History.com

Imbolc is a pagan holiday celebrated from February 1 through sundown February 2. Based on a Celtic tradition, Imbolc was meant to mark the halfway point between winter solstice and the spring equinox in Neolithic Ireland and Scotland. The holiday is celebrated by Wiccans and other practitioners of neopagan or pagan-influenced religions. Imbolc is just one of several pre-Christian holidays highlighting some aspect of winter and sunlight, and heralding the change of seasons.

The celebration of Imbolc dates back to the pre-Christian era in the British Isles.

The earliest mentions of Imbolc in Irish literature date back to the 10th century. Poetry from that time relates the holiday to ewe’s milk, with the implication of purification.

It’s been speculated that this stems from the breeding cycle of sheep and the beginning of lactation. The holiday was traditionally aligned with the first day of spring and the idea of rebirth.

https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/imbolc

Blessed be

Now at spring’s awakening, short days are lengthening

and after St. Bridget’s Day. I’ll set my sail.

A blind man, on a stone bridge in Galway

or the road to Loughrea, felt the sun’s rays

in his bones again and praised the sycamore and oak,

crops still drowsy in the seed, wheat, flax and oats.

His song rising, he praised Achill’s eagle, Erne’s hawk

and in beloved Mayo, young lambs, kids, foals,

and little babies turning towards birth.

Blind Raftery invoked Bridget, Ceres of the North,

born into slavery at Faughart, near Dundalk

to an Irish chieftain and a foreign slave.

Why, of all small girls in so distant a century born

is she honoured still, in place-names, constant wells,

new rushes plaited to protect hearth, home, and herd?

Bridget, goddess, druidess of oak, or saint - a girl

who gifted her father’s sword to a beggar for bread,

we, who have wounded the engendering seas and earth,

beg you to teach us again, before it grows too late,

your neglected, painstaking arts of nature and of care.

Moya Cannon’s latest collection is Donegal Tarantella (Carcanet). Her poem was commissioned by Galway 2020 to mark the beginning of spring this St Bridget’s Day.


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