Lugh

Now that August is in full swing, it is appropriate to think of Lugh. It would have been more appropriate, I suppose, to have considered him on Lughnasadh (August 1) but I’m afraid I missed the deadline. August is the only month with no officially recognized holidays, either lighthearted or serious, in the United States. Back in Celtic Britain the first of August was one of the quarter days, or days when the rent was due and religious festivals were celebrated. When Scotland was Christianized, Lughnasadh was kept under the name Lammas-mass, a festival of the first harvest of the year. The Christian correlation became the deliverance of Peter from prison or Saint Peter in Chains.

Lugh was, without doubt, one of the most important gods of the Celts. It has been suggested that the Celts understood their gods not to be transcendent beings of a different order than humans, but rather as their own ancestors. They apparently believed that gods came from great humans. Lugh is a warrior god, and occasionally god of the sun. His favored epithet is “long arm” or “long hand,” indicating his felicity with spears and swords. So widely was he known that many important cities were named after him, including Lyon in France, Vienna (known by one of his epithets), and perhaps even London itself. When Romans conquered the Celtic lands, the festival in August was that of the Caesar from whom the month takes its name, Augustus. Apart from the minor Christian festival of Peter in Chains, the month of August was simply forgotten as the seat of holy days.

The origins of gods differ in diverse cultures. The assumption of most people today seems to be that gods exist as an ontological reality and we reverence them because of their factual existence. The Celts, on the other hand, grew their own gods in the tradition that a noble human was worthy of veneration and full of undying power. Lugh may have been one such person. If he was, he has been lost in the heavy haze of hoary antiquity. He comes to us today in August, but more often in March. The word leprechaun is an Anglicized version of the Irish phrase “Lugh the cobbler” (one of his many associations). As such he is remembered every time we pour ourselves a bowl of Lucky Charms.

Part Lugh, part Potter