*Ø* Blogmanac August 15 | Feast of the Assumption (Roman Catholic)

On St Mary’s Day, sunshine
Brings much good wine.
Traditional weather proverb for today, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Roman Catholic tradition

On Lady Day the latter,
The cold comes on the water.
English traditional proverb

Feast of the Assumption
“ ... celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church to commemorate the death of the Virgin Mary and the assumption of her body into Heaven when it was reunited to her soul. It can be traced back to the 6th century and in 1950 Pope Pius XII declared that the Corporal Assumption was thenceforth a dogma of the Church.”
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

The declaration in 1950 by Pius XII that this doctrine was divinely revealed fascinated and even excited Carl Jung, who saw great symbolic significance in it. Jung saw it as giving completeness to the Trinity, the tripartite God, whch was incomplete because four, the number of sides in a square, has a harmonious perfection.

Mary’s Bannock
To make the Moilean Moire (Gaelic: ‘Mary’s Bannock’) which is traditional today:
Pluck ears of new corn and sun dry … Husk by hand and grind ears with stones. Knead flour on a sheepskin, make into a cake and toast on a fire of rowan-wood (magical wood).

A piece of this cake must be eaten by all family members starting with youngest and moving up to oldest. All must then walk sunwise around the fire. The embers must be gathered into a pot and carried sunwise around the farm and fields.
Kightly, Charles, The Perpetual Almanack of Folklore, 1987

Assumption of the Holy Virgin (or, Dormition Day) Markopoulo, Greece
In the village of Markopoulo on the Island of Kefalonia, a festival is held. Small, harmless snakes with a black cross on their heads appear, only to vanish again after the festivities until the following year. Or, so it is said.

Kampos on the Island of Patmos
In the evening, lively festivities are celebrated in the open, with local folk musical instruments, folk dances and a delicious meal consisting of either fresh fish or baby goat meat.

Tutbury hunters' procession, Middle Ages
In old England, on the Feast of the Assumption, the wood-master and rangers of Needwood forest started the two-day festivities by meeting at Berkley Lodge, in the forest, to arrange for the dinner that was given to them on this day at Tutbury Castle. The buck they were allowed for the feast was killed, as another that was their annual present to the prior of Tutbury.

They would ride into town in procession, each carrying a green bough, and one bearing the buck's head, with a piece of fat fastened to each antler. The town's minstrels accompanied them. When they reached the centre of town the hunters blew their horns, then all went to the church and each paid a penny offering. Mass celebrated, then a grand dinner prepared for them in the castle. The prior gave them 30 shillings towards the feast. The following day there were further festivities.

Modern morris dancers at Tutbury Castle

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On St Mary's Day
The great wind and earthquake marvellous,
That greatly gan the people all affraye,
So dreadful was it then, and perilous.
John Harding, in his chronicle for 1361, of the English earthquake of August 15, 1361