Lughnasadh, Lughnasa or Lúnasa ( , ) is a Gaelic festival marking the beginning of the harvest season. Historically, it was widely observed throughout Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. Traditionally, it is held on 1 August, or about halfway between the summer solstice and autumn equinox. In recent centuries, some celebrations have shifted to Sundays near this date. Lughnasadh is one of the four Gaelic seasonal festivals, along with Samhain, Imbolc, and Beltane. It corresponds to the Welsh and the English Lammas.
Lughnasadh is mentioned in early Irish literature and has pagan origins. The festival is named after the god Lugh. In the Middle Ages, it involved great gatherings that included ceremonies, athletic contests (most notably the Tailteann Games), horse racing, feasting, matchmaking, and trading. According to folklorist Máire MacNeill, evidence suggests that the religious rites included an offering of the First Fruits, a feast of the new food, the sacrifice of a bull, and a ritual dance-play. In recent centuries, Lughnasadh gatherings have typically been held atop hills and mountains, including many of the same activities.
The festival persisted widely until the 20th century, with the event called Garland Sunday, Bilberry Sunday, Mountain Sunday, and Crom Dubh Sunday. The tradition of climbing hills and mountains at Lughnasadh has survived in some areas and is recast as a Christian pilgrimage. The best known is the Reek Sunday pilgrimage to the north top of Croagh Patrick on the last Sunday in July. Several fairs are also believed to be survivors of Lughnasadh, such as the Puck Fair. Since the late 20th century, Celtic neopagans have observed Lughnasadh, or something based on it, as a religious holiday. In some places, festival elements have been revived as a cultural event.
Name In Old Irish the name was (). This is a combination of (the god Lugh) and (an assembly), which is unstressed when used as a suffix. Another theory is that it originated from the word nás (death), rather than násad. Later spellings include , and .
In Modern Irish, the spelling is , which is also the name for August. The genitive case is also as in (Month of August) and (Day of Lúnasa). In Modern Scottish Gaelic (), the festival and the month are both called . In Manx (), the festival and the month are both called . The day itself may be called either or .
In Welsh (), the day is known as , originally a Latin term, meaning the Calends of August. In Breton (), the day was known as , the Feast of August.
Mythology and folklore
In Irish mythology, Lughnasadh is said to have been founded by the god Lugh as a funeral feast and athletic competition—funeral games—to commemorate the death of an earth goddess. Irish myths about Lughnasadh and Lughnasadh sites tend to feature a woman who is carried off or held against her will, and who dies of grief, shame, exhaustion, or unspecified natural causes. Parallels with the Greek tale of Persephone have been noted. A story about the Lughnasadh site of Tailtin says the festival was founded by Lugh as funeral games in memory of his foster-mother Tailtiu.Monaghan, pp.297–299 She was said to have died of exhaustion after clearing the plains of Ireland for agriculture. Tailtiu may have been an earth goddess who represented the dying vegetation that fed mankind.Monaghan, pp.436–437 Another tale, about the assembly site of Naas, says that Lugh founded the festival in memory of his two wives, the sisters Nás and Bói. One theory is that it was a mourning (or wake) for the end of summer.
Folklorist Máire MacNeill extensively studied the later folklore and traditions of Lughnasadh. She concludes that the main theme is a struggle for the harvest between two gods. One god, usually called Crom Dubh in later folklore, guards the grain as his treasure. The other god, Lugh, must seize it for mankind.MacNeill, Máire. The Festival of Lughnasa. p.416Mac Gabhann, Seamus. "Landmarks of the people: Meath and Cavan places prominent in Lughnasa mythology and folklore" . Ríocht na Midhe, 11. Meath Archaeological & Historical Society, 2000. pp.236–237 Sometimes, this was portrayed as a struggle over a woman called Eithne, who represents the grain. Lugh also fights and defeats a figure representing blight. MacNeill says that these themes can be seen in earlier Irish mythology, particularly in the tale of Lugh defeating Balor, which seems to represent the overcoming of blight, drought and the scorching summer sun.Ó hÓgáin, Dáithí. Fionn Mac Cumhaill: Images of the Gaelic Hero. Gill & MacMillan, 1988. p.11 In surviving folklore, Lugh is usually replaced by Saint Patrick, while Crom Dubh is a pagan chief who owns a granary or a bull and who opposes Patrick, but is overcome and converted. Crom Dubh is likely the same figure as Crom Cruach and shares some traits with the Dagda and Donn. He may be based on an underworld god like Hades and Pluto, who kidnaps the grain goddess Persephone but is forced to let her return to the world above before harvest time.Anna Franklin & Paul Mason. Lammas: Celebrating Fruits of the First Harvest. Llewellyn Worldwide, 2001. p.238
Historic customs In the Middle Ages, the or (modern spelling: ) was held each Lughnasadh at Tailtin in what is now County Meath. According to medieval literature, kings attended this óenach and a truce was declared for its duration. It was similar to the Ancient Olympic Games and included ritual athletic and sporting contests, horse racing, music and storytelling, trading, proclaiming laws and settling legal disputes, drawing-up contracts, and matchmaking.Kelly, Fergus. Early Irish Farming. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1997. p.459Patterson, Nerys. Cattle-lords and Clansmen: The Social Structure of Early Ireland. University of Notre Dame Press, 1994. p.145 At Tailtin, young couples entered into trial marriages by joining hands through a hole in a wooden door.Monaghan, p.444 The trial marriage lasted a year and a day, at which time it could be made permanent or broken without consequences. (Originally published: Dublin: A. Thom, 1865–1901. Alternatively known as .) After the 9th century the was celebrated irregularly and it gradually died out. It was revived for a period in the 20th century as the Tailteann Games. Another Lughnasadh gathering, the , was held in what is now County Kildare. Carman is also believed to have been a goddess, perhaps one with a similar tale as Tailtiu. The included a food market, a livestock market, and a market for foreign traders. A 15th-century version of the Irish legend Tochmarc Emire ("the Wooing of Emer") is one of the earliest documents to record these festivities.
From the 18th century to the mid 20th century, many Lughnasadh customs and folklore were recorded. In 1962 The Festival of Lughnasa, a study of Lughnasadh by folklorist Máire MacNeill, was published. MacNeill studied surviving Lughnasadh customs and folklore as well as the earlier accounts and medieval writings about the festival. She concluded that the evidence testified to the existence of an ancient festival around 1 August that involved the following:
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.MacNeill, Máire. The Festival of Lughnasa: A Study of the Survival of the Celtic Festival of the Beginning of Harvest. Oxford University Press, 1962. p.426
Many of the customs described by medieval writers survived into the modern era, though they were either Christianized or shorn of any pagan religious meaning. Lughnasadh occurred during a poor time of the year for the farming community when the old crops were done and the new ones not yet ready for harvest. Many of Ireland's prominent mountains and hills were climbed at Lughnasadh. Some of the treks were re-cast as Christian pilgrimages, the most well-known being Reek Sunday – the yearly pilgrimage to the top of Croagh Patrick in late July.Monaghan, p.104 Other hilltop gatherings were secular and attended mostly by the youth. On the Iveragh Peninsula, a pilgrimage to the summit of Drung Hill was part of local Lughnasadh celebrations until it died out around 1880.
In Ireland, bilberries were gathered and there was eating, drinking, dancing, folk music, games and matchmaking, as well as athletic and sporting contests such as weight-throwing, hurling and horse racing.MacNeill, The Festival of Lughnasa, pp.142–143, 150, 180, 182 At some gatherings, everyone wore flowers while climbing the hill and then buried them at the summit as a sign that summer was ending.MacNeill, The Festival of Lughnasa, p.143 In other places, the first sheaf of the harvest was buried.MacNeill, The Festival of Lughnasa, p.421 There were also faction fights, whereby two groups of young men fought with sticks.MacNeill, The Festival of Lughnasa, p.424 In 18th-century Lothian, Scotland, rival groups of young men built towers of sods topped with a flag. For days, each group tried to sabotage the other's tower, and at Lughnasadh they met each other in 'battle'.MacNeill, The Festival of Lughnasa, pp.369–372
Bull sacrifices at Lughnasadh time were recorded as late as the 18th century at Cois Fharraige in Ireland, where they were offered to Crom Dubh, and at Loch Maree in Scotland, where they were offered to Saint Máel Ruba.MacNeill, The Festival of Lughnasa, pp.407, 410 Special meals were made with the first produce of the harvest.Monaghan, p.180 In the Scottish Highlands, people made a special cake called the , which may have originated as an offering to the gods.Monaghan, p.299
Another custom that Lughnasadh shared with Imbolc and Beltane was visiting holy wells, some specifically clootie wells. Visitors to these wells would pray for health while walking sunwise around the well; they would then leave offerings, typically coins or clooties.Monaghan, p.41 Although bonfires were lit at some of the open-air gatherings in Ireland, they were rare and incidental to the celebrations.
Traditionally, Lughnasadh has always been reckoned as the first day of August. In recent centuries, however, much of the gatherings and festivities shifted to the nearest Sundays – either the last Sunday in July or first Sunday in August. It is believed this is because the coming of the harvest was a busy time and the weather could be unpredictable, which meant work days were too important to give up. As Sunday would have been a day of rest anyway, it made sense to hold celebrations then. The festival may also have been affected by the shift to the Gregorian calendar.
Lughnasadh was a time of unpredictable weather in Ireland. Heavy rains known as "Lammas floods" often coincided with beginning of August and were responsible for destroying the corn. There are many folk sayings that relate to the unpredictable weather conditions during Lughnasadh and the importance of these conditions to the harvest:
"...For Lammas floods, with crops oft havoc play, And e'en one swept the rustic bridge away." "August needs the dew as much as men need bread. After Lammas corn ripens as much by night as by day."
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