Happy Lammas Eve! Beloved, beloved, beloved, thrice beloved!I Lammas is the festival of the first fruits of the harvest, at the time of year the grain crops are brought in.
At the summer solstice, 6 weeks past now, Sol’s bright hands opened and began to let go of the light.
Imagine you are in a baker's shop, in a small village in the countryside. It is Lammas, at the start of August, when the fields are ripe and the crops being brought in. You deliver a basket of freshly baked bread to an old woman who lives on her own in a cottage on edge of the village, beyond the first field.
Your journey takes you along a street of old cottages, with gardens full of flowers. At the end of the street, there is a fence with a stile, and beyond that a field that is golden with ripe grain.
. A path leads around the edge of the grain field. You see poppies and other wildflowers and herbs growing in the borders. Beyond that, you see that the grain crop is being harvested under the hot, August sun.
At the far end of the field is an old hedge, and after a while your reach it. In the hedge is a gate. This gate leads into the old woman's garden behind her cottage. Open the gate and walk into the garden, carefully closing the gate again behind you.
The garden at first seems overgrown, with tall trees at the sides, shrubs, and bushes, and tall plants, it offers cool, dappled shade from the August sun. You make your way further into the garden and see flowers growing everywhere. It is full of bright colors. You see bees going from flower to flower, you hear birds singing, and notice the sign of other wildlife too.
You then see the old woman. She is harvesting berries and putting them into a basket. You go up to her and greet her. She smiles and greets you in reply. Then she invites you into her cottage.
The old woman invites you to sit at her table and put down the basket of bread, then she prepares tea using leaves in an earthenware teapot and brings out a jar of fresh jam she has made from berries from her own garden, with butter and milk from another neighbors farm.
When your tea is finished she takes your cup into her hands, She turns it three times clockwise and then holds it to the sunlight that streams through the cottage window. She shows you the patterns in the leaves and interprets them, too.
You walk home lighter somehow and make corn dollies to hang on your door, keeping the secrets of the first harvest and the return of the Autumn soon to come.
A favorite poem for you:
“I meant to do my work today—
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree,
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree,
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.
And the wind went sighing over the land,
Tossing the grasses to and fro,
And a rainbow held out its shining hand—
So what could I do but laugh and go?”
by Richard Le Gallienne
AND this one:
Walter de la Mare
A Song of Enchantment
A song of Enchantment I sang me there,
In a green-green wood, by waters fair,
Just as the words came up to me
I sang it under the wild wood tree.
Widdershins turned I, singing it low,
Watching the wild birds come and go;
No cloud in the deep dark blue to be seen
Under the thick-thatched branches green.
Twilight came: silence came:
The planet of Evening's silver flame;
By darkening paths I wandered through
Thickets trembling with drops of dew.
But the music is lost and the words are gone
Of the song I sang as I sat alone,
Ages and ages have fallen on me -
On the wood and the pool and the elder tree.
Have a glorious August. Harvest and share your bounty with your neighbors.