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Customs, Lore and Legend of Other Clare Days:
Calendar Festivals


The history of a country is not in parliaments or battlefields, but in what people say to each other on fair days and high days, and in how they farm, and marry and go on pilgrimage.'
W.B. Yeats

Folk practices connected with festivals occupy a large space in the folklore record. Originally the festivals signified important points in the Celtic calendar such as equinoxes and changes in the seasons. At such times the protection of the gods had to be invoked. In later times it was the protection of the saints that was sought from the countless hostile forces that were capable of influencing the cycle of one's yearly activity. And so the times of ploughing, sowing, pasturing and harvesting were observed in a special way. The festivals were probably also times of merriment and relaxation from the drudgery of everyday life in a world where existence, even at the level of mere subsistence, meant incessant toil.

The first in importance in the calendar of feasts was Lughnasa, named after Lugh - Ireland's version of the Greek Achilles or the Roman Mercury. His feast was celebrated on the Sunday nearest to the first of August, a time when the crops were traditionally ripe for harvesting. Folklore preserves several accounts of a Lughnasa festival on Mount Callan which survived, at least vestigially, down to our own day in the form of the 'Garland Sunday' festivities at Lahinch and in the 'pattern' at the nearby St. Bridget's Well at Liscannor. The transfer of the Lughnasa activities to St. Bridget's Well, as Máire MacNeill has suggested [The festival of Lughnasa, (Oxford, 1962)], is an example of a fusion of custom whereby people were persuaded to celebrate the old festival at the new Christian site. Other examples of this type of fusion of custom are detectable in some of the practices traditionally associated with St. John's eve (23 June), a date which fairly closely coincides with the summer solstice, and also in those attaching to St. Bridget's Day (1 February). This latter feast is said to have been a Christian superimposition on the Celtic festival of Imbolc when fertility rites connected with the arrival of the lambing season are said to have taken place.

St. Bridget's Well, Liscannor. George Petrie, 1825
St. Bridget's Well, Liscannor. George Petrie, 1825

The emblem known as 'St. Bridget's Cross', still made in some homes in Clare on the eve of the saint's feast, is said to be a variant of the swastika, an ancient representation of the sun. Cormac's Glossary, a manuscript attributed to a 9th century bishop of Cashel, tells of the druids driving cattle between sacred fires through the purifying smoke before putting them out to graze on the summer pasture. What appears to be a remarkable survival of this custom is reported in the Schools' Scheme from the Kilmaley district in the 1930s:

'The cows are struck with lighted furze bushes after the bonfire on St. John's eve to stop abortion in cattle.'

Still another curious example of an old Celtic ritual adapted for Christian purposes is found in Sir Samuel Ferguson's account of his visit to New Quay in the Burren in 1853. He describes what appears to be a survival there of the ancient custom of ritual horse-bathing, or horse-swimming races. In other parts of the country this custom was sometimes associated with Lughnasa sites. At New Quay however Lugh would seem to have been superseded by St. Kieran:

'On St. Kieran's festival a singular commemoration of him and his companions' voyages is kept up here, called snamh aonaigh, or the swimming fair. The peasantry bring down their horses and with them swim about the strand in honour of the saints of Aran. It is at least a salubrious custom whatever may be thought of its spiritual utility.'
(Herbert, 'He sang of Clare and studied its many antiquities' in The Clare Champion 24 Dec., 1949.)

From New Quay also, and from many other parts of the country as well, we hear of a fairly faithful observance of St. Martin's day, 11 November. According to tradition St. Martin had met his death by being crushed by a mill wheel, and so no wheel should turn on that day. It was a common practice to kill a fowl and sprinkle its blood around the house in honour of the saint. At New Quay a phantom ship was sometimes seen off the coast and fishermen traditionally did not put to sea on that day.


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