Ancient Cornish name:
Miz-east, harvest month.

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Jewel for the month: Sardonyx. Insures happiness in marriage.

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August First. (Loaf-mass Day.)

Day of offering first fruits, when a loaf was given to the priests in place of the first fruits.

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At Latter Lammas, i.e. never.

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The August gold of earth.

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All things rejoiced beneath the sun, the weeds,

The river, and the cornfields, and the reeds;

The willow-leaves that glanced in the light breeze,

And the firm foliage of the larger trees.

Shelley.

Of Gardens.

In August come plums of all sorts in fruit, pears, apricots, berberies, filberds, musk melons, monkshoods of all colour.

Bacon.

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August 1st. (Snipe shooting may begin.)

Snipe's song: "Don't take" local name for Snipe.

Nipcake, don't take,
Don't take, don't take;
Gie the lasses milk and bread,
And gie the laddies don't take,
Don't take, don't take.

Scottish Midlands.

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August 5th. (Old Style.)

St. James's Day. Oyster Day.

Who eats oysters on St. James's Day will never want.

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Wheat sways heavy, oats are airy,

Barley bows a graceful head,

Short and small shoots up canary;

Each of these is some one's bread—

Bread for man or bread for beast,

Or at very least

A bird's savoury feast.

C. Rossetti.

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It is always windy in barley harvests; it blows off the heads for the poor.

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On Thursday at three
Look out and you'll see
What Friday will be.

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No weather is ill
If the wind be still.

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For morning rain leave not your journey.

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Never a fisherman med there be,
If fishes could hear as well as see.

Kent.

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If the sage tree thrives and grows,
The master's not master, and that he knows.

Warwick.

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A garden must be looked into, and dressed as a body.

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To smell wild thyme will renew spirits and energy in long walks under an August sun.

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Friday's a day as'll have his trick,
The fairest or foulest day o' the wick.

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Dry August and warm
Doth harvest no harm.

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Put in the sickles and reap,
For the morning of harvest is red,
And the long, large ranks of the corn,
Coloured and clothed as the morn,
Stand thick in the fields and deep,
For them that faint to be fed.

Swinburne.

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Summer is purple, and drowsed with repletion.

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Now yellow harvests wave on every field,
Now bending boughs the hoary chestnut yield,
Now loaded trees resign their annual store,
And on the ground the mellow fruitage pour.

Beattie. (From "Virgil.")

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August 16th. (St. Roche's Day.)

Formerly celebrated in England as a general Harvest Home.

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Good huswives in summer will save their own seeds

Against the next year, as occasion needs;

One seed for another to make an exchange,

With fellowly neighbourhood seemeth not strange.

Tusser.

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On one side is a field of drooping oats,

Through which the poppies show their scarlet coats.

Keats.

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August 24th. (St. Bartholomew's Day.)

If St. Bartholomew's Day be misty, the morning beginning with a hoar frost, then cold weather will soon ensue, and a sharp winter attended with many biting frosts.

Thomas Passenger.

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St. Bartlemy's mantle wipes dry
All the tears that St. Swithun can cry.

Portugal.

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...Happy Britannia!...

Rich is thy soil, and merciful thy clime;

Thy streams unfailing in the Summer's drought;

Unmatch'd thy guardian oaks; thy vallies float

With golden waves; and on thy mountains flocks

Bleat numberless; while roving round their sides,

Bellow the blackening herds in lusty droves.

Beneath thy meadows glow, and rise unquell'd

Against the mower's scythe.

Thomson.

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