Lá Lúnasa 2011

Ah, finally have some time to write up about my Lúnasa festivities. More than any other festival (save Oíche Shamhna that is), Lúnasa is my most lengthy celebration. I'm a child of autumn and so I bask in all the turn of the season has to offer for as long as I can. Can I just praise the weather a bit here? A couple of days this month have given us a sneak peak at October's glorious weather and I couldn't be happier. We are in such a time now. Hurricane Irene has given us here in the southeast some breezy and extremely less humid air. I am loving it! Even if it's just a tease of autumn. But back to Lúnasa...

Lá Lúnasa sona daoibh go léir!

by OeilDeNuit

Lugnassad, luaid a hada

cecha bliadna ceinmara,

fromad cech toraid co m-blaid,

biad lusraid la Lugnasaid.

Lughnasa, its dues for telling:

In every distant year,

a taste of every fruit with flame,

a meal of vegetables on Lughnasa.

Lá Lúnasa is fast approaching

And so my thoughts are turning towards the harvest season ... corn is growing tall in the fields of our local farmers and we've already harvested about a cup of blackberries from my grandfather's brambles but sadly the kiddies ate them before I could get a taste. Our tomato plants are finally beginning to yield fruit and though the persimmon tree (see the photo in last post) won't be ready to harvest until early autumn, fruit is steadily growing on its branches. And not to mention all the flowers in the garden, particularly the zinnias. As soon as the heat allows, I'm going to check our wild blackberries, cherries and bilberries to see how their progress is coming along. This was our first year trying strawberries but the deer are eating most (though they are turning out rather weensy anyways)...

Aside from how the garden is progressing and all the rain we've been blessed with, I've been spending lots of time with family (Fourth of July was great, despite some drama from a certain family member who looks for every opportunity to blow things out of proportion), working and writing. One book is in second draft stage with the betas and another is the entering planning/research stage. I also submitted a 12-photo digital portfolio to Written River: A Journal of Ecopoetics and I'm pondering on sending in a few poems. So overall, things are oddly quiet and busy all at the same time.

And thus I leave you with a photo I took of the absolutely stunning sunset we had here on June 9th. Moments like these almost make me forget about the humidity ... almost ;) How's summer treating everyone else?

Lá Lúnasa 2010

(To anyone who reads via RSS, I apologize for the post that went through Sunday. I was trying to work on a draft and schedule it ... and ended up clicking publish instead before the post was even finished. *headdesk* Even after I deleted it, it was still showing up on RSS :/ So, please ignore that post as the following was what I was going for.)

Lá Lúnasa was a great success this year.

Saturday, I finished the cleaning I had started on Friday night, and baked some blueberry cream cheese pound cake (from a dear friend's recipe which you can find here), with the blueberries harvested at my grandfather's house. The blackberries were already gone, eaten by the family with some cream when Lúnasa arrived in our locale, so I had none for this celebration.

Long was the sorrow, long the weariness of Tailtiu

"Great that deed that was done with the axe's help by Tailtiu, the reclaiming of meadowland from the even wood by Tailtiu daughter of Magmor.

When the fair wood was cut down by her, roots and all, out of the ground, before the year's end it became Bregmag, it became a plain blossoming with clover. Her heart burst in her body from the strain beneath her royal vest; not wholesome, truly, is a face like the coal, for the sake of woods or pride of timber.

Long was the sorrow, long the weariness of Tailtiu, in sickness after heavy toil; the men of the island of Erin to whom she was in bondage came to receive her last behest. She told them in her sickness (feeble she was but not speechless) that they should hold funeral games to lament her - zealous the deed.

About the Calends of August she died, on a Monday, on the Lugnasad of Lug; round her grave from that Monday forth is held the chief Fair of noble Erin. White-sided Tailtiu uttered in her land a true prophecy, that so long as every prince should accept her, Erin should not be without perfect song.

A fair with gold, with silver, with games, with music of chariots, with adornment of body and of soul by means of knowledge and eloquence. A fair without wounding or robbing of any man, without trouble, without dispute, without raping, without challenge of property, without suing, without law-sessions, without evasion, without arrest.

A fair without sin, without fraud, without reproach, without insult, without contention, without seizure, without theft, without redemption: No man going into the seats of the women, nor woman into the seats of the men, shining fair, but each in due order by rank in his place in the high Fair."

— excerpted from Metrical Dindshenchas. ed and trans. Edward Gwynn. 1925. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies: 1991. (Read Online Here.)

Being in the summer season and the harvest coming on

As tomorrow will be packed with my Lúnasa celebrations and then my niece's birthday party later in the evening, I leave you with this season's greetings for now—

Lá Lúnasa Shona Dhaoibh! Moladh dhuit, a Dhéithe!

(stock.xchng)

Lugnassad, luaid a hada
cecha bliadna ceinmara,
fromad cech toraid co m-blaid,
biad lusraid la Lugnasaid.

already?

Looks like I might begin celebrating an early Lá Lúnasa this weekend as the blueberries and blackberries are ready and are currently being harvested.

PSA: oh, the lack of research hurts.

I didn't mean for my next post to be a rant and I will get around to posting about Lá Fhéile Bríde but I'm at the end of my tether with this lazy research I see in neopagan books and on websites.

Today's aggravation came up as I was was doing some research on the phrase brón trogain as referring to August/Lughnasadh. I decided to Google it and the search came up with the following as one of the results:

"I especially like the ancient name of Bron Trogain, sometimes translated as "earth sorrows under her fruits."" (Source)

*blinks* Um ... what?!

eDIL has...
Brón = 'sorrow'
Trogain (trogan) = 'earth', 'August', 'Autumn' or 'raven'/'female raven'

You can also see talk of it on OLD-IRISH-L here. It simply means 'the sorrow of the earth', and it is referred to in The Wooing of Emer as 'the beginning of autumn'.

Please tell me what this has to do with "under her fruits"? Why!? Why must some neopagans insist on twisting meanings and words to fit their goddess lore AND CALL IT ANCIENT?!

*headdesk*

I wish I could save everyone from bad research but I know it's all in vain. Just a warning to any NeoPagans who may come across my blog: never take neopagan books as gospel. Do your own research and ask questions.