09/06/2025
Welsh Folklore of September: Witches’ Frolics and Harvest Mares 🌾🍎
September in Wales was once known as the “reaping month.”
It was thought to be a lucky time for marriage, and around the 14th, people went a-nutting – gathering hazelnuts to share at the village Mabsant festival.
The fierce gales of the season were blamed on witches, and nicknamed “the witches’ frolics.”
Farmers looked to the weather for signs: three cold days in mid-September meant no October frosts; a dry month promised “a cellar full of cwrw da” (good ale), while a misty copse foretold a mottled harvest.
Most famous of all was Y Gaseg Fedi – the harvest mare. A handful of corn was left standing, bound into a sheaf. At the harvest supper, reapers competed to cut it down by hurling sickles, sometimes dangerously close to onlookers.
Whoever claimed it carried it proudly to the farmhouse, dodging buckets of water thrown by laughing maidens. Victorious, he was hailed as the hero of the feast.
Elsewhere, the custom went by other names: Y Wrach (the witch), Neck in Pembrokeshire, and Ysgub-y-Gloch (the bell sheaf) in North Wales.
And when the orchards were stripped, tradition said to leave three, seven, or nine apples hanging on each tree – an offering to ensure next year’s crop would be heavy and sweet.
