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Autumnal Equinox, Mabon, nearly Michaelmas, the last harvest, harvest home & Summer’s end.

What a beautiful time of the year as we officially welcome Autumn and say goodbye to summer with so many names to describe this seasonal celebration. And yes we should celebrate and mark this seasonal transition and give thanks for the year we have harvested and look forward to what is yet to come. And it seems that the weather has finally begun to act as it should with misty mornings, watery sunlight, showers and a bit of a chill in the air unlike our rather poor excuse of a summer which was grey, dull, wet and didn’t give us our sufficient dose of vitamin D from our sun. This is another reason to get outside and get those rays while you can before winter is here and seeking our welcome.

The equinox is the time or date (twice each year) at which the sun crosses the celestial equator and when day and night are of equal length. It can also be a good time for seeing the Aurora, Northern Lights or Mirrie Dancers as there is often an increase in geomagnetic energy at the times of equinox and the tilt of the earth aligns to ‘receive’ the geomagnetic particles.

Balance visits for only a moment.

As Autumn colours, float so lightly,

That little difference is apparent.

It tips, nonetheless,

Change has begun

Hurried harvest is completed and stored

It’s no time to be caught out.

As the wise prepare

And then wait for our Sun’s return

From journeying to distant lands

Of which we can only dream.

It’s the time of preserves and pickles as a way to eek out the vegetables and fruits throughout the coming months. Not only can pickles and preserves add flavour to foods but often have the added benefit of providing vitamin C that could not be be attained when the fresh vegetables and fruits had finished. For sailors this was an important way to avoid scurvy . Rose hips are particularly full of Vitamin C and Rose hip syrup was made and taken to stave off seasonal sniffles.

This time of the year also marked the time to begin shutting down bee hives for winter. The Michaelmas daisy, the flower of the moment, was said to symbolise farewell, perhaps in recognition of saying our goodbyes to summer.

The 24th is St Bartholomew’s Day. If it is ‘fair and clear’ then a prosperous Autumn comes that year.

Although traditionally we decorate our trees with ‘clooties’ in summer now is a lovely time to gather nuts, hips, berries and changing colour leaves to make circlets or strings to feed wildlife and look beautiful adorning your home, hanging off trees and marking thresholds. You can usefully add Rowan to act as a protectorate if you are feeling under supernatural influences.

For our ancestors bringing the harvest home and preparing for the darker and colder part  of the year was essential for survival. This is no longer the case for us. However the residue of preparing and shutting things down seems to still permeate our instincts which we try to fight off due to work/life demands. Perhaps we should listen to our instincts a little more.

Having just come back from a visit to Iceland it was very apparent that they are still very much dictated to by the arrival of winter and an acceptance that things change, places become inaccessible and that there is a need to bring light, warmth and cosy-ness into their lives. Fairy lights and candles were plentiful in all places we visited together with blankets, hot chocolate and cinnamon buns. Crafts of all kinds but particularly textile and wool based ones were occupying people already. A real sense of community, kindness and making the autumn and winter very positive and being welcomed was apparent.

Here in Britain we are lucky not to have such extremes between summer and winter but we do have our own lovely traditions and pastimes that can make this such a Magickal time. Storytelling and reading, playing board games, walks to kick leaves and collect conkers, apple pie making (served with custard), sloe gins made in readiness for Yuletide and jacket potatoes made crisp on bonfires.

So we welcome Autumn with its many guises and names and celebrate the change. We keep the light and warmth of summer alive in our actions and ways, we illuminate our homes and we get cosy.

May the colours and soft light of Autumn be with you as you celebrate this wonderful seasonal gentle transition as the year's wheel turns once more.

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Lammas the beginning of Harvest

Lammas is the season of first fruits and bringing in the wheat and grain crop. A ritual harvest loaf was made from the new wheat. It was one of the ancient quarter days the others being Candlemas, Whitsuntide and Martinmas. The quarter days were later changed to Lady day, Midsummer, Michaelmas and Christmas. Lammas was the day that people had their accounts made up and some think the origin of its name as it was known as 'Later Lammas,' meaning 'last day of accounts.' Another explanation for the name Lammas is that the 1st August was when priests gathered 'tithe lambs' or that it comes from the Saxon word 'Leffemesse' or the old English Hlafmaesse meaning Loaf-mass day. Whatever the origin of it became a time when a mix of pagan and Christian ways  mixed together in a celebration of bringing in the first harvest. Marking an important part of the year when the 'lean' summer months were left behind.

Lughnasdh is another name for this time of the year which is a Gaelic festival marking the beginning of the harvest season where handfasting, fairs, feasting took place and communities came together.

The hedgerow is full of thistles, grasses, teasles, yet to ripen blackberries.

And orchids and everlasting sweet peas . All is abundant.

The scarecrow hangs in harvested fields with not so scared crows finding easy pickings.


‘You sunburned sicklemen of August early, Come hither from the furrow and be merry’.


Lammas is the time of John Barleycorn, a personification of the barley harvest and the alcoholic drinks made from it such as beer and whisky. We hear how John lays down his life at the hands of the harvesters but that he doesn’t die but lives on in the drinks made from him and of course his rebirth as the seasonal agricultural cycle continues.

The first song to personify Barley was called Allan-a-Maut ('Alan of the malt'), a Scottish song written prior to 1568

The first mention of "John Barleycorn" as the character was in a 1624 London broadside entitled introduced as "A Pleasant New Ballad to sing Evening and morn, / Of the Bloody murder of Sir John Barley-corn". In the second verse of the 1624 version we are introduced to an array of characters. ‘Whose names was Sir John Barleycorn, he dwelt down in a dale,Who had a kinsman lived nearby, they called him Thomas Good Ale, Another named Richard Beer, was ready at that time, Another worthy knight was there, called Sir William White Wine’


The final two verses of this 1624 version show Barleycorn as vengeful as he intoxicates those who have ‘killed’ him.


‘When Sir John Goodale he came with mickle mightThen he took their tongues away, their legs or else their sightAnd thus Sir John in each respect, so paid them all their hireThat some lay sleeping by the way, some tumbling in the mireSome lay groaning by the walls, some in the streets downright,The best of them did scarcely know, what they had done oernightAll you good wives that brew good ale, God turn from you all teenBut is you put too much liquor in, the Devil put out your een.’


Robert Burns (1782) published his own version of John Barleycorn which became the model for most subsequent versions of the ballad. Burns's version begins:

There was three kings unto the east,Three kings both great and high,They took a plough and plough'd him down, Put clods upon his head,And they hae sworn a solemn oath John Barleycorn was dead.

Unlike other versions, Robert Burns makes John Barleycorn into a saviour:

And they hae taen his very heart's blood,And drank it round and round;And still the more and more they drank,Their joy did more abound.John Barleycorn was a hero bold,Of noble enterprise;For if you do but taste his blood,'Twill make your courage rise.'Twill make a man forget his woe;'Twill heighten all his joy;'Twill make the widow's heart to sing,Tho' the tear were in her eye.Then let us toast John Barleycorn,Each man a glass in hand; And may his great posterity Ne'er fail in old Scotland!

Below is a link to a most beautiful rendition of the John Barleycorn song by Stevie Winwood.

We are delighted that our 2024 Country Wisdom & Folklore Diary has arrived from our wonderful local printers WPG bang on time for Lammas which could not be more fitting. We have spent the year gathering folklore snippets from around the British Isles, creating images, researching, writing and publishing the diary in our endeavour to keep alive the old ways and celebrate the year which has culminated in the 2024 diary which is now ripe and ready for picking and available to buy from our webpage shop www.talkingtreesbooks.co.uk, Etsy, Folksy and Amazon.

The wheel of the year has turned once more and we celebrate the cycles Mother Nature brings us . Give thanks for the fruition of the things in your life that you have planted and are now ready to be harvested. At Talking Trees with are very thankful of all of you who support our endeavour to keep alive the old ways and celebrate the year with us. We hope you like our 2024 diary & calendar. Lammastide blessings to you all. X

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Sing in the May

Hymnus Eucharisticus is sung each Mayday at 6am, welcoming the rising sun from Magdalen College tower in Oxford keeping a beautiful tradition that is over 500 years old.

Many Morris Dancers will be dancing a Mayday Dawn Dance throughout the British Isles. And there will be ‘GreenMen’  a plenty  escorting the spring/summer in and banishing winter at a variety of events countrywide. Maypole dancing will celebrate this special day across many village greens, with ribbons twisting and weaving around the pole.

But if you can’t get to any Mayday  events or prefer to not be engulfed by bank holiday crowds there will be no better way to hear singing on May morning than to listen to the dawn chorus courtesy of Mother Nature’s choir of birds, all vying for a place to be the most heard and attract a mate. The dawn chorus welcomes daybreak every day but on Mayday morning it is particularly special to hear.

You could follow your early start by following the tradition of bathing in the dew and collecting greenery and flowers to adorn your home and protect it from mischievous Maytime spirits. Then breakfast on the first cream skimmed from the milk for your porridge washed down by the first water drawn from the well. In reality we may not quite be able to follow some of these traditions but we can certainly have a good attempt at something similar. There is never any better way to welcome the merry month of May than being in nature and witnessing the turning of the year for yourself.

Mayday is known as Beltane (many variations of this word) - a day that has been celebrated for so long. Beltane’s origins lie in Gaelic/Celtic cultures of Ireland,Scotland, Isle of Man, Cornwall  and Wales where it is known as  Calan Mai. It has been a long held tradition to mark the day with bonfires, gatherings, blessings and fairs as the herds and flicks were moved to summer pastures. The smoke from the  bonfires purified the land and animals and could even give protection. It was traditional for many of these bonfires to be lit on Mayday eve when the supernatural world was closest to our living world and spirits would slip through. People would take ashes from the fire to protect their homes.

The Opposite Day to Beltane is Samhain or Halloween when the dark part of the year and winter beckons. So we have 6 months to make merry and enjoy the summer months of light, growth and warmth ( let’s hope not quite as warm as last year!)

We hope you manage to mark this long held significant day in the country calendar- remember just small acts such as lighting a candle, picking a sprig of green, listening to the birdsong and taking a breath of mayday air can be your way it doesn’t have to be grand gestures. It is a day of love, hope and joy and we are sending all those wishes to you x

If you do decide to pop out to a mayday event there is the Jack in the Green festival in Hastings, a smaller Greenman event in Clun,Shropshire, morris dancing in Stroud and many more fairs and ways to spend your day.

You can also join in No Mow May … leave your lawn long and let nature flourish and take a break !

Merry Mayday to you all and remember 'don't cast a clout until May is out', we'll leave you to decide if this means the hawthorn blossom or the month itself ! Our hawthorn is still tight budded but our ornamental cherry and apple blossom is abundant.

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