Deireadh Fómhair: October in the Irish Year

October is Deireadh Fómhair in Irish, the end of the harvest. Here is the Irish October: the last of the gathering in, the clocks going back, the geese arriving from the Arctic, and a month that runs out on Oíche Shamhna.

The last of the three autumn months arrived this morning, and the Irish name tells you exactly where you stand: Deireadh Fómhair, the end of the harvest. September was the middle of it. October closes it out.

The month that finishes the work

The word fómhar carries both meanings at once, harvest and autumn, so two of the three autumn months are named for the stage the gathering has reached:

• Meán Fómhair (September): the middle of the harvest
• Deireadh Fómhair (October): the end of the harvest

It is a working name for a working month. Traditionally this was when the last of it came in: the potatoes lifted, the apples and the nuts gathered, the turf home, the animals brought down off the hill before the weather turned. By the end of it, the year's food was in and the fields were bare. (There's more on how the whole Irish year is built this way in The Irish Calendar, and on the month before this one in Meán Fómhair.)

The year tips into the dark

October is when the dark arrives all at once rather than by degrees.

On Sunday 25 October the clocks go back, and teatime is suddenly in the dark. The October bank holiday falls on Monday 26 October, and the schools take their mid-term break around it, which is why Halloween in Ireland feels like a week rather than a night.

Then the month runs out on 31 October, Oíche Shamhna. In the old reckoning the year itself ends there: winter opens at Samhain on the first of November, so October is the last month of the old year and the harvest is its closing act. (Samhain has the festival itself: the bonfires, the turnip lanterns and the door left ajar to the Otherworld.)

What to look for outside

The swallows have gone. The fáinleoga that filled the eaves all summer left through September, heading for Africa.

The geese are arriving. October brings the winter birds in off the Atlantic: barnacle geese from Greenland onto the islands and headlands of the north and west, and brent geese into the estuaries and mudflats. The Greenland white-fronted geese come back to the Wexford Slobs, where a sizeable share of the world's population winters every year. The sound of geese overhead is the sound of the Irish October.

The trees are turning. The crann becomes the best-dressed thing in the hedge: caorthann (rowan) heavy with red berries, sceach gheal (hawthorn) in haws, coll (hazel) dropping its nuts, dair (oak) letting go its acorns. If you want the names, they are all on the new Crainn agus Plandaí study sheet, with a pronunciation guide.

The blackberries are nearly done. The old advice is to leave them once Samhain has passed, because the púca spoils them. As with most Irish weather lore, the superstition is hiding good sense: by November the fruit really has gone over.

A night at the end of the road

The whole month leans towards its last night. The báirín breac comes out with the ring hidden in it, the colcannon gets its charms, and the children go out in whatever they can put together. It is worth remembering that none of this came from America: the Irish sent it over, and got it back with a pumpkin instead of a turnip.

A few words for the month

Slán leis an bhfómhar, agus fáilte roimh an ngeimhreadh. Goodbye to the harvest, and welcome to the winter.