Back in 1977 Patrick Ford published a paper called “Celtic Women: the Opposing Sex”. It could have been tailor-made for the Morrigan, a fearsome goddess who spends most of the Tain trying to destroy the hero Cúchulainn. By contrast, Brigid seems to be the “good girl” of Irish myth.

She is the daughter of the Dagda, and mother of three sons. She marries the Fomorian Bres to end the war between his people and hers, and later weeps bitterly when her son dies in battle. (And when Christianity comes, she smartly transitions to a saint. It’s very hard to picture a St Morrigan, although I wonder what she would be patron saint of…)

Two very different goddesses? Sometimes I imagine that Irish goddesses were invented by someone heavily into Winnicotthim astride a river. This was the Irish Day of the Dead, when the veil between the worlds was thin, and people could pass into the otherworld or speak with those who lived there:

Now the Dagdae had to meet a woman in Glenn Etin on that day year about the Allhallowtide of the battle. The river Unius of Connaught roars to the south of it. He beheld the woman in Unius in Corann, washing herself, with one of her two feet at Allod Echae i. e. Echumech, to the south of the water, and the other at Loscuinn, to the north of the water. Nine loosened tresses were on her head. The Dagdae conversed with her, and they make a union. ‘The Bed of the Couple’ is the