An Irish legend tells how Saint Scothíne of Leinster was a man of ‘great piety and of wondrous power’, for he could travel from Ireland to Rome one day and return the next by walking on top of the sea. One day, as he was striding across the waves, he met Saint Findbarr of Cork who was rowing a boat.

"How come you are walking on the sea?" asked Findbarr.

"This is no sea, but a plain covered with clover," replied Scothíne, and with that, he plucked a clover blossom and tossed it to the saint in the boat, saying,

"But how come your boat floats on a plain?"

In answer to which, Findbarr dipped his hand into the water, drew out a salmon, and threw it to Scothíne.

Although miracles and wonders in the lives of early Celtic saints were attributed to the grace of God, it is not difficult to detect the magical world of an earlier tradition in such tales. The above story, for example, closely echoes the saga known as "The Voyage of Bran," a type of narrative known as an immram that would have been recited by bards in their chieftains’ halls. The hero, Bran mac Febal, sails across the sea in search of the Otherworld country known as the Isle of Women. On his journey he meets Manannan mac Lir, King of the Land-Under-Wave, riding his two-wheeled chariot over the waves. Manannan hails him, saying:

While Saint Scothíne appears to have the attributes of Manannan himself, Findbarr’s swift response shows him to be a man of power, too. The salmon he effortlessly pulls out of the sea suggests he is a fili or poet-seer, who can access the Salmon of Wisdom from the depths of the Otherworld’s waters. Findbarr, who was also known as Barrfhind, (white-tops), once rode a white horse over the water from Wales to Ireland, when the wind was not favorable for sailing. At this time the Irish Sea must have been full of saintly traffic, because as the horse went plunging over the towering waves "as though on a level field", Findbarr came upon none other but the famous voyaging saint Brendan, riding on the back of a whale. They exchanged greetings and Brendan promised to visit Findbarr’s mentor Saint David in Wales.

Saint Brendan’s voyage overseas also parallels the immrama of Bran and other Celtic heroes. He sailed with a crew of monks in search of a mysterious island where the stones were jewels, and the trees full of fragrant blossoms and apples. Marvelous apple-trees, shining with silver flowers or laden with a perpetual harvest of ripe and delicious apples are a common feature of Otherworldly islands. To eat of their fruit is to stay young forever, for this is Tir na n’Og, the Land of Youth, or the Summerland. In the 10th century Voyage of Saint Brendan it is renamed the "Land of Promise of the Saints," but the biblical overtones only thinly mask the pre-christian Fortunate Isles.

Every year on their lengthy voyage, Brendan and his monks celebrated Easter on an island known as "The Paradise of Birds." Here they came upon a huge tree so full of white birds that not a branch or leaf of it could be seen. One of the birds flew down, on wings that chimed like bells, and alighted on the saint’s boat. He told Brendan that the flock was a host of fallen angels, exiled from their heavenly home and forced to wander the skies as messengers of God. On Sundays and holy days they took the shape of birds, to sing the praises of their Creator.

In The Voyage of Bran these birds are to be found on the great tree at the heart of the Isle of Women, and in much early literature and iconography, they belong to Celtic goddesses. The birds of Rhiannon have the power to wake the dead and lull the living to sleep; the song of Clíodna’s three magic birds is of unsurpassed sweetness and has the power to heal. The feminine powers are banished from the christian concept of the Otherworld, but their birds remain, albeit in the form of fallen angels.

The lives of the Celtic saints are so clearly embedded within the numinous and mythical landscape of the primal world-view, it is not surprising that the saints themselves act more like pagan heroes and magicians than pious men of God. No doubt some of the hyperbole was consciously created by hagiographers to boost reputations and to demonstrate the superiority of Christ’s miracles over druid magic. But it was not all fabricated by scribes, but rather grew organically out of the soil of a culture steeped in the experience of a sacramental universe. Moving in and out of marvelous worlds at will, the miracles they themselves perform often seem so much the stuff of the colorful tapestry of Celtic myth it may be truly said that "to scratch a Celtic saint is to find a druid", or even — as in the case of Saint Brigid — a goddess.

Brigid is the only powerful Celtic feminine figure to be transformed into a saint, but her magical attributes and abilities are so thinly disguised as christian miracles that Sir James Frazer called her a "goddess in a threadbare cloak." Her name means "Exalted One," probably from the Sanskrit word brihati, an epithet of the divine. A mother goddess of regeneration and abundance, she was greatly beloved as a provider of plenty who brought forth the bounties of the natural world for her people.

There is certainly little evidence of her as a historical figure: accounts of her life are steeped in Celtic magical tradition. She was born at sunrise while her mother was walking over a threshold, and so "was neither within nor without". Liminality, the state of being in between places and times, is a time when magical events frequently occur in Celtic lore. Her mother was carrying a pitcher of milk, with which she bathed her new-born, and as a child she was unable to eat ordinary food, but had to be reared on the milk of a special white red-eared cow. White animals with red ears are frequently found in Celtic mythology as beasts of the Otherworld.

The goddess Brigid owned two magical oxen, for in Celtic society, cattle were the most highly valued of all animals, revered as symbols of plenty, and Saint Brigid was very closely associated with dairy cows. As an adult, she was followed everywhere by a cow who supplied her with all the milk she needed, and when she became abbess of Kildare, she miraculously increased the milk and butter yield of the abbey cows; some accounts say that her cows produced a whole lake of milk three times a day, and one churning filled hundreds of baskets with butter. She fed the poor, birds and beasts, and they all loved her for it. The bountiful mother goddess of the fruitful earth shines through the gentle christian saint.

The goddess was closely associated with fire and the sun, and the arts of smithcraft and poetry. Early writers glossed her name as breo-aigit: "fiery arrow": a false but somehow very fitting etymology for one who kindles the fires of creativity and regeneration. These associations carry into the traditions surrounding the christian saint. In one version of her life, a druid prophesies that she will be "a daughter conspicuous and radiant, who will shine like the sun among the stars of heaven." As a child, a fire was seen rising from the house where she and her mother were asleep. Yet it did not burn the house, but glowed like the burning bush of the Old Testament. When she first began to pray to God, a column of flame was seen rising from the house. She emerged unharmed, but "full of the grace of the Holy Spirit", a reference to the Pentecostal flames. A charming legend tells that once Brigid came hurrying in from tending the sheep in a rain-shower to greet Saint Brendan, who had come to find out if all the stories about this young girl were true. In her eagerness to greet the famous man, she flung off her cloak and hung it on a sunbeam to dry, and to the old saint's astonishment, there it stayed.

Within her convent at Kildare burned a perennial flame which was known as one of the three inextinguishable fires of the Irish monasteries. Stories about the flame's miraculous properties told that it stayed alight through the grace of God and the ashes from the burnt wood never increased although it burned for a thousand years, from the 5th to the 16th centuries. Gerald of Wales wrote about it when he visited the convent sometime in the twelfth century. He tells that there used to be twenty nuns keeping watch over the flame during Brigid's lifetime; since her death, nineteen took turns, one each night, in guarding the fire. When the twentieth night came, the nineteenth nun put the logs beside the fire and said:

"Brigid, guard your fire. This is your night." In the morning, the wood was found burned and the fire still alight. It seems probable that Kildare was once a pagan sanctuary attended by priestesses, similar to the Vestal Virgins of Roman tradition.

Goddess of the Sun and christian saint of the Eternal Fire are equally invoked in this beautiful invocation known as Brigid's Arrow:

Most Holy Brigid, Excellent Woman, Bright Arrow, Sudden Flame;

May your bright fiery Sun take us swiftly to your lasting kingdom.

Saint Brigid was not the only saint to be associated with miracles of fire and light. Saint Flannan breathed on his fingers to make them emit light to help him work through the night. St. Ciaran prayed earnestly for warmth one cold winter when the monastery fire had been inadvertently put out, and a ball of fire fell into his lap. A great blaze of heavenly light was often seen around Saint Columcille, and a ball of light "like a comet" shone above his head and rose up to the heavens in a column as he celebrated Mass. Although fire mysteries are standard biblical symbolism, scholars believe such phenomena arose naturally out of pre-christian magical traditions. One of these was known as imbas forosnai, which roughly translated as "knowledge which illuminates/ kindles." Poet-seers who achieved states of ecstasy through this technique were often described as having a light or flame above the head. The great warrior and solar hero Cuchullain blazed with a supernatural heat in battle, and his head was surrounded by a halo of fire.

Since pagan magicians were masters of fire, it was important for hagiographers to show that christian saints could literally outshine and so defeat their opponents of the old religion. This is why biographies of Saint Patrick makes him appear as a kind of super-druid of all Ireland who demonstrated the superiority of the church through kindling a sacred fire at Tara, the seat of sacred power.

It was the ancient custom that no other fire should be lit in the land until the ritual fire at Tara had been kindled by either the king or his archdruid, so the saint's action was an extraordinary challenge that marked the death of the old ways. When King Laoghaire saw the fire blazing on a nearby hill, he consulted his druids who told him:

"Unless this fire is quenched the same night it was lit, it will never be quenched and the kindler of it will overpower us all and seduce all the people of your kingdom."

The king and his druids climbed the hill, and, awed by the christians' temerity, the druids warned him not to enter the circle of fires, or he would come under the strangers' power. Patrick consented to meet them outside the sacred ring, but when one of the druids poured scorn upon his faith, he invoked the power of God to lift his enemy into the air and dash him to pieces against a rock. Then he called down a thick darkness in which the king's warriors began fighting amongst themselves in the dark, and, for a final touch, threw in an earthquake to put the last of them to rout.

The defeated king pretended to submit and invited Patrick and his clerics to his palace, planning to set ambushes for them en route. But Patrick learned of this through God, and the little group of monks followed by their young servant-lad gained clear passage by passing in the shape of a herd of deer with a fawn at the rear.

To effect this miracle, Patrick was supposed to have chanted a hymn that has since come to be called, "The Cry of the Deer." Although much of it is standard liturgy, some verses read like a pagan invocation of the elements:

I arise today
Through the strength of heaven;
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.

The next day, Patrick and his companions materialized in the king's palace at Tara, although all doors were closed and guarded, then he and the king's chief druid, Lucetmael, entered into a contest of miracles. Outside on the plain, the druid cast a spell to make it snow, and it fell until it was waist-high. But when Patrick challenged him to remove it, Lucetmael said he could not for twenty-four hours. Patrick laughed, blessed the snow, and it melted away at his touch.

The saint then challenged the druid to an ordeal by fire in a hut that had one section built of green wood, and the other of dry. When it was set on fire, the druid was burned in the green part, while Patrick's companion in the dry half walked out unharmed. So Patrick defeated the druids by their own magic: shapeshifting, weather-witching, and the power of fire.

Patrick's druidical skills are only matched, if not surpassed, by Saint Columcille, who sailed to Scotland on a mission to convert the Picts. To him is attributed an ancient poem in which he refutes pagan ways:

"I adore not the voice of birds,
...nor a destiny on the earthly world,
Nor a son, nor chance, nor woman,
My Druid is Christ, the Son of God."

Yet as is clear from Columcille's spiritual practices, the "dove of the church" as his name means, was heir to the druid. He used a white stone — probably a lump of quartz crystal — that he took from a stream to heal the sick. The stone had the property of floating in water "like an apple." Such "charm-stones" were almost certainly used by druids, and also by Welsh witches in historical times. He was a renowned psychic in the tradition of the Scottish seers who had the gift of an dá shealladh, "the two sights," (commonly known as "second sight") which came in very useful at his monastery on Iona, for he was able to avert all sorts of domestic mishaps, such as finding a missing milk container, and even more important, foretell the weather conditions for boats at sea. If these proved hazardous, as is often the case in the Hebrides, he used his weather-working skills to make the winds drop and calm the waves.

Like many saints, Columcille was master of the element water as well as fire. He sained, or sanctified, hundreds of sacred springs all over Scotland, removing them from local tutelary spirits into the care of the church to become holy wells. Many wells bear his name and are still places of pilgrimage today, as indeed are healing wells dedicated to Patrick, Brigid and numerous local saints, including some that sound suspiciously like genii loci rather than men of the church. Many legends of holy wells explain how their divine origin was due to a saint's miraculous deed. Typically, the saint thrusts his wooden staff into the earth and it bursts into blossom, becoming a flowering tree, at the root of which rises a healing spring.

The staff that performed this miracle was the christian version of the druid's "rod of enchantment" made of wood from a sacred tree. What is clear is that the rod of both druid and saint come from the same source: the tree that stands at the heart of the Otherworld. Rooted in sacred ground, it is able to sustain more than one branch of belief.