St Brigid’sspiritalightinstudents

For a Wairarapa Catholic women’s group, a party for Saint Brigid of Kildare may become an annual fixture alongside Saint Patrick’s Day,

The St Pat’s Ladies, who meet in Masterton monthly, said they were pleased that, this year, Ireland had made Saint Brigid’s Day a national public holiday – the country’s first in honour of a woman.

Many St Pat’s Ladies were educated in Wairarapa by the religious order of Brigidine Sisters, named after the saint, and said an annual celebration around her feast day of February 1 would be a fitting tribute to the nuns’ devotion to education.

The Catholic Women’s League disbanded in Wairarapa seven or eight years ago due to low numbers, St Pat’s member Eileen Beck said. “But we wanted to keep a social group going.”

Six Irish Brigidine nuns arrived in New Zealand in 1898 and established St Bride’s Convent in Masterton. The teaching order staffed a network of schools around Wairarapa and the North Island.

Beck and fellow St Pat’s members Judy Hooper and Margaret Fenn recalled the nuns’ individual personalities and tenacity.

“Those first women came out from Ireland, so young,” Hooper said. “I was an adult before I appreciated what they did. We lived through the era of nuns as our only teachers, before lay teachers came to the schools.”

The nuns endured Wairarapa summers wearing habits of heavy black serge tunics and thick veils covering their heads, necks and hair – a style altered to a freer design in the 1960s. What lay underneath was a mystery to curious school children, who would guess the colour of the nuns’ hair.

“Mother Tarcisius would tuck up her habit while coaching basketball – she was very sporty,” Fenn said.

“The nuns also used a house at Castlepoint at Christmas, near where my family stayed. When everyone else went inside for tea, the nuns would emerge in their black togs and white bathing caps. My parents would tell me to get away from the widow.”

While the nuns might have looked stern in their habits, “I didn’t find any of the Brigidine nuns harsh women,” Beck said. “Although, one made us say the rosary while travelling over the hill to Wellington to play basketball,” Fenn recalled with a smile.

Students and their families could not visit the nuns, or have them home for meals, and the sisters had to always travel in pairs. But through education, the nuns imparted their skills and humour.

“The nuns were absolutely part of our lives,” Hooper said. “Even though they couldn’t mix with us socially, they didn’t seem distant. They communicated with us wonderfully – we didn’t know much about Ireland but we knew every Irish song.”

The nuns had income from teaching music and had talented sewers and embroiderers in their ranks. Students at St Bride’s College for Girls were offered subjects