Crying at Lughnasadh

Happy Lughnasadh! 

In pre-Christian Britain, Lughnasadh or Lughnasa (pronounced 'luna-sa') was one of the four main festivals - along with Samhain, Imbolc and Beltane. They were widely observed throughout the UK and very much tied to the seasons. Each represents a 'quarter year' in the pre-Gregorian calendar.

Lughnasadh marks the beginning of the harvest season and traditionally falls on the first day of August - about halfway between the summer solstice and autumn equinox. It's also sometimes called Lammas because it was absorbed into the Christian calendar as 'loaf mass'.

It's a time of year that I always look forward to. Yes, of course I love watching the harvesters at work - who doesn't? But there are also fond memories of my Cornish childhood and of a peculiar ceremony called 'Crying the Neck'. 

The Cornish harvest festival is known as Guldize and Crying the Neck is the start of festivities. It involves a prominent person cutting the very last 'neck' of corn with a sickle and declaring the harvest finished. They then hold it up, shouting: 

'I 'ave 'un! I 'ave 'un! I 'ave 'un!' 

The witnesses then shout, 'What 'ave 'ee? What 'ave 'ee? What 'ave 'ee?' 

'A neck! A neck! A neck!' shouts the cutter.

After this, there's a great deal of cheering and shouting as the farm workers and guests from the community then head off for a well-earned feast and an evening of celebration. 

Today the ceremony is still enacted annually by The Old Cornwall Society and is performed in the Cornish language: 

'Yma genef! Yma genef! Yma genef!' 

'Pandr’us genes? Pandr’us genes? Pandr’us genes?' 

'Pen Yar! Pen Yar! Pen Yar!' 

Here's the late Richard Jenkin, Cornish Grand Bard and co-founder of the Cornish Nationalist Party Mebyon Kernow (and also my old chemistry teacher) Crying the Neck sometime in the 1970s.

The neck is hung in the farmhouse throughout Autumn and Winter - often being formed into a corn dolly - and is then ploughed back into the soil when seeding the fields with the new crop. In this respect it mirrors many other British harvest traditions where the 'spirit' of the wheat or corn or barley is captured in the last sheaf and then returned to the field in the Spring.

I've collected a few corn dollies over the years but this one is my favourite I think.

One custom that Lughnasadh shares with Imbolc, Samhain and Beltane is visiting holy wells (I visited a couple in this blog post here). Visitors pray for health while walking clockwise around the well. Then they leave offerings, typically coins or clooties (cloth rags).

Wiccans see Lughnasadh as a most auspicious time for handfasting - an unofficiated wedding ceremony. It can also mean an engagement or a temporary wedding (in which a couple makes an intentionally temporary marriage commitment). 

So Lughnasadh blessings to you all! 

Hoof and horn, hoof and horn, 

All that dies shall be reborn. 

Corn and grain, corn and grain, 

All that falls shall rise again.

Oh, and I'll be covering the origins and tradition of Harvest Festival very soon. It's probably a more interesting subject than you think it is. For a start it involves an eccentric vicar who liked to dress up as a mermaid ...

Watch this space.

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Afterword

After this post went live someone asked me on Facebook why the academic year starts on August 1st - is it related to Lughnasadh? Yes it is. Sort of.

The farming calendar predates schools. So when schooling arrived it had to fit around the existing annual schedule of ploughing, sowing, harvest etc. Families needed their children at home to help at these important times. So kids didn't start going to school until September, once the harvest had been gathered in. And as Lughnasadh/Lammas already existed as the start date for one of the four 'quarter years', it was a logical existing start point for an academic semester. I believe the long six week holiday at this time of year was also created for the same reason - to allow for the harvest.