I'm quoting from Jennifer Heath's wonderful book The Echoing Green: The Garden in Myth and Memory:
"... Goddess and saint share the same attributes. Blessing newborns with fire and water, Brigit brings life to the dead of winter and mediates the month's travails as it labors towrd the Vernal Equinox. In her Christian aspect as Saint Bride of Irelnd, Scotland, and England, she is known as the "Midwife of Christ." ... In Ireland, a protective harm in the form of a straw rope with crosses on it, a Brigit's Girdle, was worn on imbolc. The word means "surrounding the belly," and the belt encouraged fertility. Brigid surrounds and midwives the garden, nurses it as the plants labor and crown."
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