Bilberry Sunday and Lughnasadh Day
18 September 2007
By Martin Lawson, Conservation Projects Development Officer
At the end of July, Conservation Volunteers joined local children and adults from Fermanagh on top of Benaughlin Mountain to pick bilberries. It is an ongoing annual activity resurrected a few years ago. It was so popular, local communities have been enthusiastically climbing the hills ever since to pick the tasty blue fruits.
At the bottom of the mountain, great fun was had making traditional bilberry cakes, muffins and jam. It was a miracle any of the fruit made it down the mountain if the number of blue-stained mouths was anything to go by!
Traditionally, the end of July and the start of August heralded the performance of seasonal rites and festivities associated with the ripening and swelling of the first wild fruits and the digging of the first potatoes. The first day of August in particular was one of the all important Celtic quarter days in the annual pastoral calendar and was called Lughnasadh in honour of the male sun god Lugh. It marked the end of the waiting for the harvests, and, as with all four quarter days, it was full of omens and deep-rooted pagan customs.
Hugely popular amongst these were the processions and excursions to hilltop sites to gather the bilberries, the tiny blue-black round-headed fruits that are the produce of low growing plants on heathery slopes.
The exact origins of the task of gathering bilberries on the last Sunday in July – known as Bilberry Sunday – is now lost , but the occasion obviously broke the daily routine of agricultural toil and was recognised as licence for high spirited games and revelry involving dancing, picnicing, racing, eating and courtship.
Places such as Benlaughlin had people flocking to its heights for a secular gathering of friendship to celebrate the first fruits of the year. Without these annual festivities that give thanks to the marriage between the land and its people, all sorts of negative predictions would have ensued indicating both decay and greyness.
Bilberries were also known as fraughans, blue berries, heatherberries, whortleberries or wineberries and the handpicking was a tedious business but the sense of community with everyone gathering in a common task and the hours of fun afterwards made the day a highly popular festive event until the 1960s.
Varied use was made of bilberries (Vaccinium myrtillis) such as bilberry wine, or the making of bilberry pies, bilberry jam or even as a dye. Bilberries were often eaten as an after course at the day’s celebratory meal when mashed with fresh cream and sugar. The baking and sharing of freshly made bilberry cakes by the young women and the honour of dividing them was given to some young couple about to be married or who had danced best on the evening in question. It was also known that people from Connaught were known as “Blackmouths” from their continued eating of ripened bilberries especially during the famine period.
Bilberry Sunday and the following day Lughnasadh had other links to seasonal rites. Often, land tenure and rights of pasture were settled on the first of August and a new loaf from the first corn was baked. At some places, cattle were made to swim through streams and loughs into which lumps of butter had been cast to ensure the beasts would be healthy during the rest of the year.
There are still a few bilberries left in the hills, but the annual harvest is moving on to some of our other fruits such as crab apples, hazel and sloes. Conservation Volunteers will be out scouring the hedgerows and woodlands for tree seed in the coming months. Contact your local office for details if you want to join in and learn about growing trees from seed.
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