{"id":21744,"date":"2013-08-15T15:23:15","date_gmt":"2013-08-15T21:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?page_id=21744"},"modified":"2015-09-04T08:10:06","modified_gmt":"2015-09-04T14:10:06","slug":"lughnasa","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/?page_id=21744","title":{"rendered":"Lughnasa"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Lughnasa 2015<\/a><\/h1>\n
August 1, 2015<\/span><\/a> Leave a Comment<\/a><\/span>Written by Charles<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
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Lughnasa \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 The Blue Recovery Moon<\/p>\n

\"lammastide\"<\/a>The first of the three harvest seasons begins today. Lughnasa, the festival of first fruits, or Lammas, as the Catholic appropriation of this Celtic holy day came to be known. On Lammas peasants would bring loaves of bread made from the first of the corn (wheat) harvest and place them on the altar.<\/p>\n

Here is an intriguing account of Lughnasa\u2019s mythic origin from Kathleen Jenks\u2019\u00a0website<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cLugh dedicated this festival to his foster-mother, Tailtiu, the last queen of the Fir Bolg, who died from exhaustion after clearing a great forest so that the land could be cultivated.\u00a0 When the men of Ireland gathered at her death-bed, she told them to hold funeral games in her honor. As long as they were held, she prophesied Ireland would not be without song.\u00a0 Tailtiu\u2019s name is from Old Celtic Talantiu, \u201cThe Great One of the Earth,\u201d suggesting she may originally have been a personification of the land itself, like so many Irish goddesses.\u00a0 In fact, Lughnasadh has an older name, Br\u00f3n Trogain, which refers to the painful labor of childbirth. For at this time of year, the earth gives birth to her first fruits so that her children might live\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"images<\/a>This year, my first Lughnasa in the west, I\u2019m aware of the contrast between the humid and agriculturally focused Great Wheel holidays and the rocky, desert, arid region which I now call home. On Shadow Mountain we have no harvest, no fields retrieved from ancient forests. We have stony cliffs, lodgepole and ponderosa pine, aspen. At the base of Shadow Mountain in Shadow Creek Valley there is a stand of alfalfa that was cut last week and baled this week. But the rationale is more fire mitigation, reducing the fuel load, than an agricultural one, though I imagine some happy horses will get those bales.<\/p>\n

\"mn<\/a>This year Lughnasa still has that Midwest feel for me. The vegetable stands are full of produce, farmer\u2019s markets tables groan with the increasing yield of gardens all round the region. In fact, the week-long market holiday that began at Lughnasa in the Celtic lands inspired our agriculturally focused county and state fairs. The Great Minnesota Get-Together starts later this month on August 27th. No better latter day Lughnasa festival.<\/p>\n

Adapting the Great Wheel with a western inflection may take a couple of years. I have no clear idea, for example, how to talk about Lughnasa on Shadow Mountain. An intriguing piece of work that lies ahead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Lughnasa \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a02013 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Moon of the First Harvests<\/p>\n

Today begins the first of the three harvest seasons, Lughnasa. \u00a0This is the holiday of first\u00a0\"\"<\/a>fruits, the celebration of those beets, carrots, onions, garlic, chard, herbs, peas and the cherries, currants and pears already brought inside. \u00a0In the Catholic tradition this was called Lammas, the feast of the first breads, baked from the first harvested wheat or other grains.<\/p>\n

Lughnasa, Mabon (Fall Equinox) and Samhain (Summer’s End) celebrate the beginning, peak and end of the harvest. \u00a0This is the time of year when the hard work of late spring and early summer produce results. \u00a0In many agricultural societies these were the months that determined life or death over the fallow winter months beginning at Samhain.<\/p>\n

There are many traditions and customs peculiar to these harvest times, not the least in our society, of course, the beginning of school. \u00a0The State Fair and all the county fairs held in these months echo these traditions since the holiday itself, August 1st in this case, usually began a week long market fair where goods were exchanged, feasts held, dances and games held, new relationships begun or ended.<\/p>\n

This year a new harvest. \u00a0The first fruits of the broadening grasp of human diversity in\u00a0\"\"<\/a>Minnesota. \u00a0Gay couples can and have already married here. \u00a0Coming only days after the Pope’s who am I to judge, this may be a first harvest worthy of the history books.<\/p>\n

Kona’s death was, too, a harvest, a life lived fully, ripened and now mature. \u00a0Lughnasa 2013 will be remembered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lughnasa 2015 August 1, 2015 Leave a CommentWritten by Charles Lughnasa \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 The Blue Recovery Moon The first of the three harvest seasons begins today. Lughnasa, the … Continue reading Lughnasa<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":686,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-21744","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21744"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32362,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21744\/revisions\/32362"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}