[Sca-cooks] Bread recipe request (OOP)

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

> Considering that the Christians were willing to co-opt rituals from anyone,
> in my opinion, it is very likely that Celtic pagan rituals got scattered
> temporally into the Christian religious calendar.  Lammas is a first-fruits
> thanksgiving, but it also celebrates St. Peter's deliverance from prison.
> That latter point makes me think the feast may have been in the Christian
> calendar before mugging a Celtic god for its harevest rites.  It might also
> be instructive to take a scholarly look at the worship of Ceres and Demeter.

*grin* I've been slowly tracking this for a while, and never did catch on
to something that a relatively scholarly neopagan book suggest: the
Demtrian cycle isn't the same as what we would think of as winter/summer.
I'm going to do a lot more research on this. (I agree that the Wiccan
dates are very odd and imposed from without on the calendar. But why those
dates?)

However, there was a Demetrian games in a Greek month that corresponds
roughtly to July-August. However, that wasn't a harvest festival; probably
because Greek barley was harvested in May. (Somebody remind me when winter
wheat is harvested in North America?)

August 15, the Acension of the Virgin, is the traditional date for harvest
festivals in Poland and some other places.

I suspect that the Lammas date comes from somewhere else and is concurrent
with the harvest of ? maybe spring wheat? but where?

According to the OED, Lammas seems to date back to Anglo-Saxon times:

1. The 1st of August (Festum Sancti Petri ad Vincula in the Roman
calendar; see also GULE), in the early English church observed as a
harvest festival, at which loaves of bread were consecrated, made from the
first ripe corn. (In Scotland, one of the usual quarter-days.) Also, the
part of the year marked by this festival.

  c893 K. ÆLFRED Oros. V. xiii. §2 æt (wæs) on ære tide calendas Agustus,
& on æm dæe e we hata .hlaf~mæsse.. 1154 O.E. Chron. an. 1135 (Laud MS.)
On is ære for se king..ouer sæ æt te Lammasse. c1290 S. Eng. Leg. I.
37/124 Bi-fore lamasse seueniht. ?a1400 Morte Arth. 421, I salle at
Lammese take leue. c1440 Promp. Parv. 286/1 Lammesse, festum agnorum, vel
Festum ad Vincula Sancti Petri. 1480 CAXTON Chron. Eng. ccxliv. (1482) 296
To mete at southampton by lammasse next sewyng without ony delay. 1570
Reg. Ministers in Lauder's Tractate (1864) Pref. 10 William Lauder,
Minister of Forgondynye (in 1567), [his stipend] iiijxxli. [£80], and
xxli. mair sen Lambmes, 1569. a1651 CALDERWOOD Hist. Kirk (1843) II. 393
Adam, called Bishop of Orkney, was delated for not visiting the kirks of
his countrie, from Lambmesse to Allhallowmesse.


-- Pani Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
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