60. Grass cross, for Cuthman & Dicul

The idea for Brigit's Garden came to me one April morning in 1997, not in Ireland, but in this cottage on my family's farm on the Sussex coast, where I was on holiday. It used to be the dairy, and as a child I loved to come here to watch the cows being milked. I was amazed about a year later to find a Brigit connection with this exact spot.

In the 7th century, a young shepherd called Cuthman lived on our farm. He became a holy man and followed the call of God, taking his elderly mother in a hand-cart across the South Downs to a place
called Steyning where he founded a church.

Contemporary stained glass of St Cuthman in Chidham church

When medieval historian John Blair analysed the Life of St Cuthman he found it stood out from the Lives of other English saints as it was full of  'strikingly Celtic elements'. Stranger still, some of the stories are almost identical to those in the Life of St Brigit. Cuthman and Brigit both tended sheep and magically prevented them from straying, and they both hung items of clothing on sunbeams. Brigit saved a field of hay by sending away a storm, and Cuthman punished farmers who laughed at him by bringing down a storm on their hay.

Clearly, St Cuthman must have been educated in Celtic Christianity by Dicul and his Irish brothers across the creek (see post 59), and the stories passed on to him.

Sheep still graze in Cuthman's fields

Every time I think of the coincidence of a Brigit connection with my childhood home I feel a sense of awe, of wonder. It was the landscapes of Sussex - chalk downland, wheat fields, tidal estuary and  muddy shores - that inspired my love of nature, which combined with Celtic heritage to find expression in Brigit's Garden in the very different landscapes of Connemara. And yet they were connected by history.

In memory of St Cuthman and Dicul I fashioned a small Brigit's cross from grass and took it to the shore. I watched it float away on an ebb tide, a little Brigit boat, celebrating connection across the sea.