Padraig leaned back on the bench outside the café, his shoulders set against the salt wind, eyes fixed on the horizon where the Atlantic stretched endless and grey. “You know, Maeve,” he began, his voice low and steady, “folk like to think the seasons are just weather, rain one day, sun the next. But here in Ireland, we’ve always known better. The land has its own clock, older than any calendar, and it keeps turning whether we take notice or not.”
He pulled at his pipe, letting the smoke drift. “Take Lúnasa, for one. First of August, when the fields would give up their first sheaves of grain. The old ones marked it with games and feasts, all in honor of Lugh, the bright god of a thousand skills. They say he held the fair for his foster mother, Tailtiu, who gave her life clearing the land so the people might plant. Out of that sacrifice came the tradition — contests of strength, fires on the hills, and the baking of the first loaf from the new wheat. That bread wasn’t just eaten, Maeve. A piece would be set aside, blessed and given back to the earth, to keep the barns safe through winter.”
He shifted, his gaze still far away. “Folk wove little corn dolls, too; bits of straw twisted to hold the spirit of the harvest, kept as tokens for luck in the year ahead. And it wasn’t all solemn either. Deals were struck, young couples found one another, and laughter carried with the smoke of the fires. It was a way of saying thank you for the land, for the labor, for the simple fact of being fed.”
A silence passed before Padraig spoke again, softer now. “And then, not long after, comes the Autumn Equinox. Cónocht an Fhómhair. A day when light and dark stand as equals. Just for a moment, the scales balance. The ancients built places like Loughcrew to catch it, stones lined up so the sunrise would strike carvings of sunbursts and stars, reminders that even the sky bows to the rhythm.”
He tapped his pipe against the stone wall. “For them, it was more than cleverness. It was wisdom. They saw in that balance the truth of things: that life holds both plenty and want, joy and sorrow, light and shadow. And you can’t have one without the other. At the equinox, they gave thanks, knowing the darker days were coming. They gathered what they could, and they prepared their hearts for the winter ahead.”
Padraig turned back to Maeve, a glimmer of something like kindness softening the lines of his face. “That’s the lesson of it, if you’re listening. The harvest, the balance, the long nights that follow, they’re not just the turning of the year. They’re the turning of us, too. Reminders to be grateful, to take what’s given, and to endure what must come. The world keeps its own clock, Maeve. We’ve no choice but to walk to its tick.”
The sea answered him with a crash against the rocks below, as if to say the old man had spoken true.
Read Threads of Passage to meet Padraig Doyle and enjoy more of his great wisdom. His story will be told in Echoes of Passage in the spring of 2026. Threads of Passage is available at Amazon.com
