. Mixed communities were
common, influenced by the same Celtic ideas. Hilda, the Abbess of
Whitby, ran a community in the 7th century which included the
poet Caedmon.
In remembrance of the goddess of fire, the fire at Brigid’s
community was never allowed to go out. In a ‘Smooring Blessing’
one of the many collected by Alexander Carmichael in the 19th
century, we find the lines:
I will smoor the hearth
As Mary would smoor,
The encompassment of Bride and of Mary
On the fire and on the floor
And on the household all.
To ‘smoor’ meant to smother the flames with ash, so that they could
be blown into life in the morning. The little foundation at Kildare
eventually became one of the great Irish monastic institutions.
Brigid of Kildare was renowned over the Celtic world and
eventually sainthood was conferred upon her and she became
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