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
Bridget 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 burbled their joy.
Up rose a column of fire out of the new goddess's head that burned
to the very sky. Bridget 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, Bridget 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 Bridget 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 Bridget's hands baked the craft of bending iron.
Out of the fire on Bridget's hearth and the waters of her magic well
came the healing teas. Out of the fire on Bridget's head flared out
writing and poetry. Out of the fire in Bridget's heart spread the heat of
compassion.
Word of the gifts of Bridget's fires traveled wide. People flocked to
learn from Bridget 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, Bridget 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 Bridget 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. Bridget brewed motherwort, licorice root, and dried
parsley for a woman who was coming to the end of her monthly bleeding.
"Cup a day," said Bridget, "that you stay supple and strong."
The people wanted Bridget's recipes. "But we can't remember which
plants for which healings, where to gather them or how long to steep
them," they told Bridget.
The fire on Bridget'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 Bridget.
"Bathe yourself in my well." said Bridget to the first man. At every
place Bridget's waters touched, the man's skin turned whole again.
"Now bathe your friend," said Bridget.
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 than Bridget for her well of wisdom
and her fires of hand, hearth, head and heart. "Thank you,
Bridget, for the simthcraft, 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."
