Lisa

Today is Michaelmas, or the feast day of St Michael. I’m fascinated by the history, lore and legends surrounding this holiday; let’s learn together. St Michael was highly esteemed in the Middle Ages and played many roles: warrior, psychopomp, defender of souls against the devil whom he was often depicted battling. His feast day was known as Michaeles Maesse. As Eleanor Parker writes in her excellent book Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon Year, “He was a hero to suit the Anglo-Saxon imagination. His feast was a high point in the church year … while an Anglo-Saxon homily speaks of St Michael himself as a harvester: ‘the holy archangel St Michael, the prosperous sower of Christ's fields and the reaper bearing the fruit of the bright lands, who fills his Lord's barns with the purest wheat.’” In England, Michaelmas was a quarter day, or “settling day” when rents were paid and accounts settled, when great hiring fairs were held and farm laborers, their terms of service having expired, went in search of new jobs and lodgings. This aspect of Michaelmas may have been slyly referenced in Sir Gawain & the Green Knight. Shortly before Gawain begins his journey, he sees the “Meghelmas mone” or Michaelmas moon, the full moon of harvest. It reminds him he has an account to settle with the Green Knight. Traditionally, blackberries were not eaten after Michaelmas Day because the devil was said to have kicked, trampled or spat on them. When the devil fell from heaven he landed in a blackberry bush, making the berries too wet or sour to eat. Landlords were given geese at Michaelmas, and the eating of geese became as indelibly linked with the holiday as turkey now is with Christmas. In some places this was seen as bringing good luck: Jane Austen wrote in a letter of eating a goose in hopes of improved book sales.