Hey Reader. In Wales, Lughnasadh goes by another name: Gŵyl Awst (pronounced gwill oust), and like much else in Cymru, it carries its own rhythm and soul. Though it shares echoes with the Irish festival, its heartbeat is a little different, especially depending on where you find yourself.

In Ceredigion (once called Cardiganshire), it isn’t the golden fields of grain that take center stage, but the uplands and their keepers. Here, the celebration is known as ffest y bugeiliad—the shepherd’s feast. Hilltop revels still abound, with contests of strength and bursts of music, but the focus is more on cowherds and shepherds than on farmers. It’s a feast of the hill folk, not the ploughmen.

Down in the valleys and farm country, Gŵyl Awst is marked by a more communal rite: the fedel wenith, or reaping party. Entire communities gather to harvest the fields together. Once the work is done, the bounty is shared—a ritual of mutual aid and deep-rooted fellowship, sealing another season of hard-earned abundance.

In Carmarthenshire, the table groans with a special rice pudding—spiced with bread, raisins, currants, and treacle. Elsewhere, oats rule the feast. One rustic favorite is Siot—crumbled oatcakes steeped in cold buttermilk, humble and hearty.

Naturally, games follow feasting, and many of them are far from innocent. Most stem from old fertility rites and are strictly adults-only. One raucous sport called Rhibo involves six men linking hands to toss couples into the air. Another custom, delightfully named awr ar y gwair ("an hour in the hay"), turns a hayfield into a snare: if you wander in, you might be “captured” by someone of the opposite sex, tied with hay, and only released in exchange for a favour...

Then there’s the caseg fedi, the harvest mare—a braided sheaf made from the last standing stalks of grain. Across Wales and beyond, it’s a game of skill and luck: reapers toss their sickles to bring it down. The one who succeeds is honoured—but only if they can carry the sheaf home dry. A gauntlet of women waits with buckets to douse him. If he makes it back untouched, he earns all the beer he can drink. Fail, and it’s the seat of shame—at the foot of the table.

The caseg fedi is then hung in the rafters, in a barn, or cradled in the fork of a tree. Sometimes, it’s run to a neighbouring farm still mid-harvest and flung at their reapers—a cheeky challenge to keep pace.

In Brecknockshire, Gŵyl Awst calls pilgrims up to the high places. At dawn on August 1st, folk set out for the Beacons, the mountains straddling Carmarthenshire and Glamorgan. Their goal is Little Van Lake, said to be home to the Lady of the Lake. If she appears, she grants healing. Some bring bottles to collect the waters, just in case.

This tradition whispers of a nearly forgotten tale: a goddess of dawn who married a mortal man. Their son, Rhiwatton, learned the healing arts from her, and his descendants became the famed Physicians of Myddfai, tied to the royal house of Dinefwr. In the old Triads, Rhiwatton is described as “of the Yellow Hair”—a solar child. His mother, the Lady of the Lake, appeared but once a year, perhaps always on this day.

Some believe she shares a mythic thread with Tailltiu of Lughnasadh, and even with Athene of the Panathenaea. A festival for the dead, for the harvest, for women who died in giving life, and for the ones who rise again each year with the sun.

This is the basis of my short story - I hope you enjoy!

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🌾 Rhiwatton of the Yellow Hair 🌊

Long before the stones of Dinefwr stood proud against the sky, before Myddfai was anything more than mist and pasture, there was a lake hidden in the fold of the Black Mountain. Llyn y Fan Fach, they called it later, but its true name is older than words.

On the first morning of Gŵyl Awst, the sun lifted gently over the hills, and from the silver glass of the lake stepped a woman. She wore a cloak of light woven from dawn itself, and her eyes held the stillness of time uncounted. Her feet never rippled the water. Her name was not known, for she never gave it—only that she came with the sun, once each year, and would leave before the dew dried.

That day, a shepherd wandering with his dogs saw her. Not in a dream—though for the rest of his life he would question it—but clear as sunrise. He did not fall to his knees or call her goddess. Instead, he greeted her as if she were a traveller. She smiled, and for a time, she stayed.

In a valley no map remembers, they made their home. And in the turning of the seasons, a son was born.

They named him Rhiwatton, a name that held the sound of rustling oats and golden broom. His hair was bright as the first light on water, and though he laughed like any child, there was something ancient in his gaze. His mother taught him what she could before the year turned. How to hear the voice of a stream. How to draw fever from the skin. How to ask permission before picking a plant.

When Gŵyl Awst returned, she vanished with the rising sun.

Each year she returned for just one day. And each year she taught him more. Rhiwatton grew wise, not only in herbs and waters, but in listening—to pain, to land, to silence. He never asked why she came and went. He only waited, learned, and remembered.

When he was a man grown, he walked to the hill fort at Dinefwr and cured the fevered son of a chieftain. The grateful lord offered gold, but Rhiwatton asked for nothing. “Teach your children what you’ve seen today,” he said. “That is enough.”

He married a girl of Myddfai, and in time, his children learned as he had—how to heal with leaf and root, how to balance humours, and how to see the body as the land itself, shaped by wind, wounded by storm, but always able to bloom again.

His line became known as the Physicians of Myddfai, famed across Cymru and beyond. They carried their mother’s knowledge quietly, never claiming the sunlit woman by the lake, only honouring her each Gŵyl Awst by rising before dawn, walking into the hills, and placing their hands on the cool stones by the water.

They say she still comes, just before sunrise on the first of August. Some claim to have seen her just once in their lifetime. She does not speak, nor does she stay, but the waters stir, and the plants seem to lean toward the shore.

And sometimes, when the right herb is picked in the right hour, healing comes faster than expected.

I hope you enjoyed my short story. You'll also be able to find this on my website very soon.

If you’re celebrating, may your harvest be rich, and your hearth warm. 🌻 💙

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