MOLUAG AND THE SUMMER SOLSTICE

In which I explore the connections between the saint, the deity, stars, and seals

A poem in the Martyrology of Oengus praises Saint Moluag of Lismore in terms of light, brightness, and the sun.

"The pure, the bright, the pleasant,
the sun of Lismore;
that is Moluoc,
of Lismore in Alba". 

Moluag is reported to have died on 25 June 592 AD, and so this day of June 25 became his feast day.  And, at his death, there was a solar eclipse, a darkening of sun and saint.

Well now, that’s either a fantastic coincidence, or, someone is trying to tell us something?  June 25 is the date of the summer solstice, the moment when the sun is at its height.  The actual solstice is around June 21, but the Romans considered December 25 to be the winter solstice, March 25 the spring equinox, and so June 25 was the summer solstice.  Not exactly the most accurate dating, but it made enough sense if you were a Roman.  The early Christian church continued this sort of loose dating, and we still celebrate Christmas on December 25 today. 

There is another saint also commonly celebrated at the midsummer solstice, St John the Baptist on June 24.  The ancient pagan solstice fires on hilltops became a celebration in his name.

The question is why might St Moluag have been given this important date as his feast day?  The answer may be the same reason why St Brigid is celebrated at Imbolg, it may be a continuation of the sacred in the name.  There are quite a few Irish saints by the name Brigid and they tend to have their feast days all celebrated within a day or two of Imbolg. And before I go on, it’s of interest that saints in eastern Scotland often have a different date to their feast day in Ireland.  Ireland had a tradition that a saint’s feast day should be the day they died, so what was the reasoning behind the different dates in Scotland?  Could it be that Scottish saints are following an older tradition, linking them to their namesakes?

Moluag, Lugh, Light and the Sun

Moluag is a pet name Mo-lug-oc, My little Lug, his proper name being Lugaid.  Lugaid is based on Lug or Lugh, the name of a prominent deity in Celtic lore, attested in Ireland, Britain and the Continent. Like so many ancient deity names, scholars have had difficulty deciding on a derivation for Lugh, but one of these proposed meanings is ‘light’ or ‘shining’.  So one possibility is that Lugh was a god of light. The summer solstice is the moment when the daylight lasts the longest, so is this what connects Lugh to this moment in time? 

Light however does not necessarily equate to the sun, as light itself appears separately before the sun rises.  The sun is an aspect of a female deity in Celtic and European lore.  The very words of the Celtic languages refer to the sun with a female gender. So Lugh was not a deity of the sun, even if he was the god of light.

But by the time of Moluag, things had gotten messy.  The classical Greek and Roman cultures had witnessed the power of the sun being usurped by men, first removing her divinity and giving her power to her male charioteer, Helios, then voting it willy-nilly to the young god Apollo.  Christianity followed this lead, covering Jesus with sun symbolism. The sun and its light had by the time of Moluag become confused and conflated. Saint Patrick betrays his confusion of sun symbolism, when he writes how he was attacked by a demon, and:

At once I saw the sun rising into the dawn sky, and while I kept invoking ‘Helias, Helias,' with all my strength, lo, the Splendour of the Sun fell over me and instantly shook all the heaviness off from me. I believe I was succoured by Christ my Lord and that his Spirit even then was calling out on my behalf.

*Saint Patrick, Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus, in Paul Gallico, The Steadfast Man: A Biography of St. Patrick (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1958), pp. 220-25.

Lugh and the constellation Leo

Do we have anything else to connect Lugh to the summer soltice?  After all, Lugh is traditionally associated with the autumn festival of Lughnasad, not the summer solstice.  The story goes that Lugh set up the Lugnasad festival in honour of his foster mother Tailtiu, who had cleared the plains for agriculture.  And on the Coligny calendar which lays out the original timing of Lughnasad, the festival is composed of two parts, the first when the constellation Leo is in the sky, the second part when the sun moves into Virgo, a female with her sheath of grain.  This suggests that Lugh may have been represented in the sky by the constellation today called Leo, and Tailtiu with Virgo, the goddess of the harvest.

The constellation Leo is depicted as a lion in classical terms, but we have an old manuscript that marks the constellation Leo as Cú dog.  Was Lugh a war dog to the Irish, rather than a lion? So far the story isn’t resolving itself, just getting more complicated as we go. But, let’s keep pushing on …

Failinis and the star Regulus

Lugh has a lapdog called Failinis, a superb magical dog "more splendid than the sun in its fiery wheels".  By day he can overcome fifty men, but by night he is caer thened, an ‘ember of fire’, ‘a star of fire’. This lapdog’s name, Failinis, is a name redolent of kingship.  fál is an interesting word, it is all about kingship and sovereignty, used particularly for a high-king.  Ireland itself is called Inis Fáil, the Island of Royalty.  The famous Lia Fáil, the Flagstone of Kingship, is the magical stone which cries out when the rightful king stands on it.  

The constellation Leo holds in its lap one of the brightest stars of the northern sky. Today we call it Regulus, and throughout history most peoples have given this star a type of ‘king’ name. Failinis, a star of fire, was Lugh’s lap dog, before whom ‘all the wild beasts of the world’ would prostrate themselves. So, it’s possible that the star Regulus was called Failinis in Irish astronomy, and that Lugh was represented in the sky as today’s constellation Leo with its royal star Regulus.

In the old Welsh language, the star Regulus is recorded as Calon y Llew, the Lion’s Heart, a direct translation of the classical description.  The puzzle is that the deity Lleu, is at times also named Llew, usually taken to be just a random spelling confusion.  But is it just that? Or are there more elements as well as pure etymology linking the two in historical philosophy?  The word lleu itself means ‘light, brightness; bright’ according to the GPC A Dictionary of the Welsh language, again bringing us right back to the notion of Lugh as the deity of light.  The language, and the connections within the language, and how people treat those connections over time, is often a complex web of chaotic evolution.   

CC BY-SA 3.0 Wikipedia

Regulus, originating in Latin as a personal name, is still found in the period of Moluag.  One of the monks with Columba when he settled on Iona was Riaguil, Irish for Regulus. Riaguil of Bennchor was a scribe at the great monastery of Bangor in Ulster, Moluag’s mother church.  Riaguil of Muccinis on Loch Derg and Riaguil mac Buachalla are other Irish examples. On the continent there is Regulus of Senlis and Regulus of Arles, both early bishops.  The relics of St Andrew are said to have been brought to Pictland by another Regulus, and the tower of Rule (Riaguil) stills stands at Saint Andrews in Fife to this day.

Lugh and Lughnasad

Still, now we have a quandary.  If Lugh was represented in the sky as the constellation Leo/Cú, with his lapdog Regulus/Failinish, and this constellation governs the first part of Lughnasad in early August, why would Lugh be associated with the summer solstice of late June?  There is one obvious answer to that question.  The stars and constellations do not stay steady to the time of the year, but ever so slowly swing in a great circle around the sky, completing a full circle every 26,000 years.  Leo was the constellation of the summer solstice near the time of the major monuments like Bru na Boinne and Stonehenge.  Lugh may have always been this constellation of light, brightness, the summer, the summer solstice.  His constellation had just processed a little to sit two months later at Lughnasad in the early medieval period.

Kerbstone K52 at Newgrange, marking the summer solstice, directly opposite the passage which admits the winter solstice sun.

Lugh and the Seals

Do we have anything else to support the idea that Lugh is a deity of light, the god of the summer solstice?  Well, there is the matter of seals. And this is the part of this story that I love. Lugh was said to have been born with a group of seals, but as they were being carried to Ireland, the seals fell into the sea.  The Welsh story of Lleu (cognate of Irish Lugh) tells how he was born with a twin, Dylan, who immediately leapt into the sea.  And the summer solstice is the moment when the common and harbour seal mothers haul themselves out onto rocks and sand bars to give birth.  Just as Lugh is born at the summer solstice with his seal brothers, just as his constellation rose with the sun in the Neolithic and still today shines brightly through the summer months till harvest.

Lugh, Lleu, Moluag, seals, the light bright summer solstice, June 25, the constellation Leo/Llew/Cú.  It’s all connected, a tale of summer.

Seal mother and her pup

Delightfully, ironically, and probably coincidentally, today Moluag’s island of Lismore and its skerries are a nationally important breeding colony of the common seal and the harbour seal.