Lúnasa: The Festival of the Harvest

On 1 August, Lúnasa opens the harvest — the assembly of the god Lugh, the Tailteann games, and the hill-climbing pilgrimages that survive as Reek Sunday.

The last of the four great festivals arrives with the first of the grain. Lúnasa (pronounced LOO-nə-sə) falls on 1 August and opens fómhar, the harvest — the season of gathering in what the year has grown. Its name tells you exactly whose festival it is: Lugnasad, "the assembly of Lugh." (It completes the cycle begun at Samhain — see The Irish Calendar.)

Lugh and Tailtiu

Lugh (Lú) is one of the greatest figures of the Tuatha Dé Danann — the Samildánach, "the skilled in all arts," master of every craft at once, and wielder of a spear that never missed. But Lúnasa isn't a festival of his triumph; it's a festival of his grief. Lugh founded it, the story goes, as funeral games in memory of his foster-mother Tailtiu, the queen who cleared the forests of Ireland to make the plains fit for farming and died of the effort. The first harvest is her gift, and the festival her memorial.

The great assembly

Those funeral games became the Óenach Tailten — the Tailteann Games, held at Teltown in County Meath. For centuries this was one of the largest gatherings in Ireland: athletic contests and horse racing, trading and treaty-making, the settling of disputes and the proclaiming of laws. It even had its own marriages — the famous "Tailteann marriages," trial unions that lasted a year and a day and could be dissolved, without blame, at the next festival.

To the hills for the harvest

Across the country Lúnasa was marked by climbing the high places. Communities walked up their local hill or mountain to pick the first bilberries (fraocháin) and welcome the harvest — a custom that gave the day names like Fraughan Sunday and Garland Sunday. The greatest survival of this is Reek Sunday, when thousands still climb Croagh Patrick (Cruach Phádraig) in County Mayo on the last Sunday of July — an ancient Lúnasa pilgrimage wearing a Christian cloak.

The harvest fairs of Lúnasa live on too. The most extraordinary is Puck Fair in Killorglin, County Kerry — one of Ireland's oldest fairs, where a wild mountain goat is caught and crowned "King Puck" over three days of celebration each August.

A few words for the season

Lúnasa completes the four festivals of the Celtic year — after Samhain, Imbolc and Bealtaine — and with it the wheel turns back towards Samhain and the dark half of the year.