Fields of Gold
Lughnasa and Grain history and folklore
Today, the last Sunday in July, is known as Bilberry Sunday in many parts of Ireland. It is also the day many make a pilgrimage, some barefoot, up Croagh Patrick. Both are remnants of an older tradition, or rather a series of traditions centred around the ancient festival of Lughnasa.
Lughnasa or Lughnasa is named for the God Lugh and the modern Gaeilge name for the month of August, Lunasa, carries it still. Lughnasa celebrates the start of the harvest season, and the start of Autumn by the old ways. Our ancestors would have celebrated when the harvest was ready or on the full moon closest to the start of harvest, but now it is a fixed calendar point, traditionally the 31st of July-1st of August. 1st of August happens to be the Full Moon this year and so we are well in the season of Lughnasa.
Today’s post includes all the lore of Lughnasa and of the grain harvest and a short story inspired by the names for this moon so closely tied to the season, the Grain Moon, Lightning Moon, or Dispute Moon will follow on Tuesday.
In mythology Lugh, the “stranger god” (he’s a later/adopted God from outside the Tuatha Dé Danann and joined our pantheon in the battle against his grandfather, Balor) created the festival which bears his name in honour of his foster mother Tailtiu. Tailtiu was forced to clear a great plain in Ireland, allowing agriculture to flourish and died of exhaustion. A great gathering or fair was held at the Earthworks at Tailtiu in County Meath, now Teltown, celebrating the Harvest long before the first written records of it in the 6th century. Indeed, the King of Tara was obligated to hold at least one great assembly, the óenach Tailteann during his reign and festivities continued until the Norman invasions and survived on a smaller scale until 1770. The Harvest season was celebrated from the start of the season until Samhain (November).
Lughnasa was celebrated all over Ireland in a similar fashion, with large social gatherings, fairs, horse races and sports. Food was plentiful again after the leanness of July, often known as hungry July, when the previous year’s grain stores were running low and the spring greens were long since past, and people wanted to celebrate. The grain, both winter and spring crops being harvested at varying times throughout the season (Winter planted grain should be ready to harvest now if it is not already in, whilst the Spring sown crop will be ready in September) and as the season progresses fruits and berries were, and still should be, a call for celebration. In later years the potato crop was added to this bounty. The green, and golden land providing for its people. Horses were also celebrated at this time with horse races and fairs, including dangerous races involving horses swimming across lakes with a rider on their back. As the centuries wore on ploughing championships became common as did non-horse related sporting events. The GAA National Final is still held during harvest season, the concluding match being scheduled between late August and early September.
As Christianity took hold and culturally appropriated the festivals it could not wipe out Lughnasa was renamed Lammas, Bread Mass, and loaves of bread, baked with the freshly milled grain were placed on church altars, moving the celebration from the land to the church. However, the gatherings remained, communities still had to gather to bring in the grain and harvest feasts and dances remained popular as did the fairs. Hiring fairs, horse fairs and general commercial gatherings continued during harvest time for hundreds of years. Most traditional fairs in Ireland began to die out in the 1930’s however the Lammas Fair in Ballycastle on the North Coast remains as Irelands oldest fair.
Given that Harvest was a time for communities to come together, working to secure food for the year ahead, it is unsurprising that customs reliant on gatherings became traditional at this time. One such custom is still evident in the name for the coming full moon, Dispute Moon. During the gatherings laws were made and disputes could be aired and settled before the assembly, their resolution witnessed by the community. It is interesting here to note that August was also the traditional month for ‘divorces’ in pre-Christian Ireland. Teltown Fort was the site of many ceremonies of separation, when a couple decided to end their arrangement, one would walk North from the site and the other South and thus their marriage was dissolved by law and importantly in the eyes of the community.
Conversely Harvest was also a time for matchmaking and courtship. Given the long hours, days and even weeks of these gatherings it is unsurprising that flirtations were fanned, and new relationships formed. This remained a feature of Bilberry Sunday, when the day was more about courting than the berries themselves.
Bilberries grow high on mountainsides and are notoriously difficult to find and pick. To gather enough to be of any use would involve a long walk and many hours amongst the heather, providing an opportunity for sweethearts to spend time together. Young women would often bake Bilberry cakes and present them to the one their hearts desired. And in many places throughout Ireland there was a Bilberry Sunday Dance, to further fan any flames of love kindled on the hillside.
Given the importance of grain and the longevity of the celebrations surrounding the Harvest it is unsurprising then that there is a considerable amount of folklore regarding the grain crop.
Whilst the community worked together during harvest there was a spirit of competition between farms to be the first to cut all the crop, and no one wanted to be last. To be left with the last remaining sheaf in your field was to risk never marrying or being first amongst the neighbours to die. The last sheaf was known as the Cailleach, Granny, the churn or the Hare and was imbued with many beliefs. To put the Hare from the Corn was to cut the last sheaf. Whoever cut it was contrarily blessed with luck, good health, or marriage. Games were made of throwing blades at it or being blindfolded and sent at it with a scythe to be the one who made the last cut. Once cut it was taken home, plaited, and kept until the following year. Often kept in the eaves of the house, hanging in the kitchen or sometimes in the cow shed, where the grains were fed to cows when calving. To have the last sheaf in the rafters was believed to bring blessings and protection to the house, even being believed to protect the children of the house from drowning. However elsewhere in Ireland, mainly in Southern counties the last sheaf was left in the field to bless the farmer and his land.
In the midlands of Ireland the last sheaf was used for death magic. Probably an import from Scotland where belief in murder by witchcraft was rife, the last sheaf was stuck with pins and then buried in the ground as a representation of the intended victim. The belief was that the victim would wither as the sheaf rotted, the only cure was to exhume the object and burn it.
Last month I briefly mentioned Harvest Knots. Some examples made locally (County Antrim) over one hundred years ago are pictured above. These beautiful and intricately crafted objects were made mainly from the straw gathered from the grain harvest, rather than the hay made from grass earlier in the year. They were worn as charms of protection, fertility, or love. They were worn in the gladness of a successful harvest. Young women would wear them in their hair and the men wore them in buttonholes or in their caps. The areas in which harvest knots were popular correspond to those which were planted by the British in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so it is perhaps not too much of a stretch to say that they were an import from English harvest traditions. There is some suggestion that they were gifted as love tokens, but it is without much evidence. Similarly, they may have been worn as an advertisement that the wearer was available to work the harvest, but again we simply do not know as that information, along with the practice of weaving them, has long since passed from knowledge.
For more in-depth information on last sheafs or harvest knots, indeed all things hay and straw I highly recommend the comprehensive Straw, Hay & Rushes in Irish Folk Tradition by Anne O’Dowd.
We have covered both the Grain and the Dispute elements giving rise to names for this coming Full Moon leaving us with only Lightning remaining. For those of you living in Ireland this will already be obvious, August is known for its thunderstorms. When the heat rises from southern Europe and hits with the cold blowing in from the Atlantic the result is storms and indeed lightning. With Climate Change that pattern is shifting bringing intense storms earlier in the year, but August has not yet begun so we shall see what weather it brings.
Augusts Full Moon tale Grain, Lightning, Dispute will follow on Tuesday morning, for you to read as the moon grows to it’s peak.
A child who insists that if it is daylight, it is still his “lucky day” has lately put paid to my evening writing, but the tale is underway and will be in your inbox with the moon. Today we are heading up the hillside to search for bilberries between the showers of rain (I’ll post a note here if we find some) and wander a while in those fields of gold.
Happy Lughnasa, may the season be bountiful for you, and may you reap all the good you’ve sown. Xx
