Episode 12: When Do You Cut the Corn? 

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This episode takes on Lúnasa, the festival that opens the Irish harvest at the start of August, and the old ethic of the first of the crop. Drawing on Kevin Danaher's The Year in Ireland and Máire MacNeill's The Festival of Lughnasa, it covers the rule against cutting the corn too soon, the hill gatherings and bilberry picking, and the great fair assemblies at sites like Tailtiu. The real cost of plenty, and what the harvest actually asked of people, sits underneath the whole of it.

This Episode's Practice: The First of the Harvest

Find the first of something genuinely coming to you now, at this turn of the year. If you grow anything at all, even a pot of herbs on a sill, take the first cutting of it. If you do not, take the first of the season's fruit from the market, the first blackberries off a bramble, or the first of any harvest that is yours, and that can be the first money from a piece of work you have finished as much as anything that grows.

Set that first portion apart from the rest, on its own in your hands or on a plate. Say plainly what it is, and that it is the first of this harvest. Give a small piece of it away before you take any for yourself, out onto the ground outside or set aside for someone else, the first going out from you rather than into you. Only then take your own share and eat or use it, knowing the harvest is properly opened. Close with Beir Bua (pronounced: BARE BOO-ah). Keep it honest: the first portion has to be a real first and a real giving, something you would have wanted for yourself.

Irish Terms in This Episode

Lúnasa (LOO-nuh-suh): the first day of autumn and the start of the harvest, 1 August; one of the four great festivals.

fraochán (FREE-khawn), plural fraocháin: the bilberry or whortleberry, gathered on the hills at Lúnasa.

óenach (AY-nakh): a fair or assembly; the great Lúnasa gatherings such as Tailtiu and Carman.

Domhnach Chrom Dubh (DOW-nakh khrom DUV): Crom Dubh's Sunday, one of the local names for the Lúnasa Sunday.

Tailtiu (TAL-tyoo): the assembly site at Teltown, County Meath, and the name of the foster mother of Lugh.

Beir Bua (BARE BOO-ah): take victory; the closing phrase of the practice.

Sources

• Kevin Danaher, The Year in Ireland (Cork: Mercier Press, 1972), the first of the harvest, Garland Sunday, and the Tailtiu assembly.
• Máire MacNeill, The Festival of Lughnasa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), the hill gatherings and bilberry picking (via Danaher).
• The Metrical Dindshenchas, ed. and trans. E. Gwynn, on the Fair of Carman (via Danaher).

Living Irish Witchcraft is hosted by Rev. Lora O'Brien, MA. Find more at irishpaganschool.ie