My mother grew up in rural Clare in the 1960s. And one of her fondest memories from childhood is the trip to Lahinch for Garland Sunday - the last Sunday of July, which in her memory was simply a great day out.

The men would walk the seafront. The women came too - which was notable, she says, because most of the fairs and gatherings of the time were horse fairs or cattle fairs, places where women didn't usually go. Garland Sunday was different. It was for everyone. Children ran and played and got into whatever mischief was available. There was food - she remembers eating periwinkles out of a brown paper bag with a pin, standing on the seafront in Clare with the Atlantic in front of her.

She didn't know, and still doesn't particularly, that this tradition has a name older than "bank holiday Monday." She didn't know about Crom Dubh, or Domhnach Crom Dubh, or the gathering places on hilltops that the priests eventually redirected to church patrons. She just went to the sea on the last Sunday of July because that's what you did.

That's how folk tradition works. The meaning drops away, or gets redirected, or gets forgotten - but the practice persists. People keep going to the water. They keep gathering on this specific weekend. They keep doing, without knowing why, something their ancestors did with full awareness of why.

I find this extraordinary. The thread is still there, even when nobody is holding it deliberately.

My mother is in her seventies now. She still enjoys a trip to the coast in late July. She still, without naming it as such, observes something very old.

This week's post is about Crom Dubh - who he was, what the folklore records tell us, and why the August bank holiday tradition of heading to the seaside is probably older than most people realise.

[Read it here]

Bríd libh

Órlagh

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