Lughnassadh Song: The Battle of Summer

For the rite of Lughnassadh, my grove celebrates this in the Irish cultural style, and a key aspect of the Irish celebration of Lughnassadh was a major festival gathering across all of Ireland. The mythological story of this festival concerns its namesake, Lugh of the many skills, the hero who shows up just when the Tuatha de Danann think all is lost and are suffering under the oppression of their Fomorian enemies and defeats them in battle.

Musically, this has some significant syncopations going on, which allows the melody to float around not overly tied to a standard 4/4 rhythm, with the next word coming not quite where you expect it to keep things interesting. This was in large part an excuse for me to try out playing a new-to-me small harp, so some fairly simple chords over a not-overly-complex plucking pattern seemed to be in order.

All works are copyright by yours truly, but may be distributed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 4.0. That means, in short, you can use them yourself and your grove, and play the song to your heart's content both in private and in public, but must give credit where credit is due, and if you're planning on selling something involving this song we need to talk about that first.

Sheet Music

The Battle of Summer

Recording

The Battle of Summer