Lughnasadh, 1 August

Lughnasadh falls on the first of August, the date this rule records, the third of the medieval Gaelic calendar's four quarter days and traditionally the beginning of the harvest season. Its name and its earliest attested meaning both trace to the god Lugh, and medieval Irish sources including the Metrical Dindshenchas and the saga tradition around Tochmarc Emire describe the festival as funeral games instituted by Lugh in honor of his foster mother Tailtiu, who was said to have died clearing the land for agriculture, games historically associated with the great assembly site of Tailtiu in County Meath, remembered as Aenach Tailteann.

Beyond its mythological explanation, the day functioned in early Ireland as a genuine seasonal assembly, drawing large gatherings for trade, sport, matchmaking and the settling of legal disputes alongside its harvest associations, a civic as well as a religious occasion. Like Imbolc, its modern observance as one of the neopagan Wheel of the Year's eight sabbats, often under the alternate English name Lammas, is a twentieth century revival rather than a continuous practice, and the honest reading of the medieval sources supports a genuine early festival with real civic weight behind Lugh's funeral games, without supporting the claim of an unbroken line running directly from that early festival to its present day Wiccan form.