According to medieval Irish hagiographies, she was an abbess who founded the important abbey of Kildare (Cill Dara),[3] as well as several other convents of nuns.

[2] They say Brigid was the daughter of an Irish clan chief and an enslaved Christian woman, and was fostered in a druid's household before becoming a consecrated virgin.

The saint has the same name as the goddess Brigid, derived from the Proto-Celtic *Brigantī, "high, exalted", and ultimately originating with Proto-Indo-European *bʰerǵʰ-.

There are few historical facts about her, and early hagiographies "are mainly anecdotes and miracle stories, some of which are deeply rooted in Irish pagan folklore".

[11] Like the saint, the goddess in Irish myth is associated with poetry, healing, protection, smithcraft, and domestic animals, according to Sanas Cormaic and Lebor Gabála Érenn.

Legends of her early holiness include her vomiting when the druid tried to feed her, due to his impurity; a white cow with red ears arrives to sustain her instead.

While Dubhthach was talking to the king, Brigid gave away her father's bejewelled sword to a beggar to barter it for food to feed his family.

[29] It is said that Brigid was "veiled" or became a consecrated virgin either through Saint Mac Caille, Bishop of Cruachán Brí Éile,[30] or by St Mél of Ardagh at Mág Tulach (the present barony of Fartullagh, County Westmeath), who gave her the powers of an abbess.

[31] Brigid, with an initial group of seven companions, is credited with organising communal consecrated religious life for women in Ireland.

Christus per illum illamque virtutes multas peregit" ("Between St. Patrick and St. Brigid, the pillars of the Irish people, there was so great a friendship of charity that they had but one heart and one mind.

[36] Thomas Charles-Edwards wrote that Brigid's power is expressed in 'helping' miracles: healing, feeding the hungry, and rescuing the weak from violence.

[26] Dáithí Ó hÓgáin wrote that the melding of a pagan goddess and Christian saint can be seen in some of the miracles, where Brigid multiplies food, bestows cattle and sheep, controls the weather, and is associated with fire or thermal springs.

[12] According to Brian Wright, the miracles of Brigid outlined by Cogitosus mostly concern healing; charity; cows, sheep and dairy; the harvest; fire; fertility/pregnancy; and her virginity/holiness.

[2] Brigid is said to have been buried at the high altar of the original Kildare Cathedral, and a tomb raised over her[22] "adorned with gems and precious stones and crowns of gold and silver".

Cogitosus, writing in the late 7th century, is the first to mention a feast day of Saint Brigid being observed in Kildare on this date.

Men and women wearing elaborate straw hats and masks visit public houses carrying a Brídeóg to ward off evil spirits and bring good luck for the coming year.

[22] They are said to have remained in Down Cathedral until 1538, when the relics were desecrated and destroyed during the deputyship of Lord Grey, excepting Brigid's head which was saved by some of the clergymen who took it to the Franciscan monastery of Neustadt, in Austria.

[53] According to the local tradition of the latter church, St. Brigid's head would have been carried to King Dinis of Portugal in 1283 by three Irish knights travelling to the Aragonese Crusade.

A commemorative inscription on the northern façade of the church, in 16th-century characters, reads: "Here in these three tombs lie the three Irish knights who brought the head of St. Brigid, Virgin, a native of Ireland, whose relic is preserved in this chapel.

[55] In 1884, Francis Cardinal Moran, Archbishop of Sydney, obtained a relic of the saint's tooth from the parochial church of St. Martin of Tours in Cologne in the German Empire and gave it to the Brigidine Sisters in Melbourne.

Cardinal Moran wrote about the circumstances in which he obtained the tooth in a letter to the Reverend Mother of this Convent dated 13 March 1906: I went all the way to Cologne on my return from Rome in 1884, on my appointment of Archbishop of Sydney to secure a portion of the precious relic of St. Brigid preserved there for over a thousand years.

I then had to invoke the aid of an influential Canon of the Cathedral of Cologne, whom I had assisted in some of his literary pursuits and he set his heart on procuring the coveted relic.

[56]In 1905, Sister Mary Agnes of the Dundalk Convent of Mercy took a purported fragment of the skull to St. Bridget's [sic] Church in Kilcurry.

In the twelfth century, the city had two crosses dedicated to Brigid, though, according to the Monasticon Hibernicum, purported relics of the saint reposing in Armagh were lost in an accidental fire in 1179.

"[58] The Old Saint Peter's Church, Strasbourg contains also (unspecified) relics of St. Brigid, brought by the canons of St. Michael in 1398 when they were forced to leave their submerged abbey of Honau-Rheinau, itself founded by Irish monks.

Cogitosus' circa 650 Vita Sanctae Brigidae portrays Brigid as having the power to multiply such things as butter, bacon, and milk, to bestow sheep and cattle, and to control the weather.

Kilbride ("Church of Brigid") is one of Ireland's most widely found placenames, there are 45 Kilbrides located in 19 of Ireland's 32 counties: Antrim (2), Carlow, Cavan, Down, Dublin, Galway, Kildare, Kilkenny (3), Laois, Longford, Louth, Mayo (5), Meath (4), Offaly (4), Roscommon (2), Waterford, Westmeath (2), Wexford (4), and Wicklow (8) as well as two Kilbreedys in Tipperary, Kilbreedia and Toberbreeda in Clare, Toberbreedia in Kilkenny, Brideswell Commons in Dublin, Bridestown and Templebreedy in Cork and Rathbride and Brideschurch in Kildare.

[72] She also appears in a fresco painting that adorns the interior of St. Patrick's Chapel on the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey depicting the saint with a spindle, a bowl of fire, and a cow in the background.

She left there certain signs of her presence—her wallet, collar, bell, and weaving implements, which are exhibited and honoured there because of her holy memory—and she returned to Ireland, where, not much later, she rested in the Lord and was buried in the city of Down.

The chapel on that island is now dedicated in honour of Saint Brigid; on its south side there is an opening through which, according to the belief of the common folk, anyone who passes will receive forgiveness of all his sins.’[74] Brides Mound in Beckery is also linked to St. Bridgid and in 2004 'Brigadine sisters, Mary and Rita Minehan, brought the perpetual Brigid flame (restored in 1993) from Solas Bhrde, in Kildare, during a Glastonbury Goddess Conference ceremony on Bride's Mound.