Over 1,500 years after her birth, St Brigid is still known today for her compassion and care for others, particularly dispossessed people.
Brigid is pagan goddess, Gaelic cultural icon, and along with Columba and Patrick, she is also christian patron saint of Ireland, promoting protection, healing and fertility, revered for making places of shelter for people to belong to.
Her legacy is celebrated annually on St Brigid’s day, the first day of February which is also the Celtic feast Imbolc, marking the beginning of the growing season. Traditionally, on St Brigid’s Eve, grasses are collected to make her Cross which is hung over the entrance to a home or byre, to provide protection against evil and fire, and as a blessing to all who belong there.
For the Crosses on display here, Susannah Rose travelled to Kilmory beach in Knapdale, Argyll, with the silhouette of Ireland in the distance, to collect the marram grasses from grass-clumps rooted in the backshore, and from wind-strewn grasses around the sands. Look carefully at the marram tones of yellow ochres, bleached after last year’s growth, and the fine strands of a hopeful green of the early Spring.
“I made this by crossing the grass in a sunwise direction, with the first strand facing north then, east, south and west in rotation. Instead of taking it to the windless shelter of my home, soaking and softening the grass to weave a tight flexible cross, I feel the importance of making this cross here, in this healing place Kilmory, which holds the sound of the waves connected between land and sea, and I weave-in the air to fold it in between the strands. The cross takes shape, its interlacing creating strength. I tie the four arms with some washed up twine I find lying on the beach. It’s holding together now, fragile, and light.
Susannah’s embodied process elevates the value of these often overlooked natural materials; by following this centuries-old technique, she continues a practice of caring in the community which underpins traditional gestures of hospitality and protection, and offers an invitation to (re)grow your sense of belonging to the people and places around us here.