An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Lammas

Lammas, 1st August, is one of the four Great Sabbats of the witches’ year. It is notable as the time when, “on the morrow of Lammas” (that is, on the day after Lammas), King William Rufus was mysteriously slain in the New Forest, in the year 1100, the thirteenth year of his reign.

So well remembered is the Red King’s death, that to this day people in that area sometimes visit the Rufus Stone in the New Forest on 2nd August, the anniversary of the day he was killed.

Margaret Murray and Hugh Ross Williamson, both of whom have made a close historical study of William Rufus, regard him as a sacrificial victim, a sacred king of the Old Religion. Accounts of his death vary in detail; but all agree that he was killed by an arrow, in the vicinity of an oak tree. The original tree has long perished, having been reduced to a stump by people who cut pieces from it to keep as relics. In 1745, a triangular pillar was erected on the site of the former oak tree; but this too was chipped and defaced by pilgrims to the spot, to such an extent that it had to be replaced by the present memorial.

This circumstance in itself shows the mysterious regard in which King William Rufus was held. The monkish chroniclers of his time detested him, because he was an open pagan; but he was popular with the common people, and no worse a king than others of his period.

The Feast of Lammas itself is sometimes called ’the Gule of August’, from the old British word gwyl, meaning a feast or a holiday. The first week in August had always been the working people’s holiday time, until the Government introduced ’staggered holidays’; and Lammas was the great season for fairs.

The word Lammas is usually derived from ’loaf-mass’, the time when the first corn is harvested. However, it is more likely to be a shortened version of the old Celtic Lughnasadh, the Druidic festival at the beginning of August. This was dedicated to Lugh, the Celtic sun god; and it is notable that Llew, the Welsh version of this ancient god, is told of in the Mabinogion (translated by Lady Charlotte Guest, J. M. Dent, Everyman’s Library Edition, London, 1913) as a king who was murdered and came back to life.

Lughnasadh means ’the commemoration of Lugh’. It was the day upon which the country people of Britain and Ireland held processions in honour of the dead sun god; hence, if Margaret Murray is correct, it was a singularly appropriate season for the death of Rufus as the sacred king. After the summer solstice, the sun’s power begins to decline; hence the sun god dies symbolically, only to be reborn again at the winter solstice. Lammas is the time of the first signs of autumn, even as Candlemas is the celebration of the first signs of spring.

These festivals, which go back to time immemorial, are part of the deep oneness with Nature that the people of olden days experienced; even to the extent of being willing victims for sacrifice.