LAMMAS: Mass of the Bread

 

Lammas Day - the first day of August, once observed as the first  harvest festival, during which bread baked from the first crop of wheat was blessed.  Lammas  means "Mass of the Bread", although in pre-Christian times it was called Lughnasadh (Day of Lugh) a traditional celebration of  the  Celtic Sun God Lugh.  As such, the celebration often traditionally included many games and feats of strength, among them the famous Highland Games, which included sports  such as log throwing and sword dancing.

The Wicker Man was traditionally related to the Lammas ceremonies - he represented the God who dies and is ever reborn, the eternal "Green Man" in the next year, next growing season, next cycle, next turning, the lover of the Goddess, the Earth Mother.  This  ancient and ubiquitous symbol of the  sacrificed and resurrected God, related to both the Sun and the Grain is found "resurrected" in numerous myths and religions, among them  Osiris, the Green Man, Dummuzi the shepherd,  even in Christianity where it is found in the death and ressurection of the Christ - born at the Winter Solstice (often called the "return of the light"), sacrificed, and then reborn, appropriately  at the time of the Spring Equinox.   

 In contemporary neo-Pagan culture the effigy is often created and loaded with offerings of food, flowers and prayers on paper before it is burned - this tradition is sometimes carried on indirectly in the creation of  sculptures that are burned in the closing bonfires of Starwood Festival on the East Coast.  

Starwood Bonfire

         

           Lughnasadh

Fields of listening, whispering corn
Ripen in the heavy air
Lugh the Golden dancing forth,
Leaves and sheaves in his wild hair.
In perfect circles bow the stalks,
Mark the path where great Lugh walks,
Mark days and seasons, round they go,
As above, so below.

All that dies shall be reborn
All that dies shall be reborn

 Rev. Raven Spirit 2002

 John Barleycorn Must Die is a traditional English song very much related to early traditions of Lammas and Lughnasadh - records of its origins go back as far as the 1300s, and it is probably much older than that.    Over time, many variations have arisen, and the Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote his own  version of the story.  In the 70's, John Renbourne, Traffic, and Steeleye Span popularized the song, along with many folk artists during the Folk Revival of the 60's and 70's. 

John Barleycorn is a very prime myth indeed  - the Great King who is sacrificed, dies and is reborn in the agricultural cycle.  The motif is found as the story of the  Sumarian myth of  Dumuzi, the Shepherd husband of the Goddess Inanna who goes into the underworld for part of the year to be with the Queen of the Dead, and returns to Inanna in the Spring.  The same idea of the dying and reborn King is found with the Egyptian Osiris, who is reborn in the Sun God Horus.  And of course, the later evolution of this mythic cycle in the tale of Persephone, Demeter, and Hades, which became the basis of the Elysinnian Mysteries pilgrimage and ritual cycle.  

John Barleycorn is the personification of the grain, and the life of the grain from planting to harvest, its  transformation into bread and  beer, the staples of agricultural life.  After Barleycorn’s "first death"  he is buried, and laid within the ground.  In Midsummer he grows a “long golden beard” and “becomes a man”.  The song goes on to describe threshing and harvesting. Then the grain is shared: some is taken to the miller to make flour for bread. And some is saved and brewed in a vat to make ale. And some is planted, so that the whole cycle can begin again.   Some of these rituals survive to this day in modified folk traditions, as well as in neo Pagan revivals,  most famously the sacrifice of the wicker man "the burning man".   

Here is a rendition of the folksong "John Barley Corn Must Die" by Green Crown, a wonderful group I remember from my days at the Renaissance Faire:

https://youtu.be/9IIr6vjn3ZY

  Photo with thanks to  Avalon Revisited

It might be noted as well that John Barleycorn is also the God of Ecstasy - because he provides celebration and ecstasy as the barley becomes the source of beer and the beloved malt whiskey of the Highlands.  The malting and fermentation is also a part of his "life cycle" and transformative  divinity. Perhaps one of the most famous "ecstatic"  manifestations of the Wicker Man, his rituals of sacrifice, rebirth, and  celebration,  is Burning Man, the  festival that happens in Nevada every fall.  Originally associated with the burning of the Wicker Man at the Lammas Harvest Festival by neo-Pagans in the Bay Area, it's grown to become a fantastic art event.  I'd be willing to bet however that  the majority of people who attend  Burning Man don't know about its origins in a resurrection of a  traditional European  myth.

Here's an excellent  quote I take from a Druid's Blog called "The Dance of Life" 

about the Wicker Man:

"In English folklore, the folksong representing John Barleycorn as the crop of barley corresponds to the same cyclic nature of planting, growing, harvesting, death and rebirth.  Sir James Frazer cites this tale of John Barleycorn in The Golden Bough as proof that there was a Pagan cult in England that worshiped a god of vegetation, who was then sacrificed to bring fertility to the fields.  It is tempting to see in this  echoes of human sacrifice as portrayed in The Wicker Man film (1973), but that is not really what this time is about.  Whilst there was a Celtic ritual of weaving the last sheaf of corn to be harvested into a wicker-like man or woman, it was believed that the Sun 's spirit was trapped in the grain and needed to be set free by fire and so the effigy was burned........In other regions a corn dolly is made of plaited straw from this sheaf, carried to a place of honor at the celebrations and kept until the following spring for good luck."

It's interesting that in Robert Burn's poem, there are "three kings", similar to the kings from the east in the Nativity story.  Early Christians who came to the British Isles (and elsewhere) often absorbed native pagan mythologies and traditional rituals into Christian theology/mything.   The evolution of the Story of Christ is full of such imagery in order to help the natives accept Christianity:  it is very unlikely that Jesus was actually born on the Winter Solstice, for example. Certainly John Barleycorn shares with the Christ Story the ancient, ubiquitous  theme of the death and rebirth of the sacrificed agricultural King. 

I am a great admirer of the wisdom traditions of  Christianity, but I also believe it is necessary to separate the spiritual teachings of Christianity from  the mingling (and  literalization) of earlier  mythologies absorbed, and often changed or even demonized, throughout the very  long development of the Christian Church. 

For example, I believe the metaphor used to describe Jesus as the "Lamb of God" directly relates to Biblical Hebrew  practices prevalent in his lifetime  of the  sacrifice of lambs and goats to Yahwah.  Indeed, the  sacrifice of animals was common

throughout the Roman world as well.   The later development of  the doctrine that Christ   "died for our sins"   may have some of its origins in the important, and quite ancient,  Semitic Scapegoat Rituals,  wherein the "sins and tribulations" of the tribe were ritually placed on the back of a goat, which was then driven away from the village or tribal enclave  to literally "carry away the sins" into the desert.  

 

Observing recently a Catholic "Communion" ritual ("This is my Body, This is my Blood") I was impressed by the many layers of mythologies and archaic traditions inherent in that ceremony, still important to so many people today.  One of the threads of that Ceremony  may very well originate in the prime agricultural myth of  the dying and reborn God.  A  long tradition from which John Barleycorn arises, with each turning of the year,  re-born  again every spring to be "sacrificed" in the fall. 

Ubiquitous indeed!  This same idea is found in variations throughout the Americas as well, this time with  the story of the Corn Mother (among the Cherokee, Selu) who is killed, dismembered, and reborn in the spring - and when her sacrifice is not honored, misfortune befalls the tribe.     (I myself have had the privilege of encountering the Corn Mother. )

John Barleycorn
by Robert Burns

There was three kings into the east,
Three kings both great and high,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die.
They took a plough and plough'd him down,
Put clods upon his head,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead. 

 

 

But the cheerful Spring came kindly on,
And show'rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up again,
And sore surpris'd them all.
The sultry suns of Summer came,
And he grew thick and strong,
His head weel arm'd wi' pointed spears,
That no one should him wrong.

The sober Autumn enter'd mild,
When he grew wan and pale;
His bending joints and drooping head
Show'd he began to fail.
His coulour sicken'd more and more,
He faded into age;
And then his enemies began
To show their deadly rage.
They've taen a weapon, long and sharp,
And cut him by the knee;
Then ty'd him fast upon a cart,
Like a rogue for forgerie.

They laid him down upon his back,
And cudgell'd him full sore;
They hung him up before the storm,
And turn'd him o'er and o'er.
They filled up a darksome pit
With water to the brim,
They heaved in John Barleycorn,
There let him sink or swim.
They laid him out upon the floor,
To work him farther woe,
And still, as signs of life appear'd,
They toss'd him to and fro.

 

 

They wasted, o'er a scorching flame,
The marrow of his bones;
But a Miller us'd him worst of all,
For he crush'd him between two stones.
And they hae taen his very heart's blood,
And drank it round and round;
And still the more and more they drank,
Their joy did more abound.

John Barleycorn was a hero bold,
Of noble enterprise,
For if you do but taste his blood,
'Twill make your courage rise.
'Twill make a man forget his woe;
'Twill heighten all his joy:
'Twill make the widow's heart to sing,
Tho' the tear were in her eye.
Then let us toast John Barleycorn,
Each man a glass in hand;
And may his great posterity
Ne'er fail in old Scotland!

 

And here is Steeleye Span to tell the tale! 

 https://youtu.be/tlL9RCznuU8?si=XpmYSDKxGC2wKbN5