Brid

Nevyn

http://www.ordbrighideach.org/writings.htm wrote:

Brigit the Goddess
The name Brigit comes from the Celtic word 'brig' which is suggestive of power and authority and means 'High One' or Exalted One'. So in a sense, like many Celtic god-names, Brigit is a title rather than a true name. The same root gave rise to the name Brigantia, goddess of the Brigantes (sometimes thought to be the same deity as the Irish Brigit) who had a huge tribal hegemony in north Britain before and during the Roman period. Brigantia's name points to her role as personification and protector of her tribe: at Birrens, an image of the goddess accompanied by a dedicatory inscription, depicts her wearing the mural crown of a tutelary deity. Iconography demonstrates a link between Brigantia and the high Roman goddesses Victory and Minerva. Indeed, Brigit herself is sometimes identified with Minerva, since both Celtic and Roman goddesses were associated with crafts and with healing.

The nature of Brigit and her pagan and Christian identity are extremely complex problems over which there is a great deal of controversy. According to Irish myth, the goddess Brigit was the daughter of the Dagda, an important member of the Tuatha De/ Danann. She is both a single and a triple goddess, with two eponymous sisters, and she had multifarious roles as patron of
poetry, crafts (including smithing, dyeing, weaving and brewing), seers and doctors. As a healer, the goddess particularly protected women in childbirth. Brigit was also a fertility-spirit, whose feast-day of Imbolc on 1 February was one of the great Celtic seasonal festivals. Imbolc celebrated the birth of lambs and the lactation of ewes, and Brigit was active in promoting the
welfare of livestock, especially cattle. In the myth of the Battle of Magh Tuiredh, which chronicles the great conflict between the Tuatha De/ Danann and their demon-enemies the Fomorains for the prossession of Ireland, Brigit appeared as mediator between the two. Although the daughter of the Dagdha, she was also married to the Fomorian king, Bres. Here Brigit is presented as an ancestor-deity, a mother-goddess whose main concern was the future well-being of Ireland.
Little is known in detail about the goddess Brigit. There is a danger of creating a picture of her pagan role from information we have of Brigit the saint, because certain elements of her life as a Christian holy woman appear to be pre-Christian in origin. An example of this is the saint's magical association with fire, which is given rise to the deity being identified as a fire-goddess."

and also http://www.adf.org/articles/gods-and-spirits/brigid.html

Talliesin

I'll point out [thread=188291]this previous thread on Brigidine Crosses[/thread] to anyone interested since it's related.