Lammas (from

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

''hlāfmæsse'', "loaf-mass"), also known as Loaf Mass Day, is a Christian

holiday A holiday is a day or other period of time set aside for festivals or recreation. ''Public holidays'' are set by public authorities and vary by state or region. Religious holidays are set by religious organisations for their members and are often ...

celebrated in some English-speaking countries on 1 August. The name originates from the word "loaf" in reference to bread and "

Mass Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...

" in reference to the

Eucharist The Eucharist ( ; from , ), also called Holy Communion, the Blessed Sacrament or the Lord's Supper, is a Christianity, Christian Rite (Christianity), rite, considered a sacrament in most churches and an Ordinance (Christianity), ordinance in ...

. It is a

festival A festival is an event celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, Melā, mela, or Muslim holidays, eid. A ...

in the

liturgical calendar The liturgical year, also called the church year, Christian year, ecclesiastical calendar, or kalendar, consists of the cycle of liturgical days and seasons that determines when feast days, including celebrations of saints, are to be obs ...

to mark the blessing of the First Fruits of harvest, with a loaf of bread being brought to the church for this purpose. Lammastide falls at the halfway point between the

summer solstice The summer solstice or estival solstice occurs when one of Earth's poles has its maximum tilt toward the Sun. It happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere ( Northern and Southern). The summer solstice is the day with the longest peri ...

and the autumn equinox. Christians also have church processions to bakeries, where those working therein are blessed by Christian clergy. While Lammas is traditionally a Christian holy day, some neopagans have adopted the name and date for one of their harvest festivals in their

Wheel of the Year The Wheel of the Year is an annual cycle of seasonal festivals, observed by a range of Modern paganism, modern pagans, marking the year's chief solar events (solstices and equinoxes) and the midpoints between them. Modern pagan observances are ...

. It is also the same date as the Gaelic harvest festival Lughnasadh.

Name

The name 'Lammas' comes from

meaning " loaf

mass Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...

". Several antiquarians suggested that the name 'Lammas' came from ' lamb mass'. John Brady supposed that tenants of the Cathedral of York, dedicated to St Peter in Chains, of which this is the feast, were required to bring a live lamb to the church. Another name for the feast in the Middle Ages was the 'Gule of August'. It has been suggested, following the 18th-century Welsh clerical antiquary John Pettingall, that this is an

anglicisation Anglicisation or anglicization is a form of cultural assimilation whereby something non-English becomes assimilated into or influenced by the culture of England. It can be sociocultural, in which a non-English place adopts the English language ...

of ', Welsh for "feast of August".

History

In Christianity, the offering of first fruits to God has a history, as in the

Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

, "when the harvest ripened the priest went into the field and gathered a sheaf of first-ripened grain. Then he took that sheaf into the temple and waved it before the Lord." The Didache of the early Church enjoined firstfruits be given of "money, clothes, and all of your possessions" (13:7). In

Anglo-Saxon England Anglo-Saxon England or early medieval England covers the period from the end of Roman Empire, Roman imperial rule in Roman Britain, Britain in the 5th century until the Norman Conquest in 1066. Compared to modern England, the territory of the ...

Lammas was the name for the first day of August and was described in Old English literature as "the feast of first fruits", being mentioned often in the ''

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' is a collection of annals in Old English, chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the ''Chronicle'' was created late in the ninth century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of ...

''. It was probably the day when loaves baked from the first of the wheat harvest were blessed at church. The loaves might then have been used in protective rituals: Homans, George (1961). ''English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century'', 2nd ed. 1991. p.371. a book of Anglo-Saxon charms directed that the Lammas loaf be broken into four parts, which were to be placed at the four corners of the barn, to protect the grain. For many

villein A villein is a class of serfdom, serf tied to the land under the feudal system. As part of the contract with the lord of the manor, they were expected to spend some of their time working on the lord's fields in return for land. Villeins existe ...

s, the wheat must have run low in the days before Lammas, and the new harvest began a season of plenty, of hard work and company in the fields, reaping in teams. In the medieval agricultural year, Lammas also marked the end of the hay harvest that had begun after

Midsummer Midsummer is a celebration of the season of summer, taking place on or near the date of the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere; the longest Daytime, day of the year. The name "midsummer" mainly refers to summer solstice festivals of Eu ...

. At the end of hay-making a sheep would be loosed in the meadow among the mowers, for him to keep who could catch it. Historian Ronald Hutton writes "the time that the first of the harvest could be gathered would have been a natural point for celebration in an agrarian society". He says it is likely "that a pre-Christian festival had existed among the Anglo-Saxons on that date". Folklorist

Máire MacNeill Máire MacNeill (7 December 1904 – 15 May 1987) was an Ireland, Irish journalist, folklorist and translator. She is best known for her magisterial study of the Irish harvest festival, ''The Festival of Lughnasa'' (1962, 1983). Biography ...

linked Lammas with the Insular Celtic harvest festival Lughnasadh, held on the same date, and suggested the Anglo-Saxons adopted it from the Celtic Britons. She highlighted the apparent lack of a Continental Germanic festival on 1 August, and the apparent borrowing of the Welsh name ''Gŵyl Awst'', 'Gule of August'. However, Hutton says that "MacNeill's thesis of a pan-Celtic seasonal ritual, like her reconstruction of pagan rites, is so far un-proven" and to prove it "would involve a detailed knowledge of the religious calendar of the Anglo-Saxons before they arrived in England, which is impossible". Lammas Day was one of the traditional Scottish quarter days before 1886. Lammas also coincided with the feast of St Peter in Chains, commemorating Saint Peter's miraculous deliverance from prison, but in the liturgical reform of 1969 the feast of St Alphonsus Liguori was transferred to this day. Ann Lewin explains the Christian feast of Lammas (Loaf Mass Day) and its importance in the

liturgical year The liturgical year, also called the church year, Christian year, ecclesiastical calendar, or kalendar, consists of the cycle of liturgical days and seasons that determines when feast days, including celebrations of saints, are to be obse ...

: Today, in the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion#State churches, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the mother church of the Anglicanism, Anglican Christian tradition, ...

, the mother church of the Anglican Communion, during the celebration of Holy Communion, "The Lammas loaf, or part of it, may be used as the bread of the Eucharist, or the Lammas loaf and the eucharistic bread may be kept separate." '' Common Worship'' specifies: Christians also have church processions to bakeries, where those working therein are blessed by Christian clergy. In

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

's ''

Romeo and Juliet ''The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet'', often shortened to ''Romeo and Juliet'', is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare about the romance between two young Italians from feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's ...

'' (1.3.19) it is observed of Juliet, "Come Lammas Eve at night shall she ulietbe fourteen." Another well-known cultural reference is the opening of '' The Battle of Otterburn'': "It fell about the Lammas tide when the muir-men win their hay."

Other uses

Neopaganism

Some neopagans have adopted the name and date of Lammas, making it one of the harvest festivals in their

. Other neopagans use the Gaelic name '' Lughnasa''. It is the first of the three autumn festivals, the others being the autumn equinox and

Samhain Samhain ( , , , ) or () is a Gaels, Gaelic festival on 1 November marking the end of the harvest season and beginning of winter or the "Celtic calendar#Medieval Irish and Welsh calendars, darker half" of the year.Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, Ó hÓ ...

. In the Northern Hemisphere it takes place around 1 August, while in the Southern Hemisphere it is celebrated around 1 February.

Horticulture

''Lammas leaves'' or '' Lammas growth'' refers to a second crop of leaves produced in high summer by some species of trees in temperate countries to replace those lost to insect damage. They often differ slightly in shape, texture and/or hairiness from the earlier leaves.

Exeter Exeter ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and the county town of Devon in South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter w ...

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

is one of the few towns in England that still celebrates its Lammas Fair and has a processional custom which stretches back over 900 years, led by the Lord Mayor. During the fair a white glove on a pole decorated with garlands is raised above the

Guildhall A guildhall, also known as a guild hall or guild house, is a historical building originally used for tax collecting by municipalities or merchants in Europe, with many surviving today in Great Britain and the Low Countries. These buildings commo ...

. The fair now takes place on the first Thursday in July. A low-impact development project at Tir y Gafel, Glandwr, Pembrokeshire, Lammas Ecovillage, is a collective initiative for nine self-built homes. It was the first such project to obtain planning permission based on a predecessor of what is now the sixth national planning guidance for sustainable rural communities originally proposed by the One Planet Council.

In popular culture

* In the ''

Inspector Morse Endeavour Morse, GM, is the namesake character of the series of "Morse" detective novels by British author Colin Dexter, a Detective Chief Inspector in the Thames Valley Police in Oxford, England. On television he was portrayed by John ...

'' episode "Day of the Devil", Lammas Day is presented as a Satanic (un)holy day, "the Devil's day". * Lammas is a prominent plot point in the novel, '' Lammas Night'' (1983) by Katherine Kurtz.

References

External links

Lammastide
- The Church of England
The God in the Bread: A Sermon for Lammas
- Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America
Lammas-tide by Leigh Hatts - Walking the Pilgrims' Way

{{Wheel of the Year Christian festivals in Europe Christian processions August observances Holidays in Scotland Scottish quarter days February observances Summer holidays Summer solstice Autumn equinox cy:Gŵyl Galan Awst