A man who taught us a lot about ourselves and our country was Estyn Evans, a Welshman. In a foreword to the 1992 Lilliput edition of his splendid book The Personality of Ireland: Habitat, Heritage and History, based on a series of lectures he had given in Queen's University, Belfast, Paul Durcan wrote: "Reading it, I knew I was reading one of the most important books of my life . . .I felt lucky and privileged to have read it." He writes further: "Evans was . . .a poet of place, a singer of transhumance, who became more of an Ulsterman then the Ulster people themselves. He was a European. . .He was an environmentalist who believed with all his heart and conscience that a landscape and people cannot be understood except in relation to each other." Evans founded the Department of Geography at Queen's and was a prime mover in the establishment of that wonderful creation at Cultra, just outside Belfast, the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. And when, after a passing reference in this corner to St Brigid's crosses, two readers send in their lovely rushwork, you look up Evans's book Irish Folk Ways to refresh your memory about these remarkable, and not only Irish, artworks.
The first was from Sr M. Fionntan of Presentation College, Kilcock, Co Kildare, the cross attached to a cardboard sheet on which is printed a short history of St Brigid and of the origin of her crosses. The sister tells us that Mrs Brigid Tighe, a parishioner, and her children make a great number of them. The sister has written a play about St Brigid "and the children are due to do it in a competition on April 1st, DV. Maybe you'd offer a prayer for our success, please. It will be in Gaelige. . ."
Then from Sean O'Brien in Templeogue, Dublin, a similar gift, using rushes collected in Bushy Park by the River Dodder. He has been making the crosses since he came to Dublin from Tyrone in 1956. His late mother brought the skill from her native Co Derry and the custom spread around his own area and into adjoining North Monaghan. His family is carrying on the tradition in South Dublin. Evans, in his minutely detailed Irish Folk Ways, shows many variations of St Brigid's crosses, and tells us that the spread of sources of that inspiration illustrates how the Church won over pagan symbols, for so many of the crosses are in lozenge or swastika form, from other cultures. The three-legged form, he says, is usually reserved for the byre. Three crosses of the more conventional shape hang from a Brigid's Girdle, which he says is in the National Museum, Dublin.