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Pagan Christianity?
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Branwen
824 posts

Re: Bride/Brigit
Oct 27, 2009, 11:08
I'm not sure I use a "textbook" version. Not any one textbook, anyhow. And not just textbooks either. I do like Before Scotland though.

Brigantia is just the romananised name for Bride, so I would have to disagree that she became Bride, instead saying Bride pre-dated Brigantia as a name. Then again, I disagree with the etymologies usually given for the root word, mostly because of the elegance of the Berla Egair naSaer, Sacred Language of the Druids, in which the name is preserved in an earlier and clearer form which, if you are brought up in that tradition, has so many connections which make sense using the different etymology her name throws up for the base word. Anyway. I'll bow out of that argument because of difference of opinion, no author ever bothers with traveller lore so I can't do the "quote the source" thing. I'd add that she was the foster mother of mankind before christianity too, though. Look at Modronacht, when the Mother gives over the child of light to the care of the Cailleach/Bride in her cave, in fosterage till he can revover from his battle with the Forces of Eternal Night, and grow strong enough to come forth in the Spring. She assumed that role in the life of Jesus as a continuation of that role. If fosterage hadn't been so common, maybe people here would have given up that idea more easily, but it was one that stuck. When christianity first came, the people themselves tried to fit Jesus to their old ways, for instance, they changed their genealogies to say that they were descended from Jesus or God, or had their pagan legends have saints being born from virgin births (when before they had been maiden, not virgin, births). The church had to do some embarrassing sidestepping of these enthusiasms in the hagiographies, so it wasn't just something forced on the people, they got stuck in from the ground up, I would say.

I'd agree that paganism merged into christianity, quite often because of power struggles and the powerful roman church coming over from Ireland and backing the one small Dalriadian clan who were already christian in empire building strategies. We'd ofhad to have merged all those smaller kingdoms to survive as a celtic nation anyway, though. Religion with power and money to back them up was the only way it could have happened, given how long they had all been fighting one another beforehand and outside threats. Even the church agreed that many saints weren't based on real people, or christian legends, and removed a lot of them from the saints lists in 1967.

Iona... fits the pattern of druid sacred places, and there are several etymologies which back it up, including the one meaning Yew Place, but I don't see any mass agreement on which etymology is right so far. In folklore it was known as the Isle of the Beautiful Women too, as well as having the folklore about Druids. I like the story about the white druid and the grey monk arguing doctrine. There are various explanations of the name in Norse derivations too, but I think people are reaching, as it were. I'm with you on the Yew Tree explanation.
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