ABSTRACT
The remaining two festivals known from Irish records were Imbolc at the beginning of February, and Lugnasad on i August. The latter, presumably associated with the worship of the god Lug, - whose name was incorporated in the place-name Lugudunum, Lyons - could well have been connected with the agrarian cycle, marking the beginning of the sea son of harvest. Though this sequence of events may seem odd to a society for whom the harvest festival is principally one of thanksgiving for the successful gathering of crops and produce, we should remember that religious ceremonies and dedications among the Celts were mainly designed to guarantee the efficacy of either soil or beasts in advance of the event. It is perhaps significant that the principal non-pastoralist festival of the Irish calendar should be related to a god whose origins were foreign to Ireland; indeed, Powell has put forward the suggestion that Lug may have been introduced to Ireland by Gaulish immi grants in the first century B.C. (1958, 120).
