What is Imbolc?

The ancient name of this festival is often used these days, but what does it mean? And what do we know about the roots of Imbolc?

For most of us growing up in Ireland, 1st February was always known as St Brigid’s Day, or Lá Fhéile Bríde in Irish. We made Brigid’s crosses as children, and for many it was an intrinsically Christian festival, with special masses and prayers to St Brigid of Kildare, who was considered one of the three national saints of Ireland, along with Patrick and Colmcille.

In more recent times, however, with religion becoming less central in Irish life, and growing awareness of the ancient heritage of other festivals such as Halloween (Samhain) and May Day (Bealtaine), it’s getting more common to see the word Imbolc used in events and celebrations at this time of year.

So what does “Imbolc” mean?

Unfortunately, this word is so old that we can’t be 100% sure of its exact meaning, though some plausible etymologies have been suggested. One idea is that it stems from an older form of the phrase i mbolg – “in (the) belly” – and another is that it is derived from the Old Irish word oí-melc – “ewe milk(ing)”.

Either way, and even if these proposed etymologies were reversed engineered in later centuries and the true meaning is lost in the sands of time, the festival is strongly linked with the beginning of lambing season, which starts in February in Ireland.

Quarter days

It’s worth remembering that Imbolc was not a unique occasion, but one of four festivals which divided the early Irish year.

The others, of course, were Bealtaine (May 1), Lúnasa (August 1) and Samhain (November 1), Interestingly, these festivals do not fall on perhaps the most obvious markers of the year, the solstices and equinoxes – in other words, the days which mark the solar year, from the longest day to the shortest.

Rather than being closely connected to the patterns of the sun, the way archaeological sites such as Brú na Bóinne (Newgrange) are, it is accepted that the Irish festivals marked transitions in the agricultural year. Bealtaine was a time to drive cattle to summer pastures, Lúnasa marked the beginning of the harvest, and Samhain was considered the end of summer, the bright half of the year, with the focus on preparing to get through a long dark winter.

Within this framework, it’s clear that Imbolc would have been the “beginning of the end” of winter. The days starting to lengthen, the first flowers blossoming and, of huge importance to farming communities, lambing and calving season.

What sources do we have for Imbolc?

Although there are lots of historical records for Lá Fhéile Bríde, detailing the customs and traditions surrounding it, there are far fewer for its precursor, Imbolc. This shouldn’t come too much a surprise when we consider that St Brigid is said to have been born in 451AD and that there were already references to her feast day in the 7th century.

Literacy and Christianity went hand in hand in Ireland (‘the land of saints and scholars’), so earlier non-Christian customs could only be passed on by word of mouth, and the scribes of the first millennium would have been more concerned with bolstering the new Christian order than preserving a previous culture, the last vestiges of which may have been seen as a threat, or at least an anomaly to be stamped out.

We are lucky, in fact, that some of those Christian monks did choose to write down the older tales, although that means we can never be sure just how much they adapted this material to fit the new agenda, or how much oral tradition was simply lost altogether.

The references we find in the likes of Táin Bo Cuailgne are merely time stampers, referring to periods of the year such as “from Samhain to Imbolc”, which clearly indicate Imbolc as one of the major landmarks in the calendar, despite providing little in the way of lore regarding beliefs and customs associated with it. One exception is a poem which sheds a little light on what people did at this time of year:

Fromad cach bíd iar n-urd
issed dlegair i n-Imbulc
díunnach laime is coissi is cinn
is amlaid sin atberim

In Modern Irish this would be:

Promhadh gach bia in ord
is é seo a dhlíonn in Imbolc
ionladh láimhe is coise is cinn
is amhlaidh sin a deirim

And here is the great German scholar Kuno Meyer’s English translation:

Tasting of every food in order
This is what behoves at Candlemass
Washing of hand and foot and head
It is thus I say

Have a go at saying the poem yourself!

How to interpret this quatrain is another question. Was the ‘tasting of food in order’ related to the winter scarcity and coming availability of new food? Was the washing a kind of ‘spring-clean’, a ritual to ready oneself for the brighter, more active part of the year?

Another text, known as the Metrical Dindshenchas – dindshenchas meaning ‘topography’ or ‘place-lore’ – connects Imbolc explicitly with grazing rather than milking: iar n-imbulc, ba garb a ngeilt (‘after Imbolc, their grazing was rough’).

One way or another, we keep being drawn back to similar themes of end of winter and the beginning of a new phase in the agricultural year – obviously hugely important concerns for any pre-industrial society.

Did aspects of Imbolc survive in Lá Fhéile Bríde?

Although early Christian leaders in Ireland would have striven to draw a line between the old culture and the new, it is usually not so easy to affect a major cultural change with retaining some of the past.

You could compare it to how in the 21st century Ireland has become largely a secular country, with religion taking far less prominent a role in people’s lives than it did in the 20th century. That said, the influence of Christianity is strongly felt here, even amongst people who no longer practise, whether through phrases we use every day, in Irish or English (‘Dia duit’, ‘Bless you’), or other customs and festivals that mark our calendar (Christmas, Easter).

It’s not so hard to imagine that when Christianity became the dominant religion here in the middle of the first millennium AD, older customs were adapted and incorporated into the new system. Some have argued that Brigid herself was a pagan goddess with a cult centre in Cill Dara, later transformed into a Christian saint.

Whether Bríd of historical record is indeed a continuation of the mythological daughter of an Daghdha (the Dagda, the Irish equivalent of Zeus or Odin), we may never know for sure, but many of the customs surrounding Lá Fhéile Bríde seem to fit as well or better with the agricultural ritual and end-of-winter spirit of Imbolc than the more explicitly Christian elements.

That means that some or a good deal of the lore and traditions we associate with Naomh Bríd could contain elements which date back into ancient prehistory – perhaps especially the elements which suggest rebirth and regeneration, and the marking of a change in season. (You can explore that tradition in the National Folklore Collection.)

And if aspects of Christian culture are still clearly visible in the modern secular Ireland, maybe the faint outline of pre-Christian belief and custom is also just about visible, even to this day.

What do you think? Are you marking the changing of the season this February 1st? Let us know below.

This post is part of our materials relating to St Brigid’s Day and Imbolc. Take the next step in your Irish learning journey with membership of Bitesize Irish, giving you access to self-study lessons, online community and live sessions.