In one form or another: the livestream from Saint-Eugène isn't working and I am going back to bed for an hour and a half or so.
Yesterday was Lammas, as Dr Eleanor Parker reminded her readers; unfortunately I didn't look at her email until this morning while Holy Mass stuttered away. (Her blog, A Clerk of Oxford, is here, and her Patreon page is here.)
... To understand what this 'bread-mass' was, the closest parallel to the name Lammas is probably Candlemas, the Anglo-Saxon name for the Feast of the Purification, whose Old English name (candelmæsse) must relate to the custom of bringing candles to church to be blessed on that day. We can also get a little further by comparing the earliest allusion to Lammas, in the Old English Martyrology, probably dating to the ninth century. This doesn't actually use the name Lammas, but it refers to 1st August (in passing, as a date reference) as the day of hlafsenunga, 'blessing of bread'. In this word senung is related to the verb segnian, 'to make the sign of the cross' (from Latin signare) so we have another name which implies some kind of liturgical custom of blessing, but no further details....
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Am listening, while I prepare to complete my morning ablutions, to Duo van Vilet, eh, a Spotify 'discovery'-- a viola and an accordion. Benjamin Britten's Lachrymae (Reflections on a song of John Dowland), op 48 at the moment. No Duo van Vilet at YouTube, beyond a few seconds of marketing for the their album, but the Britten.
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