The grain is ripening for harvest. Apple trees and gardens bear the fruits of summer. This is the time of Lughnasadh, the ancient Celtic festival held in celebration of the first fruits of the harvest. A time of rest from labor, a time to take stock of, and celebrate, what the summer sun has yielded.
Lughnasa has been observed for thousands of years throughout Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Mann, originally on August 1, now on the Sundays nearest it.
Lughnasadh is named after the God Lugh, the warrior god of the arts and sciences, associated with the sun, grain and the life force itself. According to Celtic legend, Lugh decreed that a feast be held each year at the beginning of the harvest to honor his foster mother, Tailtiu of the Fir Bolg people. After the defeat of her people by the Tuatha De Dannan, she was made to clear a vast forest for the purpose of their planting grain, and she died of exhaustion in the attempt. She was buried beneath a great mound named for her, at the spot where the first feast of Lughnasadh was held in Ireland, the hill of Tailte in County Meath. At this gathering was ritual athletic games, bonfires, matchmaking and a great feast of the first fruits of the summer harvest.
Lughnasadh celebrations continued widely until the 20th century, often called 'Garland Sunday', 'Bilberry Sunday', 'Mountain Sunday' or ' Crom Dubh Sunday'. Visitors to holy wells would leave offerings and pray for health while walking sunwise around the well.
In modern Ireland, families still ascend into the hills to pick bilberries on the last Sunday of July. The tradition of climbing hills and mountains at Lughnasadh still survives, though re-cast now as a Christian pilgrimage. The best known is the 'Reek Sunday' pilgrimage, when tens of thousands of faithful climb to the top of Croagh Patrick, often barefoot, often on their knees.
The Puck Fair, still held each year in the town of Killorglin in County Kerry, is descended from an ancient Lughnasadh festival. As the three-day festival starts, a wild goat is brought into the town and crowned 'King Puck', while a local girl is crowned 'Queen'. There is traditional music and dancing, a parade, a horse and cattle fair, and a bustling market. And out on the windswept Omey Strand in Galway, horses are still raced across the sands on the first Sunday in August as they have been since time forgotten, racing to win and racing to beat the incoming tide.
With the coming of Christianity to the Celtic lands, the old festival of Lughnasadh took on Christian symbolism. Loaves of bread baked from the first of the harvested grain were placed on church altars on the first Sunday of August. Lughnasadh became Lammas, meaning "loaf mass".
But Lughnasa lives on in our small town country harvest fairs, a tradition that the Irish and Europeans brought with them to Appalachia and beyond. And it lives in in the highland games, feasting and music of gatherings like Bethlehem’s Celtic Classic Festival. So – let the harvesting, and the feasting, begin…
For the Celtic Cultural Alliance, this is Kate Scuffle. Slainte.