August 1st marked the festival of Lughnasadh (loo-nasser if your mouth mangles those Irish phonemes). It’s the beginning of harvest season and a key date in Blood Point, my Irish Nightmare Vacations novel.
Named after the pagan god Lugh, it’s another of those Irish festivals that sits between a solstice and an equinox. The big tradition for Lughnasadh is climbing hills, which those canny early Christians remixed into pilgrimages.
Most famous of these is the Reek Sunday pilgrimage to the top of Croagh Patrick, on the last Sunday in July. Other traditions include athletic contests, corn dolls, matchmaking, trading and feasts based on the first produce of the harvest.
Lugh what now?
Lugh (Loo) was another of the Tuatha Dé Danann, those supernatural folk who became the Sí, or Irish faeries. Also known as Lugh of the Long Hand, he was a king, warrior, master craftsman, artist and lawgiver. ‘Long hand’ may refer to his skill with a spear or his strength as a ruler.
The myths probably reflect nomadic hunter-gatherers who lived in Ireland before modern farmers gradually displaced them and deforested the country. The importance of fruits in this festival — also known as Bilberry Sunday — reflect the harvest being as much a natural phenomenon as one made by men’s work.
The origins of the festival are a little shakier. They show how little reliable information remains about Ireland’s pre-Christian beliefs and how one event can be mythologised in numerous ways.
Lugh dares, wins
One story says Lugh wanted to commemorate the death of an earth goddess. She’s possibly Tailtiu, his foster mother, who was exhausted after clearing the plains of Ireland for farming. She may also represent the dying vegetation as summer ends, even though Ireland’s best summer often arrives in September.
Another myth that features Naas, a town in Kildare where Lugh held court, is that he buried his wives there. Nás and Boi were sisters, but nás also means death while násadh means assembly. Lughnasadh celebrates both: double meanings are rife in Irish myth.
Then there’s a tale in which Lugh steals grain to feed mankind from another god, Crom Dubh. Sometimes the grain is represented by a woman called Eithne, whose name means grain or kernel. Elsewhere, Lugh also defeats Balor, who variously represents blight, drought and the scorching summer sun. Few people in Ireland are likely to take the last part seriously.
Lughnasadh traditions
Walking up big hills aside, what do the Irish do for the festival of Lugh? The folklorist Máire MacNeil literally wrote the book on Lughnasadh in 1962, gathering customs for the Irish Folklore Commission from numerous sources:
A solemn cutting of the first of the corn of which an offering would be made to the deity by bringing it up to a high place and burying it; a meal of the new food and of bilberries of which everyone must partake; a sacrifice of a sacred bull, a feast of its flesh, with some ceremony involving its hide, and its replacement by a young bull; a ritual dance-play perhaps telling of a struggle for a goddess and a ritual fight; an installation of a [carved stone] head on top of the hill and a triumphing over it by an actor impersonating Lugh; another play representing the confinement by Lugh of the monster blight or famine; a three-day celebration presided over by the brilliant young god [Lugh] or his human representative. Finally, a ceremony indicating that the interregnum was over, and the chief god in his right place again.
Máire MacNeill, The Festival of Lughnasa
A key factor to remember is that the old crops would be exhausted by the time Lughnasadh arrived. People would be hunting, living off the land and praying for a good harvest, whether to one Christian God or a plethora of pagan gods.
The people also had a brief time before the harvest to enjoy nature’s brief bounty as berries ripened or cattle and game fattened. A feast would give them energy before the frenzy of gathering.
In Ireland, land of unpredictable weather, early August might also bring the heavy rains known as Lammas floods. These could shift the festival around and destroy crops before they ripened. Today’s neopagans sometimes move Lughnasadh by a few days around August 1st to meet the full moon.
We’ll give them a year
Marriages were another part of Lughnasadh tradition, particularly at the Óenach Tailten fair in County Meath during the Middle Ages. There was a twist: these trial marriages lasted a year and a day, after which couples could make them permanent or break up with no consequences.
Trial marriages might be a thing of the past, for better or for worse, but Lughnasadh fairs and hill walks are now celebrated across Ireland. The period between Litha and Lughnasadh remains a time for sporting contests like the World Cup and Olympics, when athletes and others gather from far and wide to compete while their spectators feast.