The First Harvest

Lughnasadh, Lammas, harvest time, what resonates with you?

Since I was little, I’ve always thought in colours and to me August will always feel golden. Spring brings the buttery yellow of wild primroses. Summer shines with the deep yellow of sunflower petals. The first harvest begins with golden fields of corn and the beautiful tones that lead us toward autumn are a paint palette of burnt orange, terra cotta, red brick, merlot, mahogany, coffee, maple and chocolate. Colours rich and warm swirl in my mind, a sensory journey through the harvest season. The heat of the sun on my face as I run my fingers through tickly tips of corn, the smooth surface of pumpkins, their twirly stalks still connected to the plant and the warmth in my hands, cupping my first mug of maple spiced coffee on a cold autumn morning. This is what Lammas feels like to me; the beginning, a new chapter, the first harvest and my first steps on a golden path from summer to autumn. It’s as if everything inside me adjusts imperceptibly, a slight redirection, preparing for a transition, in mood, in mindset, a spiritual realignment. The first of August brings a liminal moment in time, full of promise and possibility.

I’m not the only person to feel this way, and although there’s some debate around festivals, names, lineage and historical evidence, this moment in time has been important to both the generations of ancestors that came before me and the land under my feet. Regardless of whether you call it haymaking season, Lughnasadh or Lammas, now is the time for harvesting and preserving as much grain as possible to see us all through the winter. Many of us feel disconnected from this important shift in the seasons, before I moved out of London I wasn’t even aware of it, let alone feel it. Now that I live near the countryside I can see the hay bales, standing proud like sentinels overlooking golden fields. I can see excitement light up my little boy’s face as he spots a big green tractor. We can hear the hum of combine harvesters as we navigate winding country lanes, lost without a sat-nav signal as we try to find the next adventure on our summer holiday bucket list.

You may (or may not) have heard the word Lammas, which is the modern neopagan name used for the first harvest on the seasonal wheel of the year. Its etymology roots from the Anglo-Saxon word for bread, which has evolved into our word loaf, and the suffix refers to a Christian blessing, loaf-mass.

Lughnasadh is an old Irish word connecting Lugh, the Celtic god of skills and craftsmanship with nasad, relating to death or funeral games. Modern neopagan interpretations tell of Lugh sacrificing himself with the cutting of the corn so that his people may live on the grain to survive the winter. However, this is a tenuous and rather contentious link and the modern representation of the spirit of the corn is more an amalgamation or syncretisation of the Celtic Lugh and the English John Barleycorn.

Lugh is a god within the Irish pantheon known as the Tuatha Dé Danann and one of the high kings of Ireland. Given that Lugh is such a prominent figure in Irish mythology, it would be a disservice to condense his stories here, so instead I’ll stay on point. The link lies in Lugh’s foster mother Tailtiu, who dies of exhaustion after clearing the forests of Ireland to provide agriculture for the people. In her honour Lugh institutes the festival of Lughnasadh as a funeral tribute.

John Barleycorn is an old english folksong, anthropomorphising the barley harvest. It’s a rather brutal tale of John Barleycorn being buried alive, resurrected, cut down at the knee, beaten, burned and having his bones ground between stones. A horrific tale if true of a man’s demise, or the successful harvest of an ear of barley. The earliest written version dates back to the early 1600’s, recorded during the reign of King James l. The ballad was immortalised by Robert Burns who interwove fragments of the song into his poem of the same name.

If you’re interested in a more thorough deep dive of the festival, I’d recommend the two-part Lughnasadh special on the Folkways podcast.

The festival (using whichever name resonates for you) can be celebrated by baking bread, feasting, foraging and enjoying a sense of community. I find this looks different every year (depending on weather and toddler mood swings) and today I was enjoying sugared donuts with my family at a country fair, soaking up the sunshine and feeling blessed to be alive.

If you enjoyed this post, stay tuned for the upcoming episode of my podcast Rooted by Nature. I’ll take you along as I explore the folklore of blackberries, reveal the dark and dirty side of Sleeping Beauty and share my discovery of some numerical magic that blew my mind.