LOO-nuh-suh
The harvest festival founded by the god Lugh in honour of his foster-mother Tailtiu.
Lúnasa fell around the first of August and opened the harvest season, taking its name directly from the god Lugh. Communities marked the day with gatherings on hilltops, the first cutting of the grain, and fairs that combined trade, sport, and matchmaking.
Tradition holds that Lugh instituted the festival himself as a funeral games, the Óenach Tailteann, in honour of his foster-mother Tailtiu, said to have died of exhaustion after clearing the plains of Ireland for agriculture. Held at Tailtiu in what is now County Meath, the gathering combined athletic contests with the formal business of the túatha, and endured in one form or another for centuries.
As one of the year's four great quarter-day festivals, Lúnasa marked the point where the summer's work turned into the harvest's reward, and its naming for Lugh makes it, alongside Imbolc's tie to Brigid, one of the clearest examples of an Irish festival founded by the god it commemorates.