Also called Lammas, Loaf Mass, hlāfmæsse, Lughnasadh, first fruits
On 1 August, the first bread baked from the new wheat was blessed, and an Anglo-Saxon charm book directed that it be broken into four pieces and laid in the four corners of the barn to protect the stored grain.
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Take care: Mind hot ovens and pans. Do not leave bread in corners for long, or it will attract mice and mould, which defeats the purpose.
A book of Anglo-Saxon charms instructs that the Lammas bread be broken into four and placed at the four corners of the barn to protect the grain. Eleanor Parker discusses a related fragment recommending crumbs of blessed bread against mice, with a cross and the Lord's Prayer at the barn entrance.
Many parishes revived Lammas with a loaf baked by the congregation from local flour. Common Worship allows the Lammas loaf, or part of it, to be used as the bread of the Eucharist, and smaller blessed loaves or buns may be handed out.
The Gaelic harvest festival on the same date was kept with hilltop gatherings, first potatoes and bilberry picking. Máire MacNeill's study traced its customs across Ireland. Modern Pagans often merge Lammas and Lughnasadh into one sabbat of first fruits.
The name Lammas comes from Old English hlāfmæsse, loaf mass. In Anglo-Saxon England 1 August was the feast of first fruits and is mentioned often in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It was probably the day loaves made from the first wheat were blessed in church. Ronald Hutton suggests a pre-Christian harvest festival may have stood behind it, while Máire MacNeill argued the English took the date from the Celtic Britons' Lughnasadh.
Lammas was also a legal quarter day in Scotland and a date when common lands opened for grazing. The church blessing faded after the Reformation and was revived by Anglican parishes in the 20th century. Modern Pagans adopted Lammas as one of the eight sabbats of the Wheel of the Year, usually as a celebration of the first grain harvest and of sacrifice and abundance.
A loaf and a little salt carried into a new home or offered at its door, so the household will never go hungry and life there will keep its savour.
An Old English sung charm that names nine herbs and calls on their power against poison, infection and flying venom. It is folk tradition and history, not medical care: for any illness or wound, see a doctor.
The folk rites of the end of harvest: the last sheaf cut and woven into a corn dolly or neck, carried home with shouting, and kept until spring, followed by the harvest supper. Mabon is a modern Pagan name for the autumn equinox, coined around 1970.
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