Friday Ramble Before Lammas

Here we are nearing the last day of July. Next Wednesday is the eve of Lammas, sometimes called Lughnsadh, Lúnasa, Calan Awst, "First Harvest" or "Loaf Mass". The festival celebrates summer, farming and harvesting, particularly the gathering, milling and putting by of grains and cereals.

Humans have gathered and consumed grains and cereals since Neolithic times, and the beginning of domestic grain cultivation is an important moment in our evolution. It marks the transition from an ancient, nomadic lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of farming and settlement. Sickles, sheaves, stooks, mill wheels and grinding stones are common motifs in almost every culture on island earth.

Gods and goddesses? Oh yes, our festival has a throng of harvest gods: Lugh, Tammuz, Osiris, Adonis and Attis to name a few. Then there is Dionysus or Bacchus -  the grapey god is in a class all by himself, deity of vineyards and harvesting, wine making, drunken revelry and ritual madness.  He stands at the gate between summer and autumn, and his magical tavern with its ever turning mill wheel and rapture inducing brews is the stuff of legend. According to folk tales, its doorway can be entered from any street in the great wide world if one is in the right frame of mind and receptive to the alluring tug of the wild, the intoxicating and ecstatic.

According to Irish mythology, the August 1st festival was established by the god Lugh to honor his foster mother (Tailltiu), who perished from exhaustion after clearing the plains of Ireland for cultivation. The date is also associated with other harvest goddesses like Demeter, Persephone, Ceres, Bridget, the Cailleach, Selu, Nokomis (the Corn Mother) and Freya, who is sometimes known as the Lady of the Loaf. 

In the ninth century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, August 1st was called "the feast of first fruits", and the occasion also marked the end of the hay gathering that had begun at Midsummer (June 21st). Loaves of bread were baked with grain from the first harvest and placed on church altars. The loaves were blessed and later used in simple charms and rustic enchantments. Tenant farmers paid an allotment of grain to their landlords as rent, and a tithe (one tenth of a farm's yield) was given to the local church to sustain it. Farmers delivered their portion to parish tithe barns, and a number of the elegant timber, brick and stone structures survive today. While it is difficult to date some of the earlier structures precisely, a number of tithe barns can be dated back to the middle of the fourteenth century.

Tim Powers' fabulous The Drawing of the Dark always comes to mind around this time of year. The book is full of harvest and brewing metaphors, and it's a rollicking good read. The main characters are King Arthur (reborn as an aging Irish mercenary named Brian Duffy), a sorcerer called Aurelius Aurelianus (the legendary Merlin himself), and the Fisher King. Dionysus and his magical tavern put in an appearance, and they're in good  company - the woodland god Pan, Gambrinus (the mythical brewmaster), Finn MacCool, the Morrigan, Guinevere, Morgan le Fay, Odin, Thor and Hercules also show up. There's a shipload of Vikings sworn to defend the ancient brewery at the heart of the story and stave off Ragnarok, and there are other mythical creatures too numerous to mention. There has been a paperback copy of the novel in my library since it was published in 1979, and I have retired at least three tattered PB copies since. When a dear friend gave me a hardcover copy a while ago, I was ecstatic. It seems appropriate to read the novel again before Lammas, and I am about to do so. 

The first day of August marked the beginning of the harvest for the ancients, but it also marked summer's end in some cultures, and so it is for moderns. Days are still blisteringly hot for the most part, but mornings and evenings are often cooler. Some mornings, Beau and I find fallen leaves in the birdbath when we go out, and the air is filled with the splendid whiff of herbs going to seed in the garden. There are still many warm and sunny weeks before us, and it is difficult to believe that summer is waning, but it is doing just that. Our days are growing shorter, and autumn is not far off. 

We've come a long way from our early "hunting and gathering" days, but traces of old seasonal rites remain here and there. When I arrived in Lanark county years ago, I was delighted to learn that Lammas festivities are alive and well in the eastern Ontario highlands. They are called céilidhs or "field parties", and the attendees are unaware of their origins for the most part, but all the festival trappings are there: bonfires, corn, grilled munchies and fresh baked bread, wine and beer, music, storytelling, dancing, parades by lantern light and merrymaking in abundance. Once in a while, there is even a ritual or formal harvest observance. Blessed be.