Lammas and English Magic

In her excellent little book Winters in the World, Eleanor Parker gives two recognisable examples of Anglo-Saxon magic.

One is the Æcerbot:

The ritual is not tied to any specific time of year, but it begins at a particular time of day: the first step is to go out before the dawn and cut four pieces of turf from the four sides of the land that needs to be cured. On these, you're told to drip a mixture of oil, honey, yeast, holy water, milk from every cow that grazes on the land and portion of every tree and plant that grows there. As you drip this on the turf, you're to say 'Grow and multiply and fill this earth, in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit', as well as the Pater Noster. The pieces of turf are then taken to church, where a priest sings four masses over them, and before sunset they are replaced in the field, with a cross, made of rowan-wood and inscribed with the names of the four evangelists, buried under each one.

The ceremony then continues, with a mixture of Latin prayers taken from the liturgy and pagan prayers in Old English addressed to Mother Earth (Erce), and with various rituals of the sort of almost impossible complexity that has characterised traditional English magic down to modern times.

Kipling of course makes use of something similar to this in the first chapter of Puck of Pook's Hill:

‘Have you a knife on you?’ [Puck] said at last.

Dan handed over his big one-bladed outdoor knife, and Puck began to carve out a piece of turf from the centre of the Ring.

‘What’s that for—Magic?’ said Una, as he pressed up the square of chocolate loam that cut like so much cheese.

‘One of my little magics,’ he answered, and cut another. ‘You see, I can’t let you into the Hills because the People of the Hills have gone; but if you care to take seizin from me, I may be able to show you something out of the common here on Human Earth. You certainly deserve it.’

‘What’s taking seizin?’ said Dan, cautiously.

‘It’s an old custom the people had when they bought and sold land. They used to cut out a clod and hand it over to the buyer, and you weren’t lawfully seized of your land—it didn’t really belong to you—till the other fellow had actually given you a piece of it—like this.’ He held out the turves.

‘But it’s our own meadow,’ said Dan, drawing back. ‘Are you going to magic it away?’

Puck laughed. ‘Iknow it’s your meadow, but there’s a great deal more in it than you or your father ever guessed. Try!’

He turned his eyes on Una.

‘I’ll do it,’ she said. Dan followed her example at once.

‘Now are you two lawfully seized and possessed of all Old England,’ began Puck, in a sing-song voice. ‘By Right of Oak, Ash, and Thorn are you free to come and go and look and know where I shall show or best you please. You shall see What you shall see and you shall hear What you shall hear, though It shall have happened three thousand year; and you shall know neither Doubt nor Fear. Fast! Hold fast all I give you.’

Although the Æcerbot is not "tied" to any particular time of the year, Parker associates it with Plough Monday - the ceremonial recommencement of the farming year after Christmas. A comparable blessing that is very much connected to be a particular date of the year though is the Lammas blessing (translated from Old English, italics translated from Latin):

[Take two] long pieces of four-edged wood, and on each piece write a Pater Noster, on each side down to the end. Lay [one] on the floor of the barn, and lady the other [across] it, so they form the sign of the cross. And take four pipeces of the consecrated bread which is consecrated on Lammas Day, and crumble them at the four corners of the barn. This is the blessing for that. So that mice do not harm these sheaves, say prayers over the sheaves and [then] hang them up without speaking. City of Jerusalem, where mice do not live and cannot have power, and cannot gather the grain nor rejoice with the wheat. This is the second blessing. Lord God Almighty, who made heaven and earth, bless these fruits in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spririt. Amen. And Pater Noster.

I think we can take it for granted that the "consecrated bread" mentioned here was not supposed to be the hūsl itself but rather some early version of the bread that was blessed at the end of Mass during the Last Gospel. As Eamon Duffy describes it in his classic work The Stripping of the Altars,

A loaf of bread presented by one of the householders of the parish was solemnly blessed, cut up in a skip or basket, and distributed to the congregation. The offering of this loaf, which was regulated by a rota, was attended with considerable solemnity, the provider processing to the high altar before matins, reciting a special prayer, and offering a candel to the priest at the same time. It was usual for the curate to pray explicitly "for the good man or woman that this day geveth bread to make the holy lofe" when he bid the bedes. This holy loaf was meant to be the first food one tasted on a Sunday; eaten or simply carried in one's pocket, it was believed to have apotropaic powers. If one died without a priest, reception of the holy bread was accounted a sufficient substitute for housel.