August

"He had named him [August] for that month when the year stands still and blue day follows blue day, when for a while he stopped looking at the sky." --from Little, Big, by John Crowley.

August 1ST (or Lammas Day, one of the regular quarter-days in Scotland, and a half-quarter day in England, was the day of offering the first-fruits of the harvest in Anglo-Saxon times; the term comes from Old English hlafmaesse, the loaf-mass) is already past, and much of the traditional lore for August concerns reaping and gathering:

August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the harvest home is borne.

Dry August and warm
Doth harvest no harm.

None in August should over land,
In December none over the sea.

Whoever wed in August be,
Many a change is sure to see.

The boughs do shake and the bells do ring,
So merrily comes our harvest in,
Our harvest in, our harvest in,
So Merrily comes our harvest in.
We've ploughed, we've sowed,
We've reaped, we've mowed,
We've got our harvest in.