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\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 Waning Grandchildren Moon<\/p>\n
Turning round the star wheel we have come again to the first day of the month named after Augustus Caesar, First Citizen of Rome.\u00a0 In Celtic lands this month was:\u00a0 Welsh–Awst<\/em>, Scots Gaelic–an Lunasdal<\/em> and in Irish:\u00a0 Lughnasadh<\/em>.<\/p>\n Though the coming of Autumn is not visible, the wind tells us it has come<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 Fujiwara no Toshiyuki<\/p>\n The Japanese word risshu means the first day of Autumn.\u00a0 By solar equinox reckoning we are a good 8 weeks away from that day, yet Toshiyuki’s poem suggests another way to look for the fall of the year.\u00a0 Are there signals in the air, in the plant world, among the animals?\u00a0 Yes, there are. Lughnasa, a cross-quarter holiday in the Celtic calendar, marks the half-way point of the changes from the summer solstice to the fall equinox.<\/p>\n The bees have put away honey all July and August is the month when their honey production wanes.\u00a0 Many flowers and vegetables have already grown, flowered and fruited:\u00a0 iris, daffodil, tulip, lily, dicentra, coral bells, hosta and phlox.\u00a0 The long grasses have seeded as have many of the tall weeds, including the hemp that grows here in abundance.\u00a0 There are stalks, brown stalks, in the garden, the signs of a more general senescence that will over take all the flowers and vegetables as August continues and becomes September.\u00a0 Animal babies have begun to mature, witness the opossum pictured here a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n The main signal of seasonal change though, for me, is the change in the angle of the sun light.\u00a0 By August 20th, the sun’s angle of declination at its highest point in the sky, noon, will be 12 degrees less than the 69 degrees it achieved on June 20th, the summer solstice and the sun’s highest angle at our 45th degree of latitude.\u00a0 This changed angle, subtle at first, becomes obvious as August moves on and creates the tone of seasonal change in advance of temperature and other meteorological signals. We now journey toward the sun’s lowest angle of declination here, 22 degrees, reached at the Winter Solstice on December 21st.<\/p>\n In many webpages you will find confident reference to Lugh as the Celtic sun-god and to Lughnasa as his festival.\u00a0 Maybe.\u00a0 Celtic lore has a number of obstacles to clear understanding.\u00a0 The most difficult obstacles lie in the sources of information that we have for ancient Celtic life.\u00a0 Whatever written information, if any, the Celts left behind have been lost in the wake of the Roman invasions that began in 55 BC with the arrival of Julius Caesar.\u00a0 As a result we always look at the Celts through the eyes of their conquerors.\u00a0 Tacitus, for example, records the story of the Druids and their last stand across the Menai Straits in northwestern Wales.\u00a0 It is Caesar’s accounts of the Gallic Wars (Celtic Wars) that gives us much of the scanty information we have about Celtic religious life.<\/p>\n The next main source of information about the Celts comes from the Roman Catholic Church that overtook and weeded out both the ancient faery faith and the peculiar and attractive version of Christianity that evolved on its own before the Roman Church came.\u00a0 This Celtic Christianity emphasized a close relationship with the natural world and retained practices resonant with the Celtic faery faith.<\/p>\n Nowadays a different, but no less problematic type of interpretation occurs when the neo-pagan community takes up these holidays and puts into them the mythological narratives that appeal most to their sensibility.\u00a0\u00a0 They can do this, of course, and, in fact, they do, but it does not mean that the interpretation they place on the sacred days have much, if any, congruence with the practices and beliefs of the ancient Celts.<\/p>\n Thus, the Celts and their ancient life exist behind by shrouds of interpretation motivated by ancient political exigency, motivated by medieval religious arrogance and now motivated by contemporary irrational adoration.<\/p>\n Lugh, in other words, is a name put on a Celtic deity by the Romans, who tended to associate the gods of conquered tribes with gods of their own.\u00a0 Lugh came to be equated with Hermes, Mercury to the Romans.\u00a0 We have very little direct information about the Celtic pantheon, though there is some.<\/p>\n What we do know for certain is that on and around August 1, for centuries, Celtic and English peoples celebrated the first fruits of the harvest on a day called Lughnasa.\u00a0 Brian Friel’s wonderful play, Dancing at Lughnasa, gives an excellent account of the holiday as it was still practiced in the early part of the 20th century.\u00a0 As the Burns poem below* attests, part of its celebration included going out into the fields of barley or wheat or rye or whatever, to practice human fertility rites.<\/p>\n Like the rest of the Celtic holidays, Lughnasa involved a week of fairs and markets, a time of celebrations, gatherings of people from various rural areas.<\/p>\n These holidays were and are significant in the daily lives of rural folks in the Celtic Countries and England.\u00a0 The Lammas Meadows are an example.\u00a0 Lugg Meadows<\/a> in Herefordshire, England are the largest and best preserved of 20 Lammas Meadows in England today, some of which still follow the medieval land tenure system that created them in the first place.<\/p>\n In this system the lord of the manor, who owned the fields, would rent the prime bottom land to those who could afford the rent.\u00a0 Bottom land was the most valuable land in the middle ages because it often had a sandy or rocky bottom with layers of fertile silt on top, creating a well-drained and rich field for growing hay.\u00a0 Hay was critical for it fed the many animals used in farming and in the other work of the manor through the winter.<\/p>\n The fee-holders would mark their holdings with ‘dole stones’, the holding being irregular strips of the bottom land on which they purchased the right to harvest hay.\u00a0 From Candlemas (the Catholic holiday laid over the Celtic celebration of Brigid, the triple Goddess, Imbolc) to Lammas (the Catholic holiday laid over the Celtic Lughnasa) the fee-holders and the Lord kept the Lammas Meadows ‘shut for hay.’\u00a0 Over this time only the Lord and the fee-holders could enter the land.\u00a0 On Lammas Day, however, the fields would open to the commoner–the person who used the common land–who could browse his animals in them until Candlemas, February 1st of the next year.<\/p>\n The farmer making hay from the Lammas Meadows (see pic) has an interesting graphic about his concept of sustainability.\u00a0 It involves a triple bottom line:\u00a0 social, environmental and economic.\u00a0\u00a0 Here it is:<\/p>\n from a fascinating website:\u00a0 Wilson’s Almanac<\/a><\/p>\n *It was on a Lammas night, The sky was blue, the wind was still, I locked her in my fond embrace; I hae been blythe wi’ comrades dear; CHORUS<\/p>\n Corn rigs, an’ barley rigs, Robert Burns<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\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 Waning Grandchildren Moon Turning round the star wheel we have come again to the first day of the month named after Augustus Caesar, First Citizen of Rome.\u00a0 In Celtic lands this month was:\u00a0 Welsh–Awst, Scots Gaelic–an Lunasdal and in Irish:\u00a0 Lughnasadh. Though the coming of Autumn is not visible, the wind tells us it … Continue reading Lughnasa: A First Fruits Festival and Beginning of the Harvest Cycle<\/span>
\nWhen corn rigs are bonnie,
\nBeneath the moon’s unclouded light,
\nI held away to Annie:
\nThe time flew by, wi tentless heed,
\nTill ‘tween the late and early;
\nWi’ sma’ persuasion she agreed
\nTo see me thro’ the barley.<\/p>\n
\nThe moon was shining clearly;
\nI set her down, wi’ right good will,
\nAmang the rigs o’barley
\nI ken’t her heart was a’ my ain;
\nI lov’d her most sincerely;
\nI kissed her owre and owre again,
\nAmong the rig o’ barley.<\/p>\n
\nHer heart was beating rarely:
\nMy blessings on that happy place,
\nAmang the rigs o’barley.
\nBut by the moon and stars so bright,
\nThat shone that hour so clearly!
\nShe ay shall bless that happy night,
\nAmang the rigs o’barley.<\/p>\n
\nI hae been merry drinking;
\nI hae been joyfu’ gath’rin gear;
\nI hae been happy thinking:
\nBut a’ the pleasures e’er I saw,
\nTho three times doubl’d fairley
\nThat happy night was worth then a’.
\nAmong the rig’s o’ barley.<\/p>\n
\nAn’ corn rigs are bonnie:
\nI’ll ne’er forget that happy night,
\nAmong the rigs wi’ Annie.<\/p>\n