The cult of S. Brigid in Wales, Cornwall, Devon and Brittany belonged originally to those portions of the land that were colonized by the Irish in the fifth and sixth centuries.
    We know of no Welsh founders of Religious communities who can at all compare with Brigid in fame and popularity.  At Glastonbury, under the vague tradition that she at one time lived and even died there, is concealed, in all likelihood, the fact that there was there a house affiliated to Kildare; and Glastonbury is termed in Cormac's Glossary "Glasimpere of the Gadhaels."
    One reason for her extraordinary popularity is that S. Brigid has replaced, like S. Anne, a Goidelic female deity, in the same way that S. Vitus has stepped into the prerogatives of Suativit in Bohemia.
    ... Brigid was, as Cormac tells us in his Irish Glossary, becoming antiquated in the ninth century.  "A goddess whom the poets worshipped, for very great and noble was her perfection.  Whose sisters were Brigid, woman of healing, and Brigid, woman of smith's work (i.e., patroness of the forge), goddesses."  Altars to her have been found in Britain, as Brigantia, a fire goddess.  At Middleby, an inscription on one runs:—"Brigantiae s(acrum), Armandus Architectus ex imperio, imp. I" ; also on one found at Greta Bridge, Yorkshire, "Deæ numeriae numini Brig et Jan." (The Lives of the British Saints, Baring-Gould, v.1, 1907)