I'm almost certain it would be more usual to pronounce this 'LOO-na-sa', as in Lúnasa, the Irish word for the month of August. However, there are almost certainly as many pronunciations of this festival as there are spellings. Brian Friel's most successful play was entitled Dancing at Lughnasa.

In Ireland, we still have a holiday around this time, although we now call it the August Bank Holiday. We also have a holiday coinciding with Samhain (Halloween), but we only recently fell into step with the rest of the world in celebrating Bealtaine (May Day).