So, it appears that Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (surely there must be room for a MAGA in there somewhere?) has introduced a bill to add Donald Trump’s face to Mount Rushmore. What a spiffing idea. And what a shame John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum died in 1941 and won’t be around to finish the job he started in 1927. He would have wanted to be there so much.
The original funding for the monument came via the Mount Rushmore National Memorial Act, signed into law by Calvin Coolidge—they probably had to wake him up to sign it—in 1927. The presidential heads are 18 metres high (that’s 60 feet in American money), employed 400 workers to get the job done and, required the transfer of more than 400,000 tons of dynamited rock to other destinations. But, hey, you can get all this stuff on Wikipedia so go look there for more statistical information.
It took Borglum seventeen years to get the job done so, sadly, it’s unlikely that former President Trump will be around to see his face alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Unless he lives to be 95. He might need to lay off the burgers if that’s going to happen.
BEFORE
AFTER
Politically the most obvious place to put Trump would be to the right of George Washington. Sadly that’s not possible, unless it becomes a sort of Snapchat head, i.e it disappears shortly after it appears. Thomas Jefferson was supposed to go there, and they started work on him before they discovered the rock was unsuitable. They scrubbed poor Tom 1.0 and restarted him to Washington’s left. That would mean Trump would have to go to the left of Teddy Roosevelt (who smashed the big corporate trusts in the early 1900s) and Abraham Lincoln (something of a DEI champion given that he emancipated the slaves in 1862)
Alternatively why not simply scrape over Washington and just Trumpify his head. The first president has surely had his day by now. And he’s already got a wig! So the construction crew (Proud Boy volunteers maybe? Come on, they owe him) would be a-head of the game. (See what I did there? Wasn’t it utterly puerile? A bit like … never mind).
The very best of luck to Rep. Luna when it comes to securing from Congress the appropriation for this well-thought-out project. I’m sure the National Endowment for the Humanities would happy to stump up at least some of the cost. It’s for a sculpture, right? And a non-woke one at that. Perfect. Or maybe the tech bros might pass the hat around, once they find their way out of the President’s back passage. However, bear in mind that even when the dynamite and the man-hours have all been accounted for, there will still be ongoing maintenance costs. Who is going to pay for the annual re-bronzing? A ton of Leichner Camera Clear Tinted Foundation Blend of Orange doesn’t come cheap.
A word of warning to Rep. Luna, however. It’s only fair she be reminded that the Supreme Court, in 1980, back in the day when it was still a court of law, rather than The Court of King Donald, acknowledged the validity of the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie in the case of United States v Sioux Nation of Indians. This Fort Laramie treaty should not to be confused with the 1851 treaty of the same name, which was negotiated by an Irishman, Thomas Fitzpatrick. You’re welcome USA.
The verdict in United States v Sioux Nation of Indians. recognised that the Lakota nation (‘Sioux’ is, apparently what their enemies called them) had not been compensated adequately for the illegal seizure of the sacred Black Hills of Dakota when gold was discovered there in the 1870s and Colonel George Armstrong Custer was sent in to protect the trespassing gold-diggers. A sum of $102m was awarded by SCOTUS, which the Lakota politely declined. They just wanted the land back. So it was deposited for them should they change their minds. That initial sum has now grown to more than $2 billion. By the time the Trumphead is completed it should be worth twice that. At this rate the Lakota will be able to just buy the land back. Who knows what they might do with John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum’s playground if they do. None of the current heads housed there have any reason to feel beloved of the indigenous peoples of north America.
Based on the 1980 SCOTUS decision the Lakota must have some moral right to intervene in any plan to add even more heads to the national monument (what price Rep. Luna is looking for more cash to include President Vance on the mountain when his term finishes in 2037?). Let’s face it, the Lakota might not be thrilled at the idea of honouring someone who tosses the name ‘Pocahantas’ around as if it’s some sort of side-splitting slur.
If the Lakota do object (and who knows, maybe they love him, just like 49.8% of the 63.9% of voters who turned up on 5 November) perhaps President Trump could Sioux them. He’s really good at that. (See what I did there? Wasn’t it utterly puerile?).
How about this for the Fifth Head instead? OK, maybe not. You probably have to be a US citizen (and not from Hawaii).
I certainly did the last time I broached the subject. And let me begin by acknowledging our debt to St. Brigid, whoever she might have been, because we in Ireland now enjoy a bank holiday in her name. Bless her (lilywhite) cotton socks and her miracles.
Now that I’ve got that out of the way, some context. Back in 2019 I was doing a weekly radio column (on Fridays) for the RTÉ Radio 1 Drivetime programme called ‘Fake Histories’ which, as the name suggests, delved into myths that had, for one reason or another, become accepted as ‘history’.
Because one Friday fell on 1 February, the feast day of the Irish saint, St. Brigid, and because her very existence had long been the subject of controversy, I thought I’d have a go at that.
It was a really baaaad idea.
Within hours of the item going out on Drivetime the programme’s producer-in-charge (I’m really sorry Elayne!) was fielding calls from the press office of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin demanding either a retraction, or my head on a plate, or something along those lines. Because the Archbishopric of Dublin has nothing more important to think about than the veracity of the existence of someone who, if they ever lived, died almost 1500 years ago, the press office just wouldn’t go away. I had to produce chapter and verse to justify even the limited scepticism of the original piece. I wasn’t suggesting that Brigid was not an Irish saint, just that she, along with hundreds of others (including every Irish saint other than Patrick, who is Welsh) had been de-listed in 1969. Although, in fairness to the Archbishop’s press office I suppose I did suggest that she might not have existed. Maybe that’s really what got their goat. Fair cop really.
Bellow you will find the original script and underneath that the frantic justification designed to get the archdiocesan press office off our backs (sorry again Elayne!). A short cut through all the sources, something of a ‘one stop shop’ really is the entry for Brigid/Bridget/Brigit in the Dictionary of Irish Biography (my first port of call in writing the damn thing) where the very first paragraph of her entry tells us that, ‘Most scholars regard her as a ghost personality generated in the period of transition from paganism to Christianity, replacing the pagan goddess Brigit …’ QED! Well sort of anyway. I don’t think the press office was convinced.
And let me reiterate, I’m delighted that Brigid has become a feminist icon and I’m eternally grateful to her for the bank holiday, which has turned us into a nation of Brigidophiles. Or Brigitophiles if you’re a sceptic (see below).
Text of the Infamous Broadcast – 1 February 2019
Hopefully by now you will already have woven your traditional St. Brigid’s cross so that nothing I have to say on the subject of the eponymous holy woman will stay your hand as you twist the strands into their intricate pattern, and clip off the ends so that the extremities are neat and flush.
Because you may not like what you are about to hear.
Tradition has it that Brigid was born in Faughart, Co. Louth in the year 451, two decades after the advent of Christianity in Ireland. Her mother is said to have been a Scottish slave baptised by St. Patrick, so Brigid herself was born into slavery. She is recorded as having founded a number of monasteries, most notably in Kildare, or Cill Dara, the ‘Church of the Oak’. Among the Lilywhites she is known as Brigid of Kildare. While abbess of that monastery she founded a school of art which produced the Book of Kildare. This beautifully illustrated volume managed to draw the praise of the infamous Hibernophobe Gerald of Wales, making it the only thing about Ireland Gerald ever saw that he actually liked. Tradition has it that she died in Kildare in 525 at the grand old age of seventy-two.
Brigid is informally recognised as a saint in no less than three Christian religions, Roman Catholicism, the Anglican communion, and Eastern Orthodox Catholicism. But the devil is in the word ‘informally’ because in 1969 she, along with dozens of other virtuous early Christians, had her name expunged from the list of saints by the Vatican. The Vatican doesn’t just remove things, it ‘expunges’ them. It was a bit like a drastic cabinet reshuffle with lots of patron saints losing their portfolios.
Among those deprived of their haloes in this cull was Saint Christopher, patron saint of travellers and, worst of all, Saint Nicholas, the man who later became Santa Claus. So, while good old Father Christmas can still climb up and down chimneys, and bring presents to millions of children, as far as the Vatican is concerned he can’t perform miracles. Brigid was handed her P45 because there were serious doubts as to whether she ever existed. So, was she real, does she have anything to do with the weaving of reed crosses on 1 February – and please keep this to yourself—was she actually a pagan goddess?
As Brigid was one of ninety-three saints removed from the universal calendar in 1969 she also had her feast day officially revoked. So, technically, 1 February is no longer St. Brigid’s Day. There is still a saint called Bridget, but she’s Bridget of Sweden. She seems to have three different feast days, one in July and two in October. Meanwhile our unfortunate Brigid has none.
One suspicion is that she was stripped of her status just because she shared a name with a pagan goddess.
The eminent Irish historian Daithí O’hÓgáin thinks the woman we now know as Brigid might well have been chief druid at the pagan temple to the goddess of the same name, and that she was responsible for turning the temple into a Christian monastery. Her Christian feast day, also happens to be the date of the pagan feast day of Imbolc. Imbolc is up there with Bealtaine, Lúnasa and Samhain as one of the four great pagan seasonal festivals. Because it was equidistant between the winter solstice and the spring equinox Imbolc celebrated the beginning of spring. Which, in an Irish context is, you would have to say, the perpetual triumph of optimism over experience. Can any Irish person put their hand on their heart and recall a single St. Brigid’s Day that felt even remotely spring-like?
The Christian Brigid had a heavy portfolio of responsibilities– in alphabetical order these included babies, blacksmiths, boatmen, brewers, cattle, chicken farmers, children in trouble, dairymaids, fugitives, infants, Ireland, Leinster, midwives, nuns, poets, the poor, poultry farmers, printing presses, sailors, scholars and travellers. The pagan Goddess Brigid had it easy by comparison, she was in charge of fertility, which, let’s face it, can’t have been a major problem in pre-Christian Ireland.
The Christian Brigid had two miraculous talents which must have made her very popular indeed and will have convinced a lot of pagans that Christianity wasn’t so bad after all. She could control the rain and the wind, always a good trick on the rainy, windy, periphery of Europe and, with even more mass appeal, she could turn water into wine.
But is she a canonised saint? Sadly, not since 1969.
SOME SOURCES – AKA THE FRANTIC JUSTIFICATION
(Assuming you could be arsed)
Quote from Dictionary of Irish Biography
(Here is the opening paragraph of the entry for ‘BRIGIT (Brighid, Brid, Bride, Bridget) )
‘… reputed foundress and first abbess of Cell Dara (Kildare), is the female patron saint of Ireland , but it is uncertain whether she existed as a person. Most scholars regard her as a ghost personality generated in the period of transition from paganism to Christianity, replacing the pagan goddess Brigit, the Irish manifestation of the Celtic Brigantia. There is no contemporary evidence for St. Brigit, but she, or her cult, is well documented in the annals, hagiography, genealogies and liturgical literature.’
As you may be aware, in 1969 the Catholic Church officially determined that details of several hundred very early saints were too obscure and uncertain to satisfy the modern criteria for congregational canonisation, and they were removed from the list of accepted saints. Brigid was one of these. Note that this does not necessarily mean that these persons were not saints; the Church says that only God makes saints, the canonisation process is for official recognition, and there are undoubtedly tens of thousands of uncanonised saints in heaven. However, considerable doubt has been expressed as to whether Brigid ever existed.
Canonization, the process the Church uses to name a saint, has only been used since the tenth century. For hundreds of years, starting with the first martyrs of the early Church, saints were chosen by public acclaim. Though this was a more democratic way to recognize saints, some saints’ stories were distorted by legend and some never existed. Gradually, the bishops and finally the Vatican took over authority for approving saints.
The official Roman calendar of feast days for celebration by the Universal Church (in other words, all over the world) does not have a saint’s feast day every day. The Church chooses saints to be celebrated worldwide very carefully — they must have a strong message for the Church as a whole. That doesn’t mean that other saints are somehow less holy — although some of the saints that have been dropped were legendary and there is little evidence they existed.
Before the formal canonization process began in the fifteenth century, many saints were proclaimed by popular approval. This was a much faster process but unfortunately many of the saints so named were based on legends, pagan mythology, or even other religions — for example, the story of the Buddha traveled west to Europe and he was “converted” into a Catholic saint! In 1969, the Church took a long look at all the saints on its calendar to see if there was historical evidence that that saint existed and lived a life of holiness. In taking that long look, the Church discovered that there was little proof that many “saints”, including some very popular ones, ever lived.
Religious orders, countries, localities, and individuals are free to celebrate the feast days of saints not listed on the universal calendar but which have some importance to them. And there are indeed feast days for saints every day of the year. As a matter of fact there are at least three saints for almost every day.
SOME RELEVANT QUESTIONS
Q: Is St. Brigid a canonised saint of the Church?
Q: Is St. Brigid on the official Roman calendar of feast days for celebration by the Universal Church?
Q: Was she or was she not removed from this calendar in 1969 along with numerous other saints?
Q: Is it not the case that St. Brigid only exists on local calendars (e.g Ireland, Australia, New Zealand) and is no longer on the Roman calendar.
Q: Where is St.Brigid’s name on the following lists of saints of the Roman calendar?
[Note – St. Bridget is not St. Brigid – she is a Swedish saint
Gradually, during the day, the winds rose. The first area affected was County Mayo where a strong breeze and heavy rains swept in from the Atlantic at around midday. Nollaig na mBan, the religious feast of the Epiphany, wasn’t going to be that pleasant a day after all. There was no Met Éireann in 1839.(We’d be lost without you Met Éireann).
There was a belief among the impressionable that the world would come to an end, that the Apocalypse would descend, on 6 January, and that one Nollaig na mBan would finally prove to be the day of Final Judgment. And that was before the Apocalypse of the Night of the Big Wind.
The squally weather that first appeared on the west coast quickly moved eastwards, and worse followed in its wake. The storm began to gather strength. Soon it was powerful enough to blow down the steeple of the Anglican church in Castlebar. As it moved across the midlands, the wind was gusting at over a hundred knots—around a hundred and eighty five kilometers an hour. (Gusts of 183km/h were recorded in Ceann Mheasa in County Galway last night). According to the scale devised by the Navan born hydrographer and naval officer, Sir Francis Beaufort, in 1805, that was a force twelve—hurricane force.
It was the most destructive wind to hit Europe in more than a century—another hurricane in 1703 had largely bypassed Ireland. But our geographical position on the western periphery of the continent, meant that this time early Victorian Ireland caught the main brunt of nature’s awe-inspiring strength. By the time the wind had blown itself out, upwards of three hundred people were dead, many at sea. Forty-two ships had sunk either sheltering, or vainly attempting to reach shelter. Most of the shipping damage was on the badly hit west coast. So strong were the surging winds that some inland flooding was caused by sea-water.
The Big Wind spared no one. Well-built aristocratic homes, and military barracks were destroyed or badly damaged, as were the bothies and cottages of the rural poor. Exposed livestock was vulnerable, not only to the Big Wind itself, but to the starving aftermath, as crops and stores of fodder were obliterated.
Ironically, given the prevailing conditions, much of the damage was caused by fire. The winds fanned the embers of turf fires, abandoned overnight in hearths. The sparks set fire to thatched roofs. These conflagrations were then spread to adjacent roofs, especially in small towns like Naas, Kilbeggan, Slane and Kells. Seventy-one houses were burned in Loughrea, over a hundred in Athlone.
The County of Meath was right in the path of the wind and the Dublin Evening Post reported that:
‘The damage done in this county is very great. Not a single demesne escaped, and tens of thousands of trees have been snapped in twain or torn up by the roots, and farming produce to an immense amount destroyed.’
The city of Dublin didn’t escape either. The tremendous gusts devoured a quarter of the buildings in the capital, as the wind raced across the Irish Sea to Britain and continental Europe, before finally dissipating. The river Liffey rose, and overflowed the quays in the centre of the city. A noon service at the Bethesda Chapel in Dorset street had given thanks, on 6 January, for deliverance from a potentially destructive fire—that night the wind whipped up the embers of the fire and consumed the church.
One of the unexpected consequences of the Night of the Big Wind came almost seventy years later, after the British government introduced an old age pension for the over-seventies. As the formal registration of births in Ireland had only begun in 1863, many septuagenarians, legitimately entitled to a pension, had no birth certificates to prove their age. One of the ways of ascertaining their entitlement devised by civil servants was to ask the question ‘Do you remember the Night of the Big Wind’. If they did, they got their pension.
Hurricane force winds destroyed property, and killed hundreds of people and animals, as ‘The Night of the Big Wind’ struck Ireland one hundred and seventy-eight years ago this month.
Myles Dungan 
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