Herstory taking lead in events to celebrate St Brigid’s Day

St Brigid’s Day is today, Wednesday February 1, Ireland's newest national holiday – the first named in honour of a woman – on Monday next, February 6, we talk to Mullingar’s Melanie Lynch, CEO, creative director and founder of Herstory, who mounted a three-year campaign to have a national day celebrating Ireland’s matron saint and Celtic goddess, and, all mná.

This year, the organisation marks the national St Brigid’s Day celebrations with the Herstory Festival of Light, illuminating landmarks in Galway, Roscommon and Kildare, while Melanie joins Derry Girls star Siobhán McSweeney in an RTÉ’s documentary, ‘Finding Brigid’, now available on RTÉ Player.

“Getting a national holiday for Brigid was a big team effort – I thought it would take a decade but we did it. It’s kind of surreal, it is a big deal for the women of Ireland,” said Melanie. “It’s definitely a shift – after four national holidays in honour of men, we finally have one for a woman.”

She believes the success of the campaign was because it was “of its time”.

“It built on the momentum from Repeal of the 8th, the Divorce Referendum, the new legislation of domestic violence, the campaign is of its time. What I find fascinating is that we’re talking about a woman who was a bishop, she co-founded a monastery, and monastery that was known all across Europe, and we know that before the bishop there was a goddess, and she was one of the main goddesses of Tuatha Dé Danann.

“It’s a really empowering story for young girls, but also for adults too, to know that this is part of our history. And I think in many ways we’re still catching up with Brigid in Ireland, 1,500 years later. She was a badass back then,” said Melanie, who says never underestimate the power of a good story, myth or legend.

“I think it was Manchán Magan made the point that if you look back through Irish culture, we don’t place history and facts over mythology or our stories. Stories are just as important to us as the hard facts, there’s huge power in those stories.

“I think sometimes there’s an obsession with the age of information and factual truth, there can be a snubbery of mythology, but look at the story of Adam and Eve, and the power of that story and how it was used to oppress women for two millennia.

“Stories are powerful – the 1916 Rising leaders knew what they were doing when they reawakened all those lost Irish mythology stories, reawakening our true identity, making us remember who we were, because we’d lost so much of that because of the British empire.”

Herstory, based in Galway, aims to tell women’s stories through the arts, visionary education projects and light shows.

“It’s a small but brilliant team, lots of volunteers and people helping on the side. We have five core people working on it, but only two of us full time. We have a board and advisors, but people have a lot of goodwill to get involved.”

Melanie was inspired to begin Herstory after hosting the Heart of Ireland festival in Mullingar with her mother, Maria Walsh, in 2015.

“During that festival, which was a steep learning curve, I was introduced to a number of women’s stories and discovered that Josephine Hart, our local heroine in Mullingar, was almost forgotten, really,” she said.

“There’s still no plaque on the wall of her home, we don’t have a statue of her in her home town. We have one to Joe Dolan, and Niall Horan is so celebrated, but what about Josephine Hart? She was an absolutely remarkable woman, and the thing that struck me was that we went into Presentation Junior School and we did poetry workshops there with the Josephine Hart Poetry Foundation, and the kids had never heard of Josephine’s name before – and Josephine actually went to that school.

“But those kids could tell me what Kim Kardashian had for breakfast that morning, 11-year-old girls, and I thought ‘Oh God, I have to do something about this’.

“Josephine Hart was my inspiration really. I dug more, talked to academics and historians, and a lot of the research on women’s stories is there, past present and future, but it’s in academic form. My background is in communications, so I knew that I could make them accessible for the public and young people.

“When I started, I just thought I’d host an exhibition and go back to the advertising industry, I had no intention of running it for seven years, and seven years later, here we are.”

Melanie said there’s a lot more to do. “Nothing’s really changed, by the way. I mean, when I talk to students doing the new history curriculum for the new junior cycle, they can’t name more than five women in the curriculum. And that curriculum was released two years after the 1916 centenary. The Department of Education forgot, within two years, the role of women in the 1916 Rising.”

As a result, Melanie says Herstory is now an official consultant of the NCCA, the National Council for Curricular Assessment, “Because we want to help rewrite the school curriculum. That’s our long-term mission.”

So where to next for Herstory? Melanie hopes St Brigid’s Day will be celebrated by the diaspora all over.

“Currently our artwork for the light display is made by people all over the world. We put out an open call, inviting artists all across Ireland and internationally to get involved, and we have artists from Kazakhstan, Iran, Germany, France, Brazil, you name it. We do a schools project as well, the Schools Art Envision Project, and we asked kids to imagine that if Brigid was alive today, what would she be up to. She was an activist at heart, and a young activist, she really felt for the plight of poor people.

“My long-term hope is that the diaspora all across the world will join us in lighting up buildings to celebrate Brigid, the goddess and the saint. And of course all of Ireland as well. It’s great to see new counties coming on board this year with really amazing new ‘Brigid’ festivals. Dublin are in their second year of it now, Roscommon are starting a new one, and we’re involved in the Galway one. It will build slowly, I just hope that the businesses don’t see this as a shopping day for the girls.

“I don’t want it to suffer the same fate as Patrick’s Day – which is just ruined by the paddywhackery and the drinking. We nearly embarrass ourselves in Ireland on Patrick’s Day in terms of our international reputation. I think with Brigid’s Day, if we get it right, we can create something really special and authentic to set the standard internationally. Brigid wasn’t the Irish Virgin Mary, and she’s not a drinking or shopping day for the girls,” said Melanie.

Melanie wants something in Mullingar for Josephine Hart, and hopes to get the current mayor, Cllr Hazel Smyth, as well as the heritage and arts officers of Westmeath County Council on board.

“I really would love to see a proper celebration for Josephine Heart in Mullingar. She’s one of our women who embody the spirit of what Brigid stood for. We’re celebrating modern women who embody Brigid, we’ve been doing a whole campaign throughout January every day sharing a woman’s story, Josephine is one of those women.

“Josephine was an advocate for poetry, we know that Brigid was the goddess of poetry, I think for Brigid’s Day next year, I’d love to see a sculpture erected in Mullingar, maybe not of Josephine Hart but maybe in honour of Josephine so that young girls on their way to school could grow up listening to stories of Josephine and what she did. She’s a really interesting person, her integrity, she had a heart of gold and she was so talented as a writer and theatre producer, and it’s just a pity that we haven’t got to the stage yet in Mullingar that we’re celebrating her.

“I mean, the Abbey Theatre hold events in honour of Josephine, and we’re not doing anything in her home town. I think she would make a great role model for young girls. I think it’s time something was done.”

• For more on Herstory, go to Herstory.ie, and for more on Brigid, see brigidsday.org, which has details on events, the school artivism project, articles, art and of ideas on how the nation can celebrate Brigid and mná na hÉireann.