Lugh is a familiar figure to anyone who touches a page of Irish literature. His name and fame are scattered throughout the Irish Cycles. Among his titles are Samh-ildánach (Many-Skilled One), Lámhfhada (Long-Arm), Lonnbeimnech, and Macnia (Young Hero). In his archetype as Young Hero, he led the Tuatha De Danaan in battle against the Fomorians in the legendary Second Battle of Mag Tuireadh. The mythical confrontation in which Lugh slays his own grandfather, the monstrous one-eyed Fomorian chief, Balor, symbolically represents a fight between two gods, the old overthown by the new. Lugh is best known for his proclamation of the harvest fair and games in tribute to his foster-mother Tailtiu. Lughnasadh celebrations are still observed to this day.

Lugh's opponent and likely his counterpart as well, Crom Dubh, may be less familiar although he is known throughout Ireland, especially in Connacht and Munster. In fact, Crom was probably the main deity before the advent of St Patrick. Even as recently as the last century, he was spoken of in Munster as "the god of harvest" who comes around each year halfway between Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox, on Lughnasadh. This festival is observed either on August 1 or the first Sunday in August.

In Máire Mac Neill's definitive book "The Festival of Lughnasa" (Oxford 1962) she describes Crom Dubh as "a pagan deity" whose name means "the dark, bent one". He is also known to be "a hill dweller, owner of a bull and of a granary, corn bringer, cultivator, feast giver, ruler of the elements, owner of a baleful light, a possessor and a conserver of his possessions."

Lugh, on the other hand, is "a newcomer, a traveller, clever, with superior power or skill, able to enlist the help of a giant, owner of a marvellous horse, a dispossessor and annexer of other's goods for his followers, a winner of meat and corn. The victory (of their annual Lughnasadh battle) involves dispossession, a transfer of goods and the confinement of the defeated in a narrow place."

In Co Limerick, Lughnasadh is Black Stoop Sunday because Crom stoops under the burden he brings out from the Otherworld each year, the first and most sacred gift, the great sheaf of wheat. The reason for the nickname Black or Dark is because he spends a season underground looking for the wheat. Another reason given for the "dubh" (dark) is because he is burned as he falls (in sacrificial bull form) through the fire and smoke of the Samhain blazes into the underworld of Winter.

In Munster and Connacht folklore, Crom Dubh's bull was immortal. Even St Patrick couldn't do away with him. One tale tells of Patrick killing and eating the bull, then ordering the bones thrown into the hide to be disposed of, and immediately the bull took form again to come back to life. It appears that Crom Dubh and his bull were interchangeable. Around Galway Bay at Samhain it is traditional to skin and roast a bull in honour of Crom Dubh. It is easy to how see this custom, symbolically partaking of Crom Dubh's roast beef at Samhain, runs parallel with feasting on the "Lammas loaf" of Eithne, CromDubh's consort.

In some of the old legends, Crom carries the maiden Eithne out of the Underworld on his shoulders. Sometimes Eithne is portrayed as his fairy mistress, and Lugh fights him in an attempt to take Eithne instead of the sheaf of grain, which shows that they are probably one and the same. The word "eithne" means kernal or grain. It is also interesting to note that the word "eitre" means furrow. By this, we see Eithne as both furrow and seed, a maiden fertility goddess.

Crom Dubh is obviously yet another face of the many-named preCeltic food-providing gods, such as the Dagda, Elcmar, Balor and Midir. All of these figures engaged in mythical combat with a Lugh-Finn archetype, dark against light at the turning of the agricultural season. Along with all the other burdens Crom Dubh carries, he hauls out from under the holy hills (those same hills that house the banished Tuatha de Danaan) a complete treasure trove of life-giving neolithic elements. One of his nicknames is "Suicin" which is likely a diminuative of "soc", a ploughshare. He brings with him to the feast the first plough, a bull, grain and a granary, and a keen awareness of the weather.

Michael Dames presents an interesting idea in his book "Mythical Ireland." He comments that after the neolithic era Crom Dubh carried more than just the first great sheaf of wheat. His burden is transformed through history with the evolution of bronze-working, the social rise of Iron Age warriors, and finally the clash with Christian saints. Born from the very roots of Irish culture, as time marched on his stooping form was laden with a succession of weighty issues under which he was expected, like his alter ego the bull-ox, to simply carry on, even enduring the degradations heaped upon him by his final symbolic foes, the Irish saints.

There are several sites in Ireland where the August 1 pilgrimage and offering predates Christianity. All of these sites have in common a ceremony involving a bull's hide and a ritual conflict symbolic of the struggle between Lugh and Crom Dubh. It isn't surprising that two of the major Lughnasadh pilgrimage sites are in the highest mountains of the west coast of Ireland, the farthest edge of the Celtic realm to catch the last rays of summer sunset.

At Sliabh Bhreandáin (Mount Brandon) on the Dingle Peninsula, County Kerry, there is still an annual dance-play that centers around a head set in place on the hill top and ends with the acting out of Lugh's victory over Crom Dubh. After Christianity arrived, St Brendan was substituted for Lugh and the play ends now with the conversion of Crom Dubh to the new religion. There was a stone head of Crom Dubh enshrined in the ruined wall of a medieval church near Mt. Brandon that had been there for longer than anyone could remember. Supposedly St. Brendan himself put it there. It was stolen in 1993, but as part of the 1999 Féile Lughnasa, a replica created by a resident of Brandon replaced the ancient artifact. Click here to see some photos of Sliabh Bhreandáin area and more history.


Croagh Patrick in County Mayo is also known as The Reek or Cruachan Aigle (Perhaps from "aige" the act of celebrating festivals). Today many call it "the holiest mountain in Ireland". So many thousands of pilgrims, some of them barefoot, have made the annual climb on the last weekend of July, that there is a path worn into the terrain. This pilgrimage converts the Pagan first-fruits festival still known as the Friday of Crom Dubh into a Sunday mass on the summit.

Until the mid 1800's only women went up on the mountain. The Rev James Page wrote "None but those that are barren go there, and the abominable practices that are committed there ought to make human nature in its most degraded form blush." Philip Dixon said that some go up on Lughnasadh Eve to sleep in the "bed" of the goddess on the peak, hoping to participate somehow in a sacred birth process and so become fertile. The first cairn along the path of the climb, a stopping place where prayers are said, is called "The Bed Of My Benen" (Leacht mo Bhionnaian), after a boy who was among the first to follow St Patrick. This may have originally been the bed of another child, birthed by the old, nearly forgotten mother goddess at Lughnasadh. Folklore tells of the struggle of St Patrick to overthrow the harvest god Crom Dubh as well as an ancient mother goddess who lived at the top of the Reek. During his battle with the goddess he faced her either in the form of a great bird, Corra, or a monster serpent who was assumed to be "the devil's mother." According to the Christian lore, Patrick drove her off the mountain - but she escaped to Lough Derg, Co Donegal, where they would later meet again at St Patrick's "purgatory lake."

Click here for short article & photo)

see also:
http://www.museumsofmayo.com/croaghpatrick.htm
http://www.explore.ie/ireland/article.php?ID=185
http://www.monasette.com/blog/gallery/croaghpatrick/

Here are some excerpts from W.M.Thackery's "Irish Sketchbook of 1843" (p.104) that tell of the pagan aspects of Lughnasadh still going strong at Croagh Patrick. Thackery writes that after the mass on the mountaintop, the people descended to dancing and lovemaking at its foot. According to his account, fifty tents were set up around "a plain of the most brilliant green grass" where they sold "great coarse damp looking bannocks of bread...a collection of pigs feet...huge biscuits, and doubtful looking ginger beer. There were also cauldrons containing water for 'tay' with other pots full of pale legs of mutton...the road home was pleasant; everybody was wet through, but everybody was happy."

As a footnote to this journal entry, please see today's news report from RTÉ!

Sources:

Journal of Royal Society of Antiquities, Ireland

Folklore of Ireland, S. O'Sullivan, London 1974

Mythic Ireland, M. Dames, Thames & Hudson 1992

The Festival of Lughnasadh, M. MacNeill, Oxford 1962

Blodeuwedd is a mythical figure that is open to a lot of different interpretations. The reading I gave in "Ochfochloch for Blodeuwedd" is a decidedly feminist viewpoint. I wanted to express something of what Blodeuwedd herself might have felt about her situation as well as hoping to strike a familiar chord in the hearts of any women who feel an empathy with her in the aspect I've portrayed. I decided to put the quote from the novel "The Owl Service" with the poem because it also relates to Blodeuwedd's hauntingly sad end. I invite whoever reads this to leave me a message and share their thoughts on the Blodeuwedd myth, the poem, or any related reflections.

Ochfochlach for Blodeuwedd


"She wants to be flowers but you make her owls." The Owl Service by Alan Garner

Conjured, created, blessed and cursed,
Not woman, not flower, fantasy first,
Man-made beauty, wizard-nursed,
Alive! with loving heart.
Given in marriage, heart untold,
Wedded but willful, heart so bold,
Punished and banished, heart of gold.
White wings unfold, dark Art!