The Celtic Origins of Lammas

Pop quiz:

What do the Christian feast day, Lammas; the Medieval Scottish and English feast, the Gule of August; the Welsh festival, Calan Awst; Ireland’s annual day of pilgrimage, Reek Sunday; and County Kerry’s Puck Fair all have in common—apart from taking place at the end of July/beginning of August?

Turns out they all might be rooted in the same ancient Celtic festival: Lughnasa.

Yes, the reason why people bake fancy little breads and climb mountains and (am I reading this correctly?) capture wild goats and keep them in elevated cages in the town square every summer is because…

Well, it’s a harvest festival, isn’t it? 

Llamas Day…sorry, Lammas Day, also known as Loaf Day, originated with farmers baking bread with grain from the year’s first harvest and bringing it to an altar to be blessed or to give it as an offering or tithe.

See it was sort of a big deal back then, after a long, cold winter, and a spring filled with rain, when food stocks were low, everyone was counting on that first harvest of the year. 

Thus, this naturally became a time when folks would want to make offerings to their gods—and later, God—in a practice known as First Fruits.

To be clear, this is a practice, First Fruits, that absolutely predates Christianity, showing up in Ancient Greek, Roman, Hebrew, and, yes, Celtic religions.

Heck, it probably even predates all of those religions as well, originating with the Proto-Indo-Europeans somewhere on the Steppes near the Black Sea before spreading all the way to the Atlantic.

But I digress.

In Ireland, it’s likely folks started making pilgrimages up Croagh Patrick, a.k.a. The Reek, and other mountains on the last Sunday in July as a continuation of that First Fruits practice—it was done as a tribute to a deity, as a “thank you” for the year’s first harvest.

Which also explains why in some parts of Ireland “Reek Sunday” is celebrated instead as Garland Sunday or Bilberry Sunday or Crom Dubh Sunday. They’re all localized versions of the same summer harvest festival—that last one being a reference to a pagan god/demon, Crom Dubh, the “black crooked [one],” who, according to legend, was vanquished by Saint Patrick. We’ll come back to Crom later.

Now, I know what you’re thinking:

What’s up—waaay up—with the goat at the Puck Fair? 

Start by listening to this excerpt from scholar Thomas Cahill’s book How the Irish Saved Civilization so you can really understand the kind of celebration we’re talking about here. And I quote:

“To this day, there is a town in Kerry that holds a fertility festival each August, where a magnificent he-goat precides like Cernunnos for three days and nights, and bacchanalian drinking, wild dancing, and varieties of sexual indescretion are the principal entertainments. It is this characteristically Irish mélange of pagan and Christian that forms the theme of Brian Friel’s magnificent play Dancing at Lughnasa—Lughnasa being the harvest feast of the god Lug, still celebrated on August 1 in parts of Ulster.”

Alright, back to the goat:

So the consensus seems to be that King Puck is a symbol of fertility that was ceremoniously offered up to a deity in honor of, you guessed it, the year’s first harvest.

The thing about the year’s first harvest, however, and this probably goes without saying, is that the precise date of it varies not only year to year based on the weather but also place to place as a result of climate and geography.

And yet, when we look at Lammas and the Gule of August and Calan Awst and Reek Sunday and other First Fruits festivals that cropped up (I’m so sorry) across Europe, many of them fall conspicuously either on or right around August 1st.

The same date as the Celtic festival of Lughnasa.

According to folklore researcher J. A. MacCulloch, there is a simple explanation for this: 

Lughnasa predates and no doubt influenced all of the aforementioned festivals.

To quote from MacCulloch’s 1911 book, The Religion of the Ancient Celts:

“The 1st of August, coming midway between Beltane and Samhain, was an important festival among the Celts. In Christian times the day became Lammas, but its name still survives in Irish as Lugnasad, in [Scottish] Gaelic as Lunasdal or Lunasduinn, and in Manx as Laa Luanys, and it is still observed as a fair or feast in many districts.

“Formerly assemblies at convenient centres were held on this day, not only for religious purposes, but for commerce and pleasure, both of these being of course saturated with religion. ‘All Ireland’ met at Taillti, just as ‘all Gaul’ met at Lugudunum, ‘Lug’s town,’ or Lyons, in honour of Augustus, though the feast there had formerly been in honour of the god Lugus.

“The festival was here Romanised, as it was also in Britain, where its name appears as Goel-aoust, Gul-austus, and Gwyl Awst, now the ‘August feast,’ but formerly the ‘feast of Augustus,’ the name having replaced one corresponding to Lugnasad.”

Did you catch all that? 

Don’t worry, because we’re going to break it all down right now, starting with the most basic of basics:

The Definition of Lughnasa

Lughnasa was one of the four major seasonal festivals of the ancient Goidelic- or Gaelic-speaking Celts, which they celebrated on August 1st to mark the beginning of the harvest season. 

As a so-called cross-quarter day, Lughnasa falls roughly halfway between a solstice and an equinox, in this case the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox. 

The other three cross-quarter days are Samhain, which became All Saints’ Day a.k.a. All Hallows Day; Imbolc, which became St. Brigid’s Day and Candlemas; and Beltane, which became Saint Walpurgis Night.

Now, it is widely accepted that Lughnasa was named for the Irish god of many talents, Lugh, who is sometimes interpreted as a sun-god, although a more recent theory based on tree ring chronologies posits that he (and several other mythological heroes, including Lugh’s son, Cú Chulainn) were actually representations of the same passing comet (re: the Cosmic Cú Chulainn theory).

Anyway, in the myths, it is Lugh who institutes the August 1st feast as a tribute to his foster-mother, Tailtiu. And, according to folklorist and professor Juilene Osborne-McKnight, part of Lugh’s celebration included “climbing the tops of mountains to present the first corn to the creator,” (source: The Story We Carry in Our Bones).

Hmmm.

And while the mythology surrounding Lugh seems and is very specific to Ireland, it’s important to recognize that Lugh has cognates in the Welsh figure Llew and the Gaulish god Lugus—the latter of whom the Romans referred to as the Gaulish Mercury.

Indeed, Lugus was widely worshiped across ancient Europe. And there’s no stronger evidence of his influence than all of the places named after him.

According to historian Peter Berresford Ellis’ A Dictionary of Irish Mythology, those places include Lyon, Léon, Loudan, and Laon in France; Leiden in the Netherlands; Legnica in Poland; Carlisle in the UK—which was formerly Luguvalum; and London—yes, that London—although that interpretation is still widely debated.

But let’s go back to Lyon for a minute. 

Because remember, MacCulloch wrote that “all Gaul’ met at Lugudunum, ‘Lug’s town,’ or Lyons’,” and that the annual summer feast nominally held in honor of the Roman Augustus, had originally been held in honor of Lugus.

Connecting Lugus to Augustus is especially intriguing because we know Augustus gave his name to the month of August in English as well as in several other languages. But in Irish, August is Lúnasa. It’s named after the festival. In Scottish Gaelic, it’s An Lùnastal. In Manx, it’s Laa Luanys. 

The Etymology of Lughnasa

The linguist and first President of Ireland, Douglas Hyde, interpreted Lughnasa to mean “Lugh’s gathering” or “perhaps ‘Lugh’s Memorial'” in his A Literary History of Ireland.

Irish historian Alice Stopford Green, meanwhile, referred to Lughnasa as “Lugh’s fair” in her book The Old Irish World.

Irish novelist T. O. Russell for his part offered the following translation in his Beauties and Antiquities of Ireland:

“The meaning of the word Lughnasa is, the games or celebrations of this same Lugh or Lewy, who lived and reigned centuries before Rome was founded, and before a stone of the Athenian Acropolis was laid.”

Finally, author and librarian Ruth Edna Kelley interpreted Lughnasa as “the Bridal of Lugh” in her Book of Hallowe’en. Here’s her explanation of the holiday and its etymology:

“Lugh, in old Highland speech ‘the summer sun’…He said farewell to power on the first of August, and his foster-mother had died on that day, so then it was he set his feast-day. The occasion was called ‘Lugnasad,’ ‘the bridal of Lugh’ and the earth, whence the harvest should spring. It was celebrated by the offering of the first fruits of harvest, and by races and athletic sports. In Meath, Ireland, this continued down into the nineteenth century, with dancing and horse-racing the first week of August.”

The games and “races and athletic sports” to which Russel and Kelley alluded are collectively known as the Tailteann Games.

The Tailteann Games

Essentially the ancient Irish version of the Olympics, the Tailteann games were held during the two weeks leading up to Lughnasa.

Here, I’ll let Osborne-McKnight give you a little more background on the games and how they related to the Gaelic summer harvest festival:

“These games took place during the last two weeks in July…The games began with druids singing funeral songs in memory of the dead and then morphed into horseraces, chariot races, footraces, swimming races, fights…Dancing, singing, story-telling, and great readings of the law were also featured. The games concluded with Lughnasa. These celebrations supposedly took place near the modern area of Telltown (Tailtin), in County Meath.”

source: The Story We Carry in Our Bones

According to legend, the townland of Tailtin, anglicized as Teltown, located midway between Kells and Navan, was named in honor of Lugh’s foster mother, Tailtiu. When she died—after performing the awesome feat of clearing the forest of Breg—Tailtiu was buried in her namesake townland.

Naturally, Lugh deemed Tailtin the perfect place to host his August 1st feast, while the adjacent tumulus served as the venue for the Tailteann Games preceding it. 

As former President Hyde wrote:

“It was Lugh of the Tuatha De Danann…who had first established the great fair of Tailltin, to which he and his friends went from year to year to meet each other, and contract alliances for their grown children. The great funeral mound, round which the games were held, was sacred to Talti, the foster-mother of Lugh, who had there been buried, and in whose honour the games in which he participated were held upon the day which he called—and still calls, though he has now forgotten why—Lughnasa.”

source: A Literary History of Ireland

Catch that part about the annual meet-up, and the “contract alliances”? Sounds an awful lot like what the Gaulish Celts were doing in Lugdunum, a.k.a. Lyon.

And that of course was the point MacCulloch was trying to make when he wrote that “‘All Ireland’ met at Taillti, just as ‘all Gaul’ met at Lugudunum.”

These were very similar gatherings, celebrated at the same time—the beginning of August—and in both cases, Lugus a.k.a. Lugh was at the spiritual center of those celebrations.

Or was he?

Was Lughnasa Always About Lugh?

Because according to the very same MacCulloch, the one who makes a pretty compelling case for a shared Celtic cultural calendar inherited by the Gaulish- and Gaelic-speaking Celts, a calendar that inevitably pairs Lugh/Lugus with the August harvest festival, the original incarnation of the festival in Ireland did not revolve around a god, but a goddess—specifically the aforementioned Tailtiu.

Yes, before she became known as Lugh’s foster-mother, Tailtiu, the “euhemerised queen-goddess” had been a corn-goddess, and before that she had been a “more primitive corn-spirit,” representatives of whom were “slain at the feast.” 

All this according to MacCulloch, who continues:

“The story of their death and burial at the festival was a dim memory of this ancient rite, and since the festival was also connected with the sun-god Lug, it was easy to bring him into relationship with the earlier goddess. Elsewhere the festival, in its memorial aspect, was associated with a king, probably because male victims had come to be representatives of a corn-god who had taken the place of the goddess.”

source: The Religion of the Ancient Celts

Ever wonder why some folks make corn-dollies every Lughnasa? Sure you do.

They’re representations of the corn-spirit. The original, female corn-spirit.

And if you’re American, a quick clarification:

I don’t mean corn like corn on the cob or maize—corn in this sense just means an area’s chief cereal crop. 

That being said, you can make corn dollies with corn husks, they work awesome.

MacCulloch believed the corn-dolly custom originated with people ritually preserving the last sheaf of their harvest. They might then feed it to their cattle or sprinkle it over next year’s crop, the idea being that they were “impart[ing] the power of the corn-spirit.”

Sounds simple and harmless enough. Just a First Fruits good luck charm kind of thing. I’m sure there isn’t some darker explanation…

Oh, right, the whole “slain at the feast” thing.

Turns out the Lughnasa corn-dolly custom “may also have included the slaying of an animal or human incarnation of the corn-spirit, whose flesh and blood quickened the soil and so produced abundance next year, or, when partaken of by the worshippers, brought blessings to them. To neglect such rites, abundant instances of which exist in folk-custom, would be held to result in scarcity. This would also explain, as already suggested, why the festival was associated with the death of Tailtiu…”

The Truth About Tailtiu

Yes, it all keeps coming back to Tailtiu. And the more you learn about her, the clearer it becomes that she has a much stronger connection to the year’s first harvest than her foster-son.

As I alluded to earlier, Tailtiu is famous for leveling landscapes, thereby creating plains suitable for agriculture.

What’s more, as the daughter (or wife, depending on the version of the story) of a Fir Bolg king, Tailtiu has a connection to the date August 1st: 

August 1st was the day the Fir Bolgs arrived in Ireland as detailed in the Lebor Gabála Érenn, or the Book of the Taking of Ireland, commonly called the Book of invasions.

The Fir Bolgs or “bag men”, one of six mythical races to settle in Ireland, arrived after the Nemedians but before the Tuatha Dé Danann.

And while the myths tell us that Lugh picked the date August 1st for the feast to honor his foster-mother’s Fir Bolg heritage, there is a compelling case to be made that the festival was already well-established, and centered around Tailtiu, before Lugh grew in popularity amongst Gaelic worshippers who subsequently reworked their religious stories to give Lugh a more prominent role in things, diminishing Tailitu’s role in the process, and badabing, badaboom, the Gaels have switched from worshiping the traditional female corn-spirit on August 1st to worshiping a male corn-spirit.

Granted, as we’ve already learned, that male corn-spirit wasn’t always Lugh. Or at least it didn’t always remain Lugh.

In some parts of Ireland, it was the aforementioned Crom Dubh, himself a reimagining of an earlier figure, Crom Cruach, who became the more prominent corn-idol.

Ever wonder why Conan the Barbarian says “by Crom!” all the time?

It’s a reference to those guys.

But before any of those male corn-idols took center stage, there was Teiltiu.

And before Teiltiu the deity, whom Irish linguistics scholar D. A. Binchy referred to as a “figment of poetic imagination,” there was a settlement by that same (or a similar) name. 

The goddess was named after the town, not the other way around.

And here our understanding of Lughnasa’s origin takes a real left turn, because it turns out in addition to predating the emergence of Tailtiu and Lugh and the Croms in Gaelic-Celtic mythology, the settlement of Taillti likely predated the arrival of the Gaelic-speaking Celts themselves.

Now, that’s not a huge revelation in and of itself because we know there were people in Ireland building settlements and tumuli and dolmens thousands of years before the arrival of the Gaels, but what is interesting in this case is that the name Tailtiu may have originated as a loan word from the Brythonic- or Brittonic-speaking Celts (i.e., the Britons), and is related to the Welsh telediw meaning “well-formed” or “beautiful.”

If this interpretation is correct, the implications are threefold: 

1. Brythonic-speaking Celts settled in Ireland (at least in small numbers) prior to the so-called “Goidelic invasion” which saw the Goidelic a.k.a. Gaelic branch of the Celtic language sweep across Ireland and into Scotland.
2. Some of these Brythonic-speaking Celts founded Taillti—or they took it over from even earlier settlers and gave it that new name. In any case, it’s plausible that these Britons were the ones who first established an August 1st harvest festival at Taillti; which could also mean that…
3. The ancient Britons are to thank for bringing Lughnasa to Ireland? And when the Gaels showed up, possibly sometime around 300 B.C.E., they hitched their wagon to the August 1st date and stitched their own mythological narratives into the existing Brythonic folk tradition surrounding Tailtiu?

Or, in the spirit of MacCulloch, might we imagine a scenario in which the Gaels and Britons, and the Gauls for that matter, all inheritors of Celtic languages, might also have all inherited a shared holiday calendar—one that pegs First Fruits to August 1st.

In which case, if the Gaels had rolled up to Taillti on August 1st and the Britons had been there making corn-dollies, playing games, getting their freak on, maybe there was a goat in a cage…

The Gaels, gazing upon this, unflinching, might have said in a foreign yet vaguely familiar language:

“Oh, yeah, cool. We do this kind of stuff every August 1st too… Sláinte!”

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Want to learn more about ancient Celtic rituals and superstitions? Check out:

Samhain in Your Pocket

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