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There is nothing more universally joyous in this world than the birth of a new baby. The tiny, soft, helpless new-born, nestled in its mother’s loving and protective embrace beholds a love that is timeless and special.
This archetypical image is in my head as we approach the great rebirth of our agricultural year on Brigid’s Day, the beginning of the new cycle of the year. The eve of the first of February had a whole host of complex folk custom and ritual that clearly delineated the awakening from the slumber of winter and the onset of the fertility of the new spring.
In terms of present day on-going folk tradition, the making of Brigid’s Crosses still dominates. Every schoolchild in the country will proudly arrive home with various manifestations of the intricately woven amulets. Some of an older – or indeed new-age - generation will observe the Brat Bríd – the little piece of cloth – or the ribbon placed outside so the Blessed Bridie will bless it. It is, however, another great tradition, that of the Brídeog, “the Biddy”, that offers us a deeper insight into the nature of this great festival.
Biddy Boys
There are many occasions in Irish folk tradition when those enacting various rituals don a costume of anonymity and in the past, these were invariably made of straw. One only has to think of the old custom of strawing a wedding or the wren boys at Christmas time.
Such straw costume was also the ritual attire of the so-called Biddy Boys, who visited house to house on Brigid’s Eve. The Biddy was made up of a group of young boys and girls who visited the houses in their locality carrying, as the focus of their procession, a doll or effigy of the saint, the Brídeog.
In more recent times, the Biddy doll might be a child’s doll, like one would buy in a local shop, but reimagined as the saint by cladding her in white and up-styling her with Brigid’s crosses and ribbons. These contrast with older exponents in the museum collections, which demonstrate a more vernacular construction.
The older Brídeog dolls were made from a sheaf of cereal straw, sometimes wrapped around a wooden stick or the churn staff and dressed in a white cotton dress.
The head was fashioned from a large potato or turnip, or a piece of cotton stuffed with straw and with the facial features painted on. In truth, some of these examples have a rather ghastly appearance, more reminiscent of the ugly “Sheela-na-Gigs” than the beautiful saintly figure of Brigid or the cuteness of a new-born baby.
The Brídeog
There is a body of evidence that suggests that the procession of the Brídeog figure was originally confined to the young girls alone and it was only later that boys and older adults took over the custom.
The former was certainly the case in Scotland around 1900, when, according to Alexander Carmichael who recorded traditions at that time, noted groups of young girls, the Banal Bríde “Brigid’s Maiden Band”, all dressed in white, with their hair down, parading their little Brigid in return for small charms and alms.
In Ireland, the young girls would chant a rhyme as they made their rounds with the Brídeog:
Here is Miss Brigid dressed in white
Giver her a penny for her night,
Put your hand in your pocket
Take the weight off your purse
And this time next year,
May you be none the worse!
In response, it was customary to stick a pin or two – always useful items for the girls- in the Brídeog and give them a few pennies. Equally, they might expect a few eggs, which they later sold for money, which in turn financed a little party.
There is an important connection between the straw Brídeog doll made from a sheaf of cereal straw and the new cycle of the year. The last sheaf of the harvest had a tremendous significance in Irish folklore and was known as the Cailleach, “the old woman” or “hag”.
The Cailleach sheaf epitomised the end of the fertile year. In some areas, two of these last sheaves were fixed together to form a distinctive type of Brigid’s Cross.
More significantly, it was the seed from this cross that was the first to be sown in the new year; the end of one cycle providing the source for the new.
This new fertile year was manifest in the form of Brigid and the straw sheaf that made her, was in essence a new life, a new baby, the goddess reborn anew.
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