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Queen of Four Fires
This is a myth of Brighid taken from The Storyteller's Goddess referenced Below. It well described the qualities of the goddess Brighid.
A long time ago, near the beginning, at the first crack of pink in a young morning, near the waters of the magic well, the goddess Brighid slipped into the world and the waiting hands of the nine sisters who swayed and crooned in a great circle around her. The waters of the magic well gurgled their joy.
Up rose a column of fire out of the new goddess's head that burned to the very sky. Brighid reached up her two hands and broke away a flaming plume from her crown of fire and dropped it on the ground before her. There it leapt and shone, making the hearth of the house of the goddess.
Then from the fire of her hearth, Brighid used both hands to draw out a leaping tongue of heat, swallowed it, and felt the fire burn straight to her heart. There stood the goddess, fire crowning her head, licking up inside her heart, glowing and shooting from her hands, and dancing on the hearth before her.
The nine sisters hummed and the waters of the magic well trembled as Brighid built a chimney of brick about her hearth. Then about the chimney, she built a roof of thatch and walls of stone. And so it was that by the waters of the magic well the goddess finished the house in which she keeps the four fires which have served her people forevermore.
Out of the fire on Brighid's hands baked the craft of bending iron. Out of the fire on Brighid's hearth and the waters of her magic well came the healing teas. Out of the fire on Brighid's head flared out writing and poetry. Out of the fire in Brighid's heart spread the heat of compassion.
Word of the gifts of Brighid's fires traveled wide. People flocked to learn from Brighid the secret of using fire to soften iron and bend it to the shapes of their desires. The people called bending iron smithcraft, and they made wheels, pots, and tools that did not break.
All the medicine plants of the earth gathered in the house of the goddess. With their leaves, flowers, barks, and roots, and the waters of her magic well, Brighid made the healing teas. She gave a boy with weak teeth the tea of the dandelion root. She gave a young woman the tea of the raspberry leaf to help her womb carry its child. An old man, a cane in each hand to help him walk, took from Brighid wintergreen bark for his pain and black cherry juice for the rheumatism. She gave comfrey to a girl with a broken leg and blue cohosh to bring her bloods without cramps. Brighid brewed motherwort, licorice root, and dried parsley for a woman who was coming to the end of her monthly bleeding. "Cup a day," said Brighid, "that you stay supple and strong."
The people wanted Brighid's recipes. "But we can't remember which plants for which healings, where to gather them or how long to steep them," they told Brighid.
The fire on Brighid's head blazed bright. She took up a blackened stick and made marks with it on a flat piece of bark."These are the talking marks," She said. "They are the way to remember what you don't want to forget."
The talking marks also let the people write down the stories of her wisdom.
Once two men with terrible stories of leprosy came to Brighid.
"Bathe yourself in my well." said Brighid to the first man. At every place Brighid's waters touched, the man's skin turned whole again.
"Now bathe your friend," said Brighid.
Repulsed, the man backed away from his friend. "I cannot touch him," he said.
"Then you are not truly healed," said the goddess. And she gave the first man back his leprosy and healed the second man. "Return to me with compassion," she said to the first man. "There find your healing."
Every year at midwinter the people thanked Brighid for her well of wisdom and her fires of hand, hearth, head and heart. "Thank you, Brighid, for the smithcraft, for the healing teas, the talking marks, and compassion. May you dwell with your fires in your house by the waters of your magic well forever." References
Thank you sisterfriend! Graphics ©Selkywolf's Den
Sequencer Barry Taylor Used with Permission
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