The rites of Lughnassadh are named, unsurprisingly, after the Irish deity Lugh. Among Lugh's greatest deeds was his role in the overthrow of a tyrannical king named Bres, who had been chosen more for looking the part than being an effective leader. Bres repeatedly insulted the other deities, such as granting the great harper Aengus Og little more than bread and water for performing before him. As the rumbles of discontent grew, the supporters of the previous king, Nuada, gathered and later revolted against the rule of Bres, and Lugh arrived at just the right moment, demonstrating all the skills considered appropriate for an Irishman at the time, and in the ensuing battle flung a sling stone that reversed the evil eye of their most mighty of enemies, Balor, causing Balor to slay his own army rather than that of Nuada. This led to a longstanding theme of Lughnassadh as the celebration of the sometimes necessary work of the warrior in protecting their people from the evils of the world, including those of would-be tyrants. Any relevance of this theme to current events is left as an exercise for the reader.
Musically, the most interesting aspect is probably the rhythm. The quick almost-grace-notes help emphasize and ornament certain syllables to keep things lively. Melodically, this is also a bit challenging due to jumping around quite a bit, leading me to wonder while recording the vocals what kind of fool would write it that way. Because one of the skills Lugh demonstrated was the harp, I decided to use that as the main accompanying instrument, which is always a good challenge for me as a relative novice on that instrument.
All works are copyright by yours truly, but may be distributed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 4.0. That means, in short, you can use them yourself and your grove, and play the song to your heart's content both in private and in public, but must give credit where credit is due, and if you're planning on selling something involving this song we need to talk about that first.
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