In the Irish town of Tully in County Kildare, a statue of a woman wearing a cross pendant around her neck and holding up a flame in one hand stands by a pool of water. This is St Brigit (or Brigid or Brighid, among other spellings) at St Brigit’s Well – one of around 100 holy wells in Ireland associated with her, and one of two in Tully. (St Brigit’s Wayside Well is the other.) It is estimated that there are some 3,000 holy wells in Ireland, many of them thought to have healing powers.
The statue is modern, the work of sculptor Annette McCormack, and so too some of the stories applied to the most important female saint in Ireland, for since the late 19th century she has been considered a Christian iteration of the ancient Irish goddess Brigit.
As Mark Williams writes, the lack of earlier sources means that Celtic mythological stories are products of the Christian era, written down by medieval scholars. Because of a lack of widespread familiarity with Old Irish and Medieval Welsh, it is the various later retellings of the myths and accounts of gods, goddesses, fairies, and heroes that prevail.
Excavating the Lowlands and Borders