lear from the fact that his name is attached to it. As
Lammas was a Christian harvest thanksgiving, so also was Lugnasad a
pagan harvest feast, part of the ritual of which passed over to Samhain.
The people made glad before the sun-god--Lug perhaps having that
character--who had assisted them in the growth of the things on which
their lives depended. Marriages were also arranged at this feast,
probably because men had now more leisure and more means for entering
upon matrimony. Possibly promiscuous love-making also occurred as a
result of the festival gladness, agricultural districts being still
notoriously immoral. Some evidence points to the connection of the feast
with Lug's marriage, though this has been allegorised into his wedding
the "sovereignty of Erin." Perhaps we have here a hint of the rite of
the sacred marriage, for the purpose of magically fertilising the fields
against next year's sowing.

Due observance of the feast produced abundance of corn, fruit, milk, and
fish. Probably the ritual observed included the preservation of the last
sheaf as representing the corn-spirit, giving some of it to the cattle
to strengthen them, and mingling it with next year's corn to impart to
it the power of the corn-spirit. It may also have included the slaying
of an animal or human incarnation of the corn-spirit, whose flesh and
blood quickened the soil and so produced abundance next year, or, when
partaken of by the worshippers, brought blessings to them. To neglect
such rites, abundant instances of which exist in folk-custom, would be
held to result in scarcity. This would also explain, as already
suggested, why the festival was associated with the death of Tailtiu or
of Carman. The euhemerised queen-goddess Tailtiu and the woman Carman
had once been corn-goddesses, evolved from more primitive corn-spirits,
and slain at the feast in their female representatives. The story of
their death and burial at the festival was a dim memory of this ancient
rite, and since the festival was also connected with the sun-god Lug, it
was easy to bring him into relationship with the earlier goddess.
Elsewhere the festival, in its memorial aspect, was associated with a
king, probably because male victims had come to be representatives of a
corn-god who had taken the place of the goddess.

* * * * *

Some of the ritual of these festivals is illustrated by scattered
notices in classical writers, and on the wh