Next Thursday is St Brigid's Day, one of the last days of traditional celebration, writes Catherine Foley
Some days are like beacons in the calendar year. They stand out as being special, worthy of ritual and memorable to many of us for a variety of reasons. Although customs and rituals in communities around Ireland are not as obvious or as widely practised as they once were, there are still some days and times of the year which are marked out by Irish communities in some small way.
Such days include the traditional harvest thanksgiving at Church of Ireland services each year around the end of September; the annual blessing of the boats in harbour villages around the coast; the feast of St Blaise on February 3rd, when hundreds of parishioners around the country go to their local Catholic church to have their throats blessed in the hope of warding off sickness; and then there's the annual nod we all give to the arrival of St Brigid's Day (February 1st).
There are other days that are no longer marked by any significant communal rituals, but there are vestiges that linger. Does the first day of spring have any significance for urban dwellers of the 21st century? Does the arrival of May Day, which was once the Gaelic Féile Bealtaine, play any part in today's annual calendar of custom and ritual?
Some rituals are peculiarly Irish, dating back to pagan times, such as St Brigid's Day, while some are universal, like the blessing of the boats, which is practised in communities around the world. And usually, wherever a ritual is practised, the universal symbolic talismans of water, candles, bells, fire and straw feature.
The practice of age-old rituals connected to these special days varies widely around the country, but such celebrations and festivals, from the Festival of Lughnasa in mid-summer to the celebratory May Day festival and the feast of Samhain in the darkest part of the year, can still evoke responses in our shared subconscious memories.
THERE ARE VESTIGES of these festivals still to be found in our culture and in our lives, if only from our acquaintance with the festival of Lughnasa through Brian Friel's play Dancing at Lughnasa, or the slow resurfacing of the custom of Hunting the Wren on December 26th.
St Brigid's Day was, as Seán Ó Súilleabháin explained in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland in 1945, "a Christianisation of one of the focal points of the agricultural year in Ireland".
The most characteristic and widespread Irish custom connected with this day was making the St Brigid's cross. Sometimes rushes were used, but straw was much more usual.
St Brigid's crosses, which are still made, are believed to protect the house and the livestock from harm and from fire.
In the Gaeltacht of Ring, Co Waterford, the late Peig Bean Uí Reagáin was a well-known craftswoman who made these crosses each year for her neighbours and friends to hang in their homes.
It is believed that no evil spirit can pass the cross, so it is generally hung above the door of the house. The charms have their counterparts in many parts of the world, writes E Estyn Evans in Irish Folk Ways.
"The Huichols of Mexico make similar charms of wool mounted on a bamboo frame: known as a 'god eyes', they bring good health and long life to children.
A Californian Indian charm made of grass or rushes is very similar."
Next Saturday, February 3rd, Catholic churches will begin to fill after Mass with coughing, sneezing parishioners who hope that a blessing on the feast of St Blaise will cure all manner of sore throats, runny noses and wheezy chests.
St Blaise was a bishop who suffered martyrdom at the beginning of the fourth century in Armenia. While he was in prison, he performed a cure on a boy with a fishbone stuck in his throat and who was in danger of choking to death. After suffering various forms of torture, St Blaise was beheaded.
The blessing involves two candles, which are consecrated, generally by a prayer, being held in a crossed position by a priest over the heads of the faithful; alternatively, people are touched on the throat with the candles.
In other places, oil is consecrated, in which the wick of a small candle is dipped before it is used to touch the throats of those present. At the same time, a blessing is given and God is asked to preserve people from throat troubles and other evils.
IN THE LATIN church, this feast falls on February 3rd, and in Oriental churches on February 11th. St Blaise is usually represented holding two crossed candles in his hand or as he was when he was captured, in a cave surrounded by wild beasts.
The harvest thanksgiving towards the end of September is the day when thanks is given for the harvested fruits of the earth and the sea.
For example, it is a special day in the school year for the children attending St James's Church of Ireland National School in Stradbally, Co Waterford. The pupils bring baskets of eggs, apples, fruit, vegetables and flowers to the church in readiness for the Sunday service in the church nearby. They also prepare in school by writing poems and prayers.
Their parents bake bread, tarts and cakes and the church is decorated by the parishioners with flowers and sheaves of wheat and baskets of fruit.
The celebration "is one [ the children] really like doing. They all bring a little basket. The church is lovely," says principal Anne Hennebry.
After the celebration in the church, the schoolchildren gather up all the produce from the harvest and bring it to Carriglea Training Centre, outside Dungarvan, Co Waterford, a special needs centre for adults.
MAY DAY, THE first day of summer, was once an important landmark in the Irish countryman's year. Kevin Danaher wrote in his 1972 book, The Year in Ireland, that "as in most parts of western Europe, the principal customs and ceremonies of Maytime were those which welcomed the summer . . . Perhaps the commonest of all, examples of which might be cited for every county in Ireland, was the picking and bringing home of fresh flowers . . . The children usually made 'posies' of the flowers, small bouquets, which they hung up in the house or laid on the doorsteps or windowsills or hung over the door."
This writer recalls bringing fresh flowers - daffodils, daisies, roses, buttercups - to school to put in front of the May altar.
A colleague recalls his grandfather, Ody Nolan, at Passlands, Monasterevin, Co Kildare, marking May Day by decorating a tree with eggshells and cowslips.
In Danaher's book, a May bush was decorated with eggshells, ribbons, wild flowers and bits of candles. Soon enough, it will be time to celebrate the Festival of Lughnasa, when people gather on hills and mountains and a great bonfire is lit.
According to Máire MacNéill's book, The Festival of Lughnasa, such assemblies were held on 78 hills - nine in Connaught, 15 in Leinster, 15 in Munster and 39 in Ulster.
"By far the most widely known of these is Croagh Patrick," writes Danaher. "Up these tracks the pilgrims have come on 'Reek Sunday', the last Sunday in July, for over a thousand years, to honour Ireland's patron saint, to obtain heavenly merit and to perform penance, on the spot where, according to traditions already recorded in the seventh century, the saint fasted for forty days and nights."
There were waterside gatherings during the Lughnasa festival too, which "differed little from those on the hills", says Danaher.
"There were the same singing and dancing, eating and drinking, picking of wild flowers and fruit."
• There will be a lesson in making St Brigid's crosses at the National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks, Dublin, tomorrow at 3pm for children aged eight and upwards, and at the National Museum, Turlough Park, Co Mayo, tomorrow from 2.30pm for children aged seven upwards. See www.museum.ie