#cornish tradition

Goal Est - The Cornish lammas

Slide 1

Goal Est (August feast), also known as Galan Est (August First) is the Cornish equivalent to Lammas or Lughnasadh. It marks the cutting of the first wheat.

Celebrated every year on August 1st, there are scant records about it’s folk customs aside from Morvah Fair, where people would come from all over the county to eat and drink copious amounts.

Slide 2

The amount of revelry incited a priest to go on a campaign in the 19th century to ban the fair. Regrettably, it worked and there was nothing held until the 1970s.

There was an effort to bring it back & strengthen the community in the form of Pasty Day - which is now an annual event held on the first Tuesday of August!

Slide 3

Boscastle Museum of Witchcraft's Lammas window display

Sources -

The Cornish Traditional Year, Simon Reed (pages 21 - 25)

https://museumofwitchcraftandmagic.co.uk/news/lammas-window-display/

https://thisissallybell.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/the-celebration-of-lammas-the-first-harvest/

Goel Est

Pages 21 - 25 of Simon Reed’s ’The Cornish Traditional Year’

Lammas comes from the English ‘loaf mass’.

Marks the cutting of the first wheat

Cornish reconstructions include:

Lunasa (after the Irish Feast)

Goal Est (August Feast)

Galan Est (First of August)

Marked by a series of festivals (such as the Morvah Fair).

Midsummer fires and the feasts of Peter & John

Pages 3 - 20 of Simon Reed's 'The Cornish Traditional Year'

Feast of ‘light and rejoicing’

Held 2 days later than the astronomical solstice

Involved bonfires (possibly related to the celtic deity Belenus)

Solestitia = Summer solstice rites

Dancing through and around fires = protection from evil intentions

It’s lucky to scatter hemp seeds for love

Bonfire/Serpent dance - chain rushes, skips and avoids embers. Sometimes & at random, a link in the chain would raise their arms at the head of the chain and the head would rsh through.

Children wore wreaths and garlands of flowers (st john's wort)