The Leabhar Breac (“The Speckled Book”) is an early 14th century Irish manuscript containing a collection of Hiberno-Latin and Middle Irish writings. Its contents are eclectic, including various saints’ vitae and religious rules along with secular histories. Within the Leabhar Breac we find a life of St. Brigid of Kildare that closely follows her 7th century vita written bySt. Ailerán (d. 665).
The vita in the Leabhar Breac praises Brigid as a wonderworker and assigns to her a very unique title:
She is it that helpeth everyone who is in straits and in danger. She it is that abateth the pestilences. She it is that quelleth the wave-voice and the wrath of the great sea. This is the prophesied woman of Christ. She is the Queen of the South. She is the Mary of the Gael. (1)
The title “Mary of the Gael” has been a popular nickname for Brigid throughout the ages. According to the story, a certain holy man at an episcopal synod had a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary coming across a plain leading a company of virgins. Later, he goes out to the Plain of Liffey and sees Brigid accompanied by her virgins making her way to the synod. The man exclaimed “This is the Mary that I beheld!” When Brigid arrives, she takes the unusual step of blessing everyone present in the name of the Virgin Mary. Ever after, the Leabhar Breac tells us, she was known as “Mary of the Gael”:
Once upon a time a certain faithful woman asked Dubthach that Brigit might go with her into the plain of the Liffey, for a congregation of the synod of Leinster was held there. And it was revealed in a vision to a certain holy man who was in the assembly, that Mary the Virgin was coming thereto, and it was told him that she would not be (accompanied) by a man in the assembly. On the morrow came the woman to the assembly, and Brigit along with her. And he that had seen the vision said ‘This is the Mary that I beheld!’ saith he to Brigit. The holy Brigit blessed all the hosts under the name and honour of Mary. Wherefore Brigit was (called) the Mary of the Gael thenceforward.
The episode on the Plain of Liffey is repeated in the Bethu Brigte, an Old Irish life of St. Brigid composed during the Carolingian era. The author of the Bethu Brigte was apparently uncomfortable with the story of Brigid blessing the synod, as he reverses the action so that she receives the blessing instead of imparting it:
The people of the assembly rose up before her and went to converse with her. They blessed her. (3)
The Bethu Brigte also clarifies that Brigid’s identification with Mary is merely symbolic: “Today a girl, for whom it has been prepared by God, will come to us like Mary.”
Another comparison to the Blessed Virgin can be found in the hymn composed by ). St. Broccán (d. 650). “Broccán’s Hymn” is comprised of 53 stanzas and presents a metrical life of St. Brigid, similar to the better known Metrical Life of St. Patrick by St. Fiacc. The first few stanzas are dedicated to praising her virtues; the remainder recount various miracles for which she was renowned, many of which also appear in the later vitae. The last stanza of “Broccán’s Hymn” elevates Brigid above every other saint save the Blessed Virgin herself:
I have not found like her save Mary…
There are two nuns in the Kingdom—
I implore their aid with all my effort—
Mary and St. Brigid.
May we be under the protection of these two. (5)
Brigid’s association with Mary can also be seen in her unique identification as the mystical mother of Jesus. In the second stanza of “Broccán’s Hymn,” Broccán calls Brigid, “mother of my high King, of the kingdom of heaven best.” And in the conclusion of the Leabhar Breac, we see the following:
This is the father of this holy virgin—the Heavenly Father. This is her son—Jesus Christ. This is her fosterer—the Holy Ghost. (6)
Here the author of the Leabhar Breac draws upon classic Trinitarian and Marian theology to explain St. Brigid’s relationship to God. But while it has been common in western Christendom for Christians to call God our Father and the Holy Spirit our helper or custodian, it is almost unheard of to call Jesus Christ any woman’s “son,” even among saintly women who imitate Mary’s virtues exceptionally. Yet this phraseology is not unique to the Leabhar Breac; we see the same language in “Broccán’s Hymn”:
She slept the sleep of a captive—
the saint, for the sake of her Son…
she was One-Mother of the Great King’s Son (7)
Historically, there has been a general Christian sensibility that the motherhood of Jesus is predicated of Mary uniquely—that, however perfectly a woman may model Mary spiritually, calling her Jesus’s “mother” and He her “son” is a line never crossed. That Brigid’s early biographers were at ease making this association is a peculiar eccentricity of Irish Catholicism, one that authors of later generations—like the author of Bethu Brigte—felt the need to carefully walk back from.
If you’d like to learn more about the great Mary of the Gael from a Catholic perspective, pick up The Life of Brigid by Cogitosus and Other Selected Writings (Cruachan Hill Press, 2022). You may also be interested in our article, “Brigid of Kildare, Pagan Goddess?“
(1) “Homily on the Life of St. Brigid,” trans. by Whitley Stokes, Three middle-Irish homilies on the lives of saints Patrick, Brigit and Columba (Calcutta: 1877), 85
(2) Ibid., 61
(3) Bethu Brigte, Chapter 11. Translated by Donnchadh Ó hAodha (University College: Cork, 2001)
(4) Ibid.
(5) Lines 209-212. The full English text of St. Broccan’s Hymn was published in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record of 1868 and can be found online here and here.
(6) “Homily on the Life of St. Brigid,” 85
(7) St. Broccan’s Hymn, Line 126
Phillip Campbell, “Brigid of Kildare as ‘Mary of the Gael,'” Unam Sanctam Catholicam, Feb. 1, 2026. Available online at https://unamsanctamcatholicam.com/2026/02/01/brigid-of-kildare-as-mary-of-the-gael