In the programme Desert Island Discs, currently run by Sue Lawley on BBC, the guest is asked what book he or she would take to this mythic island - the Bible and Shakespeare being already provided. A try-out among friends brought much hesitation and erumming. One person answered immediately: The Festival of Lughnasa by Maire MacNeill. And on the threshold of Lughnasa, what could be more appropriate?
The other day a man from Kells, Co Meath, was wondering if the ceremony at St Ciaran's Well was still celebrated on the first Sunday in August. MacNeill tells us that Sir William Wilde thought it perhaps the most beautiful holy well in Ireland. There are the remains of an ecclesiastical site and the waters are said to have curative powers, especially for toothache and headache. "Three trout," writes MacNeill, "are to be seen at the well at the hour of midnight, ushering in the first Sunday in August - they remain for a few minutes and are not seen at any other time of the year." This year, owing to The Match, there will be only the religious ceremony, and none of the exuberance of a fullscale pattern.
The author, too, tells us that many of our feasts and festivals have been observed in England and in France. In Roman Gaul a festival was celebrated on the first of August at Lugudunum, the modern Lyon; said to be in honour of Emperor Augustus, but French Celticists think it may have been substituted for a Gaullish festival in honour of the god Lugh. Lugh's name surfaces in other towns in Celtic regions: Laon, Loudun, Leiden. And it's likely that Lughnasa was celebrated in all. The reach of the book is so wide, and yet it is such easy reading, for story after story illustrates the festival now approaching, with many diversions, and anecdote after anecdote covering, it seems, every parish in the country.
There are the open-air assemblies on heights, at riversides, at lakes. And in a horsey country, it's not surprising that they were put to work - in this case in swimming competitions. Naked young men icing into the water on Galway Bay. There is a brutal horse and rider contest leading to death of one horse and rider in Lough Owel, Mullingar. Fairies, feasts, and anecdotes so bountiful and everything so well documented. First published in 1962, now hard to get. It's said it may be reprinted. A jewel. Y