It is with the introduction of Christianity into Ireland that the Irish woman came into her rightful place, and attained the preponderating influence which she, ever since, has held among the Celtic people.  In the period which followed the evangelization of the island many were the “women of worth” who upheld the honor and glory of “Inisfail the Fair”, and women were neither the less numerous nor the less ardent who hung upon the lips of the Apostle of Ireland.

Amid the galaxy of the saints, how lustrous, how divinely fair, shines the star of Brigid, the shepherd maiden of Faughard, the disciple of Patrick the Apostle, the guardian of the holy light that burned beneath the oak-trees of Kildare!  Over all Ireland and through the Hebridean Isles, she is renowned above any other.  We think of her, moreover, not alone, but as the centre of a great company of cloistered maidens, the refuge and helper of the sinful and sorrowful, who found in the gospel that Patrick preached a message of consolation and deliverance.  Let it be remembered that the shroud of Patrick is deemed to have been woven by Brigid’s hand; that when she died, in 525, Columcille, the future apostle of Scotland, was a child of four.  So she stands midmost of that trilogy of saints whose dust is said to rest in Down.

Who that hears of Columcille will forget how He won that name, “dove of the Church”, because of his early piety, and that surely bespeaks a mother’s guiding care.  Ethne, mother of Columcille, remains a vague but picturesque figure, seen against the background of the rugged heath-clad hills of Tir-Conal by the bright blue waters of Gartan’s triple lake.  Her hearth-stone or couch is shown there to this day, where once in slumber, before the birth of her son, she saw in a glorious visionary dream a symbol of his future greatness.  A vast veil woven of sunshine and flowers seemed to float down upon her from heaven:  an exquisitely poetic thought, which gives us warrant to believe that Columcille’s poetic skill was inherited from his mother.

Ronnat, the mother of his biographer, St. Adamnan, plays a more notable part in history, for, according to an ancient Gaelic text recently published, it was to her that the women of Ireland owed the royal decree which liberated them from military service.  The story goes that once, as she walked beside the Boyne, after some sanguinary conflict, she came upon the bodies of two women who had fallen in battle.  One grasped a reaping hook, the other a sword, and dreadful wounds disfigured them.  Horrified at the sight, she brought strong pressure to bear upon her son, and his influence in the councils of the land availed to bring about the promulgation of the decree which freed women from war-service.

Our warrior kings had noble queens to rule their households, and of these none stands out so distinctly after long lapse of time as Gormlai, the daughter of Flann Siona, and wife of Nial Glondubh.  Her story has in it that element of romance which touches the heart and wins the sympathy of all who hear it.