MAMAN BRIGITTE

Purifying fire, justice, protection of graves

Maman Brigitte, Gran Brijit in Creole, is the great feminine lwa of death in Haitian Vodou. Wife of Baron Samdi and mother of the Gede family, the spirits of the dead, she shares with her husband authority over the cemeteries. The first woman buried in a cemetery is consecrated to her, as the first man is to Baron: her grave, marked with a cross or a heap of stones, becomes the seat of her cult. A dreaded judge, she is invoked to render justice, punish wrongdoers and protect graves from desecration. A healer, she assists the dying and can snatch a sick person from death when she consents. Like the Gede, she loves crude language, bawdy songs and rum in which twenty-one chillies have steeped. Her colours are black, purple and white, and she is honoured at the Fèt Gede, on the first and second of November. Her name has fed an often-cited hypothesis: it is said to recall Saint Brigid of Ireland, whose memory would have reached the Caribbean with Irish migrants and indentured labourers. Her cult, fully developed in Haiti, testifies to the religious creativity of the diaspora, which wove multiple inheritances into a new and living figure.