Brigid of the Bargain Bins

Brigid lifts her toddler into the trolley
and tries to keep the twins busy
with a game of finding
the lowest numbers on the shelves.

She checks the prices of sliced pans,
weighs up own labels against known brands.
She knows they cut corners with prices,
sees through their tricks, has a few of her own.

She’s Mary of the gale-force winds
that whistled through the flat
until she stretched clingfilm
inside the window frames.             

She wears an oversized coat
that doubles as a blanket.

She will stretch her children’s allowance
to cover the table,
take the bare look from the fridge,
fill up the lunchboxes.

She’s skimped herself to dress the kids.
Under her coat, her threadbare hoodie
is ragged enough to hang on a tree
by a holy well.

At the checkout
she sees the first daffs,
wonders, now she’s lost the weight,
if that blue dress might fit again.

‘Brigid of the Bargain Bins’ was first published in Fire: Brigid and the Sacred Feminine, edited by Niamh Boyce and Shauna Gilligan (Arlen House 2024). It also in Storm Damage (Dedalus 2025). 

**

The Song of Brigid’s Cloak

There was a wise woman, we’re all agreed,
some call her Brigid, some call her Bríd.
She grew up kind and she liked a joke
and she always wore a wee small cloak.

About fifteen hundred years ago,
this strong young woman to Kildare did go
to build a church mid the common folk
with her four best friends and her wee small cloak.

Now the King of Leinster had fields galore,
so Brigid went knocking on his castle door.
“Would you give us a field by the old oak tree,
to build a church for my friends and me?”

Well the mean old king, he gave a roar,
saying, “What kind of fool do you take me for?
For nobody gets as rich as me
by giving their fields to the poor for free.”

So Brigid smiled, “would you grant instead
the land as far as my cloak will spread?”
The king laughed loudly at her joke
‘cause she wouldn’t cover much with her wee small cloak.

To see how far the cloak would reach,
her four best friends took a corner each.
When she shouted “Go!” they all set forth,
walking east and west and south and north.

The King was so mad he began to choke
and out of his ears came puffs of smoke.
His mean old heart it nearly broke
when he saw the measure of Brigid’s cloak.

But his heart was changed by Brigid’s power,
and his men built her chapel with a tall bell tower.
Now they call it Cill Dara, the church of the oak,
on the land that was covered by Brigid’s cloak.

---

Catherine Ann Cullen was the inaugural Poet in Residence at Poetry Ireland. She is an award-winning poet, children’s writer and songwriter. Her eighth book, Storm Damage, was published by Dedalus Press in October 2025. Her awards include the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship (2018), the JoyceCycle/Poetry Ireland prize, the Francis Ledwidge Award 2009 and 2016, and Ireland’s Business to Arts Award for Best Use of Creativity in the Community 2017 and 2022. In 2025, she was shortlisted for the prestigious Moth Poetry Prize. Her postdoctoral monograph on Dublin’s street poets will be published later this year.