Crossword clues for lammas
lammas
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Lammas \Lam"mas\, n. [AS. hl[=a]mmesse, hl[=a]fm[ae]sse, loaf mass, bread feast, or feast of first fruits; hl[=a]f loaf + m[ae]sse mass. See Loaf, and Mass religious service.] The first day of August; -- called also Lammas day, and Lammastide.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
Wikipedia
In some English-speaking countries in the Northern Hemisphere, 1 August is Lammas Day (Anglo-Saxon hlaf-mas, "loaf-mass"), the festival of the wheat harvest, and is the first harvest festival of the year. On this day it was customary to bring to church a loaf made from the new crop, which began to be harvested at Lammastide.
The loaf was blessed, and in Anglo-Saxon England it might be employed afterwards to work magic: a book of Anglo-Saxon charms directed that the lammas bread be broken into four bits, which were to be placed at the four corners of the barn, to protect the garnered grain.
In many parts of England, tenants were bound to present freshly harvested wheat to their landlords on or before the first day of August. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where it is referred to regularly, it is called "the feast of first fruits". The blessing of first fruits was performed annually in both the Eastern and Western Churches on the first or the sixth of August (the latter being the feast of the Transfiguration of Christ).
Lammas has coincided with the feast of St. Peter in Chains, commemorating St. Peter's miraculous deliverance from prison, but in the liturgical reform of 1969, the feast of St. Alphonsus Liguori was transferred to this day, the day of St. Alphonsus' death.
Usage examples of "lammas".
As a boy his playground had been the little rock-girt port of Dysart, and as the son of honest David Lammas, who could build a smack with any man between Berwick and Aberdeen, he had been made free of the harbour life.
Professor Anthony Lammas as before, the man that keeps the Senatus in order and guides my erring steps in the paths of logic and good taste, and Nanty Lammas will be left among the partans and haddies and tarpots of Pittenweem.
Anthony Lammas, whose long legs had been covering ground at the rate of five miles an hour, slackened his pace, for he felt the need of ordering a mind which for some hours had been dancing widdershins.
Mr Lammas, a licensed minister of the Kirk and a professor in the University of St Andrews, had just come from keeping strange company.
Neat in person, a little precise in manner, his mouth primmed to a becoming gravity, his hair brushed back from his forehead to reveal a lofty brow, Mr Lammas was the very pattern of a dignitary in the making.
So it came about that when Mr Lammas had passed his trials and won his licence to preach, a special sederunt of the Free Fishers took place, and he was duly appointed their chaplain, with whatever rights, perquisites and privileges might inhere in that dignity.
Mr Lammas, cumbered with such cares and about to set out on a difficult journey, had been in no mood for the Free Fishers, and had almost let the occasion slip.
There were gaps in the familiar company, and Mr Lammas heard how one had lost his boat and his life off the Bass in the great January storm, and another had shipwrecked at Ushant and was now in a French gaol.
It was not his recovered boyhood that Mr Lammas saw, but a segment of a grimmer world whose echoes came faintly at intervals to St Andrews halls.
Mr Lammas would have been observed to fall into lines of professorial dignity.
No scholar and a sparing attendant at lectures, he had nevertheless revealed a certain predilection for the subjects which Mr Lammas professed, had won a prize for debate in the Logic class, and in Rhetoric had shown a gift for declamation and a high-coloured taste in English style.
Mr Lammas had been on the brink of unlocking his study drawer and disclosing his own pursuit of the Muses.
Mr Lammas knew that, could he see it, there was a twinkle in the black eyes.
Mr Lammas, his mind at ease, was well disposed to this garrulous youth.
His colleague was a sick man who lived by a strict regime, and Mr Lammas thanked Heaven that he had a sound body.