Meán Fómhair: September in the Irish Year

As September arrives, its Irish name places you exactly in the year: Meán Fómhair, “the middle of the harvest”. A look at the Irish September — its name, Michaelmas and the turn of autumn.

As August slips away and the mornings turn cool, the Irish name for the new month tells you exactly where you stand in the year. September is Meán Fómhair — literally "the middle of the harvest." Where English borrows a Roman number that no longer fits (septem, "seven"), Irish names the month for what is actually happening in the fields: the harvest is in full swing, and we are right in the heart of it.

A month named by the harvest

Irish is unusually honest about autumn. The word fómhar means both harvest and autumn — the two are the same thing — and two of the autumn months are named by where they fall in the gathering-in:

• Meán Fómhair — September — the middle of the harvest
• Deireadh Fómhair — October — the end of the harvest

So the calendar itself is a farming record. (There's more on how the whole Irish year is built this way in The Irish Calendar.)

The heart of autumn

In the traditional Irish reckoning of the seasons, autumn — fómhar — doesn't begin at the equinox as it does on the modern calendar. It begins six weeks earlier, at Lúnasa on the first of August, the old festival that opens the harvest. That makes September the true middle month of autumn: the corn cut, the first fruits gathered, the light noticeably shorter each evening. (See Lúnasa for where the season starts.)

Michaelmas — the harvest's deadline

The great marker of the Irish September is Michaelmas, Lá Fhéile Mhichíl, the feast of Saint Michael on 29 September. Traditionally it was the day by which the harvest ought to be safely in, rents were paid and accounts settled, and a Michaelmas goose — fattened on the stubble of the cut fields — was eaten for luck and prosperity in the year ahead.

It also marks the close of the wild harvest. Folklore holds that blackberries should not be picked after a certain point in autumn — around Michaelmas, or later at Samhain — because the púca, the mischievous Otherworld spirit, spoils them. There's good sense hidden in the superstition: by then the fruit really has begun to turn.

Turning towards the dark

September carries the autumn equinox, when day and night stand equal and the balance tips toward the dark half of the year. From here the evenings draw in quickly, the leaves — na duilleoga — begin to turn, and the year leans on towards Samhain and the start of winter. The Irish September is a hinge: the abundance of the harvest on one side, the long nights coming on the other.

A few words for the season

Fómhar maith agaibh — a good harvest to you all. Next comes Deireadh Fómhair, the end of the harvest, and the turn towards winter.