THE FIRE-HOUSE OF SAINT

BRIGID

 

Cambrensis writing in the 12th century refers as follows to this fire: “At Kildare which the glorious Brigid renders noble, many miracles deserve to be recorded, amongst which the fire of St. Brigid comes first: this they call inextinguishable, not that it could not be extinguished, but because the nuns feed it with fuel and tend it so care­fully that it has continued inextinct since the time of the Virgin.

 

  Notwithstanding the great quantity of wood that has been consumed during so long a time, yet the ashes never accumulate. When in the time of St. Brigid twenty nuns had served the Lord here, she made the twentieth. After her glorious death, nineteen always remained and the number was not increased, and when each had kept the fire in order on her own night, on the twentieth night the last nun put faggots on the fire saying: ‘Brigid help your own fire. For this night has fallen to you.’ The fire being left so is found still burning in the morning, the fuel being consumed as usual. The fire is surrounded by a circular fence of twigs within which a male enters not.” In A.D. 1220, Henry de Loundres, Norman Archbishop of Dublin and Justiciary of Ireland, extinguished the fire which had been kept alight from early times by nuns of St. Brigid. Possibly it had been represented to him that the fire was of pagan origin. The fire, however, had any or all of three purposes (1) to provide for the wants of the poor pilgrims and strangers in accordance with the tradition founded by St. Brigid; (2) it may have been a sacred fire kept always burning before the shrines of the holy founders; (3) St. Brigid’s nuns may have been anticipating the now general rule of keeping a lamp before the Blessed Sacrament. At any rate, the fire was soon re-lighted and continued to burn till the 16th century when the monasteries were suppressed. The ruins of the Fire-house about 20 feet square are to the rere, between the Round Tower and the Nave.