The festival of Lughnasa

 The ascent of mountains in late July was central to the ancient rituals associated with the Festival of Lughnasa.  Máire Mac Neill studied almost 200 sites believed to be associated with that event, including Croagh Patrick, in an attempt to build up a picture of what used to happen in pre-Christian times.

    It may have had its origin in a mythological struggle between the gods Crom Dubh and Lugh for possession of the harvest.  The human customs that followed ranged from the collection of bilberries to the sacrifice of a bull and some of these continued into relatively modern times.  O' Neill quotes an example from Kilkenny in 1942 where the young men of a district climbed a hill (Brandon Hill?) to collect the fraughans that were then presented to young women to make 'Fraughan Cake' after which they danced at the Bonfire into the early hours.

Fraughans

Fraughan bush.

In Kerry, the slopes of  The Paps was the place that huge crowds gathered to celebrate Lughnasa and pick the wild fruits. In Ulster crowds climbed the steep slopes of Sliabh Croob to the Twelve Cairns on 'blaeberry Sunday' and Tobar na Sul on Sliabh Snaght in Inishowen was where the festival was celebrated on 'Heatherberry Sunday'.

There were similar celebrations on high places in many other parts of the country: Blackstairs (Caher Roe's Den), Slieve Blooms (Ard Eireann, Ridge of Capard), Tory Hill, Slieve Donard, Slieve Snaght and many others.  As Máire MacNeill says 'to know that every year it had been the custom of our ancesters to assemble on these hills in festivity and high spirits...is to  understand better Irish history, our passion for the wide land, for place-lore...'

It is clear that this was another reason for people to go into the mountains and uplands - an activity that continued well into the 20th C.  in modern times such festivals may have faded away but the enjoyment of the uplands and mountains remains, as indicated by the level of participation in hiking and hillwalking.

See: Picking Bilberries, Fraocháins and Whorts in Ireland, by Michael J. Conry for a definitive account of this activity.

Thanks also to: Frank McNally, Irish Times, July26 2019.

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Transhumance and Irish mountains

There is archaeological evidence from almost as early as 4,000 BC that the hunter/gatherer practices of the people on this island were being replaced by the cultivation of the land - farming was being undertaken.  As in the rest of north-western Europe, early faming in Ireland was in all probability mixed, being based on the cultivation of cereals and on animal husbandry.

(see The Prehistoric Archaeology of Ireland by John Waddell).

Likely Booley site in Comeragh Mountains

Transhumance is a seasonal movement of livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures and evidence survives of such practices in the Alps dating from the later Neolitic period (c. 3,000 BCE.  See Prehistoric farming in Europe by Graeme Barker).

  Booley house in Knockmaeldowns

That the earliest farmers on this island made use of the practice is unlikely to be verified.  Nevertheless, by the late Middle Ages the practice seems to have been established in Ireland and the 'uplands' were being used in this manner.

(see: Transhumance and the making of Ireland's Uplands, 1550-1900 by Eugene Costello).

This was the Booley.

The term ‘booley’, ‘buaile’ in Irish, refers to a temporary dwelling or shelter at a place for milking cows, and the ‘booley house’ served as a home mainly for the farm hand or for an entire family where occasionally livestock were also sheltered.

Booley in Knockmaeldowns.

P.W. Joyce, in his ‘Irish Names of Places’ provides many examples, “Great numbers of places retain the names of these dairy places, and the word ‘buaile’ is generally represented in modern names by the forms of Booley, Boley, Boola, and Boula, which are themselves the names of many places, and form the beginning of a still larger number.

For Booley sites in Galway, see:    here                   

and about 100 potential sites in Donegal, see:       here

and Achill:        here

The lost art of 'booleying' in Ireland by Eugene Costello.  Here

It is clear from all this that the Uplands of Ireland were used – to be looked at in due course

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