Question: names for the equinoxes & Solstices

[Beith]

Hi there - am directing this to Megli but if anyone else has info please feel free to join in!

Megli - have you ever come across Old/Middle Irish names for the equinoxes and solstices? [Cónocht and Grianstad in mod Irish respectively}. I was wondering if in any saga or hagiography you've read, if you ever came across a local name for these timepoints of the year?

eg. I've come across Brón Trógan in the Ulster cycle in translation but the name was kept as the Irish above. I think it refers to Lughnasadh feast day/time as "the labour of the earth", but I have not yet encountered the old names for the equinox/solstice points, which must have been named due to alignment of monuments with them.

Given the time of the year that's in it, it would be good to know!

many thanks
Beith

[Megli]

Hi Beith! You're just as likely to know as me! I have never come across a mention of the inbetween points in any irish or indeed welsh text. Mean-fhomhair for the autumn equinox perhaps? (not good at Nua-Ghaeilge!) I just don't think the Celts celebrated them, tho' the Bronze age peoples obvious did.

M/|\

[Beith]

HI Megli,
Thanks for the reply. Yes we use "Mean Fomhair" for September, lit."middle of Autumn", just as "Deireadh Fomhair" for October "End of Autumn"; before Mí na Samhna ("Month of Samhain", November) comes in. I was always curious about this, that archaeology is clear about alignments to the solstices and indeed the alignment of the mid-winter sun at the December solstice was retained in oral folklore in the area of Meath as far as I know, yet no mention of a "seasonal name" for this calendar point and no surviving calendar custom (other than recognition of the solstice sun in December at Newgrange) is evident (to me so far) which would imply indeed that it wasn't celebrated or recognised as an important marker of the year as it was in stone age times. I was just curious if anything had turned up in any mediaeval texts you studied. There is a tract on cosmology in the library of the RIA in Ireland but I think it's a translation into Irish of a foreign treatise on same and I cannot remember the period. (Astrocelt and I referenced it some time back in our discussions, so I must check into again).

Thanks anyway!

Beith

[Megli]

Yeah it's 'An Irish Astronomical Tract' ed. Maura Power, based on Mashallah or something like that (was looking at it yesterday) - it's on CELT.  But it's standard medieval astronomy/astrology....hmmmm!!! Nothing Irish abou it. (This is my Phd topic!)

[Beith]

Hi yes that's the one. I just couldn't remember it before! I see you verify what I thought -that it's not "home grown" cosmology but translation.
All the same - are there names therein for the solstice/equinoxes given as terminology (such as the nuaghaeilge above, rather than "names" for each one? I guess not, otherwise you'd have answered that already!)

So that's what you're doing?! good for you! I'll look forward to reading Dr Megli's thesis one day!

good luck with it!
BEith

[Kernos]

I may be wrong, but doesn't the Coligny calendar make reference to the Solstices and Equinoxes?

[Megli]

not that i recall, but will look it up.
M/|\

[astrocelt]

Solstice and Equinoxes always draws my attention. I see that Maura Powers have popped up again. Wow how interesting Magi, your phd thesis is going to based around these type of things. Would be nice if you were a little more specific, a private message perhaps? Anyway would love to have a chance to read it in the near future. I wonder whether you are aware that John Williams in the department of Celtic Studies for his Masters in Philosophy at the University of Sydney, undertook a study concerning the Irish terminology in astronomy for the 14th century about four years ago?

Interesting question Beith, but I don’t have an answer.

The Coligny calendar marks the mid quarter points of the agricultural festivals Imbolc, Beltane and so forth. The Solstices and Equinoxes is indeed another way in which it can be interpret this has been suggested  by Stephen McCluskey in 1998. Overall the Calander is still under debate as very little is really known and things are very uncertain.

Blessing
Astrocelt