Hell. August almost gone and never gave a thought to fraughans, bilberries blaeberries, heatherberries, whortleberries or hurtberries or whatever you like to call them. Nor, indeed read of, after the first Sunday of August, celebrations of Domhnach na Fraochog, Bilberry Sunday or whatever. Mostly the first Sunday in August, but sometimes the last in July.
That wonderful treasury of Irish memories, that jewel of friendly scholarship, The Festival of Lughnasa by Maire Mac Neill, gives so much about the origins of the custom and the various names in English and Irish speaking parts of the country. In English speaking Ulster, the most common name, she writes, is Blaeberry Sunday; in the south, in Tipperary and Waterford, where the fruit was known as the whortleberry, we got the name Whort Sunday and in Tyrone there is the "fine sounding name, The Big Sunday of the Heather".
They seem to grow everywhere on high ground. A colleague used to talk of gathering them on the Cave Hill, Belfast, near Mac Art's Fort and on adjoining hills. Sometimes, when it happened on the last Sunday in July, the new potatoes were dug at the same time. Of course the berry, call it what you will, is found in most parts of Europe. It is a rather niggly occupation, turning back the little leaves for the berry here and the berry there. The French have a device for combing them out. Jane Grigson describes it well.
The bilberry comb (peigne a myrtilles) is shaped like a shovel, wooden sides and back, with the base made of thick parallel iron wires that curve up at the end and form a comb. The shovel is scooped through the plants with an upward movement, so that berries and leaves fall back into the wire comb. You can blow along the shovel to clear away the leaves and then put the berries into your can or basket. Still some debris left, but it's better, you'd think, than picking the berries by one and twos.
In German the fruit is Heidelbeere (Heatherberry) or Blaubeere (blueberry), according to the Collins dictionary. You can make pies and tarts and sauces for game. No doubt liqueurs too, but no known person admits to it. So this year August was not a wicked month but a wasted month. They'll all be rotted by the rain. Sad. sad.