Country Living with Francis Farragher

I DON’T want to fall into the trap of wishing my life away, but there’s always a sense of relief to see the back of January . . . a month of gloom, darkness, bad weather, and a time too when the penny drops that you’ve spent too much over the Christmas period.

The arrival of St Brigid’s Day on Sunday last, and the addition of our extra bank holiday – in fairness a welcome fillip to help ease the working classes out of the Winter season – just gives us the feeling that we’ve turned the corner in terms of the change in our outlooks.

There was just a little bit of shock the other night, when a few of us speculated as to whether this was our second or third year of the St Brigid’s Bank Holiday, only to discover – with the help of Mr Google of course – that this is the fourth year of the ‘extra day off’, the first one having been celebrated on Monday, February 6, 2023.

One of those ‘trick questions’ doing the rounds is when will the St Brigid’s Day Bank Holiday ‘Monday’ be on a Friday? The answer though is pretty straightforward enough, as the creators of the new holiday have made provision, that when the Feast Day falls on a Friday, the bank holiday will coincide with that day. According to my calendar calculations, this will happen on Friday, February 1, 2030 . . . so there’s something to look forward to, if we’re still around!

It’s the first bank holiday in Ireland to be named after a woman – one of our three patron saints, along with Patrick and Columcille (Feast Day, June 9 each year) – but Brigid is the one we always associate with the arrival of the Spring season.

Our friends in Met Éireann mightn’t agree with that Spring starting date – theirs is March 1, based on temperature/weather statistics – but certainly for those of us of a certain generation, the ‘teaching monks’ always emphasised that the change of season coincided with the celebration of Lá Fhéile Bríde.

We were also led to believe that the rooks started to build their nests by picking up their first twigs on the first day of February – as if they kept a diary to mark the date – but always, as the month went on, the sight of young lambs in the fields was also another great indication of new life and inspiration.

Pictured: St. Brigid and February: Symbols of renewal and rebirth.