Gathering Day is a Welsh festival of the summer solstice, so called because it was the time when druids gathered mistletoe and other plants for use in winter. The energy of plants harvested at Midsummer was believed to be very potent, hence herbs were collected then for medicinal use; these herbs included mugwort and vervain.
This festival marks the first of the three harvests of the year and the time for collecting young tender vegetables such as peas, beans and early fruits. It is also the time for the collection of honey.
Read more about Gathering Day: Historical References
Famous quotes containing the words gathering and/or day:
“And from a cliff top is proclaimed
The gathering of the souls for birth,
The trial by existence named,
The obscuration upon earth.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“When a man grows old his joy
Grows more deep day after day,
His empty heart is full at length
But he has need of all that strength
Because of the increasing Night
That opens her mystery and fright.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)