Festivals in May

The Northern nations have many festivals in May because the weather turns to a suitable temperature and Mother Nature turns on her most beautiful colours and fragrances. For example, the Macedonians, on the Orthodox Feast Day of St George (May 6), dance the hora and perform various ancient rituals and games associated with eggs, as we do at Easter.

At Helston, Cornwall, on May 8, the townsfolk have for centuries celebrated Furry Day, with dances, songs and rites whose origins and purpose have long been lost in the mists of time.

The English for two hundred years or more celebrated Shick-Shack Day (or, Oak Apple Day) on May 29, the birthday of King Charles II who brought back monarchy to Britain after the strict Puritan regime of Oliver Cromwell.

May, however, is known especially for May Day, the first day of the month, which in olden times was celebrated as the great, colourful Spring festival, with May poles that were danced around, and fairs at which dramas, often featuring Robin Hood and his “merrie men”, were performed. Morris dancers were and still are a delightful part of the English May Day. 

In the Celtic tradition, now popular with neo-Pagans, the day is called Beltane (or Beltaine). The Scots used to light bel-fires on the hilltops and drive their cattle through the flames in a ritual which was either to destroy vermin and protect the cattle from disease, or to prepare the beasts for sacrifice.

May Day commenced in ancient Rome, with youths going into the fields, dancing and singing in honour of Flora, goddess of fruits and flowers. The goddess Bona Dea, too, was celebrated at around this time, in women-only rites. There is also a connection with the ancient pagan feast of Beltane, the first day of May, when bel-fires were lit on the hilltops and cattle were driven through the flames, either to protect them from disease or as a pre-sacrifice ritual of purification.

In recent years, May Day became an annual celebration in many countries not so much of the glories of Spring but of the traditions of the labour movement. This is because on May 1, 1886 in America, workers held the first nationwide strike, struggling to win an eight-hour working day. Three years later, in 1889, the anniversary was held as the first International Labor Day. See May 1, 1891 for the first May Day procession in Australia, at Barcaldine, Queensland during the Shearers' Strike of 1891. On May Day, still, in towns and cities all over the world, workers’ organizations stage rallies and marches. In the United Kingdom, May Day is May 1, but a public holiday is held on the first Monday in May.

May is Jewish American Heritage Month

 

'The Beltaine Blessing'

Am Beannachadh Bealltain

 

Bless, O Threefold true and bountiful,

Myself, my spouse, and my children,

My tender children and their beloved mother at their head.

On the fragrant plain, on the gay mountain sheiling,

On the fragrant plain, on the gay mountain sheiling.

 

Everything within my dwelling or in my possession,

All kine and crops, all flocks and corn,

From Hallow Eve to Beltane Eve,

With goodly progress and gentle blessing,

From sea to sea, and every river mouth,

From wave to wave, and base of waterfall.

 

Be the Three Persons taking possession of all to me belonging,

Be the sure Trinity protecting me in truth;

Oh! satisfy my soul in the words of Paul,

And shield my loved ones beneath the wing of Thy glory,

Shield my loved ones beneath the wing of Thy glory.

Bless everything and every one,

Of this little household by my side;

Place the cross of Christ on us with the power of love,

Till we see the land of joy,

Till we see the land of joy.

 

What time the kine [cattle] shall forsake the stalls,

What time the sheep shall forsake the folds,

What time the goats shall ascend to the mount of mist,

May the tending of the Triune follow them,

May the tending of the Triune follow them.

 

Thou Being who didst create me at the beginning,

Listen and attend me as I bend the knee to Thee,

Morning and evening as is becoming in me,

In Thine own presence, O God of life,

In Thine own presence, O God of life.

From the Carmina Gadelica, a collection of Scottish folklore collected by
Alexander Carmichael in the 19th century

 

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Maypoles

Once almost every village in England had a maypole, but in 1644 the killjoy Puritans had them all destroyed. With the Restoration of the monarchy in 1661 which brought renewed appreciation of old folk ways, May Day again had a place in English society and the maypoles were re-erected.

The most famous of these was a 134-feet monster in Little Drury Lane, which thenceforth was known as Maypole Alley. After just four years, by 1717 it was rotten and had to go - it was bought by Sir Isaac Newton and erected at Wanstead, in Essex as a support to the new reflecting telescope (124 feet in length), which had been presented to the Royal Society by the French astronomer Christiaan Huygens, the Dutch mathematician and physicist. In 1800 it led an anonymous author to ask humorously: “What’s not destroy’d by Time’s relentless hand? Where’s Troy? — and where’s the May-pole in the Strand?”

The moon tree is often shown in pictures … In one Assyrian picture it has ribbons like our Maypole. Perhaps a dance may have taken place around the tree in those faraway. days, like the dance that is still performed round the Maypole on May Day. In such a dance the ribbons would be interwoven, as in our own dance, to represent the decking of the bare tree with brightcoloured leaves and flowers and fruits, all gifts of the moon goddess, giver of fertility.
Esther Harding, Woman’s Mysteries, p. 45

Undershaft

The English loved dancing around the maypole on May Day. A London parish, Undershaft, was so called because it was located around a church which had an annual maypole erected, which was taller then its steeple. It was even mentioned by Chaucer (c. 1343 - 1400):

Right well aloft, and high ye beare your head,
As ye would beare the great shaft of Cornhill.

A twelve-metre-long pole at Basing-lane near St Paul’s Cathedral was fabled to be the jousting staff of Gerard the Giant. Another pole, at Little Drury Lane, was 40 metres high.

Barwick in Elmet, UK

The town of Barwick in Elmet, UK, is said to have the tallest Maypole in Britain – around 87 feet. Every three years it is raised, on the Tuesday after the Spring Bank Holiday at Barwick in Elmet, W.Yorks. Ladder parties raise it without the aid of modern machinery. A ceremony of Lowering the Maypole is held on Easter Monday, and the pole is raised again on the Spring Bank Holiday. You can see this maypole in photographs old and new at the Barwick Historical Society web-site.

Maypoles in the news

May King and Queen

In the 19^th century at Finglass, near Dublin, Ireland, ancient May Day traditions were still extant. The best maypole dancers were chosen King And Queen, and after the dance everyone went to the local pub to drink whiskey-punch, ale and porter and eat ham, beef and cakes. They sang:

Ye lads and lasses all today,
To Finglass let us haste away;
With hearts so light and dresses gay
To dance around the May-pole.

Some May Day folklore snippets

Chimney sweeps’ festival

May Day was in olden times the first day of the London chimney-sweeps’ festival, a three day revel in which chimney sweeps wore gold paper and flowers on their clothes and hats. They also had their shovels and faces lined with pink paint and white chalk. They chose a grandly-dressed lord and lady from some other profession, the lady often being a boy in extravagant female attire. 

As part of chimney-sweeps’ revels it was customary for a boy to move about in a framework of branches covered in leaves. He was called Jack-in-the-green. Jack, a Green Man sometimes also showed up in London suburbs, hailing from the country, amusing the public with rustic dancing. He carried a flower-decked walking stick.

Bonfires

From time immemorial, bonfires have been associated with May Eve and May Day in Britain. Originally dedicated to the pagan solar god Bel, or Balder, in Ireland these fires were once called Balder’s balefires. Until the nineteenth century, May Day bonfires were still lit in the Scottish highlands, Ireland and the Isle of Man, among the peasantry.

Guinevere’s Maying, by John Collier

A-Maying

In Britain it used to be customary today to go a-Maying, or gathering flowers and branches, particularly of the May bush.

May Queen

In old Britain on May Day, folk elected the Queen of the May, a pretty girl to preside over the day’s events, which usually meant sitting in a garlanded bower all day and being admired by the whole village.

The old British (and French) custom the Queen of the May today came from the ancient Roman veneration of Flora, goddess of flowers and youthful pleasures, for whom a sexually licentious festival was held at this time of year. In some villages, children carried around a finely-dressed doll called the Lady of the May. With little copies of maypoles, they went about the village asking for a halfpenny.

May cows
Up until the early nineteenth century in Britain, on May Day milkmaids would dress up a cow in garlands. They, too, dressed in flowers and danced around the cow. In earlier times they were accompanied by a man wearing a bulky frame on which were hung flowers, silver flagons and dishes. The silverware was rented out at an hourly rate by pawnbrokers.

May cosmetics
On the morning of May Day, Scottish lasses used to go out early and wash their faces in dew, a sure potion for preserving beauty. In Edinburgh the favourite place to do this was Arthur’s Seat. Similarly, at Anhalth, Germany, girls did the same to get rid of freckles.

Royal May Day
In medieval England, even the king and queen joined in with the May Day festivities. Chaucer wrote that early on May Day Forth goeth all the court, both most and least, to fetch the flowers fresh.

May scapegoat
In old Scotland and Ireland, May Day rituals were, among other things, an attempt to stop the spread of witchcraft. Whoever received a piece of cake marked with charcoal served as scapegoat for witches, becoming a figure of terror and being pelted with eggshells. (By way of comparison, in Germany it was customary to throw eggshells at a disagreeable stranger.)

Bannock rolling
Up till about a hundred years ago, Beltane (the old pagan name for May Day) was celebrated in Scotland with bonfires to which eggs and dairy products were brought as sacrifices. Beltane was also celebrated with bannocks (cakes) which were marked with a cross and rolled downhill. It might be that the custom of Easter egg rolling came from this practice, as Easter is about this time of year.  

Garland Dressing, Charlton-on-Oxmoor, Oxfordshire, UK
A wooden cross is bedecked with Yew and Box tree leaves.

Callander custom
At Callander, a town in Perthshire, Scotland, on Beltane (May Day) boys used to meet on the moors, where they lit a fire and cooked a custard and bannock cake. After eating the custard they divided the bannock, one piece of which was marked with charcoal. Whoever drew this slice had to jump through the fire three times, a relic of ancient bonfire (bone-fire) sacrifices to Bel the god of Beltane.

Spare my lambs
In the Scottish highlands on Beltane, herdsmen used to each take a piece of cake - on each were nine knobs dedicated to a deity. Each man broke off a knob, flinging it over his shoulder while saying “This I give to thee, preserve thou my horses”, (sheep, cows, etc). After that they used the same rites for wild beasts: “This I give to thee, O fox! Spare thou my lambs”.  Afterwards they dined. When they were finished, what was left was hidden, and next Sunday finished.

Penzance May Day
At the stroke of midnight ushering in the new May Day in Penzance, Cornwall, young men traditionally went around town with drums, violins and other musical instruments. They called on farmhouses where they were provided with junket, tea and country cake (composed of cream, flour, sugar and currants). Then followed a dance and the gathering of May bush.  

Sugar and oil
Last century the custom for Italian girls on May Day was to dress up and go from house to house singing special May songs. The songs wished: the pleasures of youth; a long life full of love; that all one eats would turn to sugar and oil; that one’s clothes would never wear out; that St Antony of Padua would guard the hearer and that St Catherine of Siena might intercede for the hearer.

Drinking on Wrekin Hill, Wellington, England
Until the1820s, people assembled on the four Sundays after May Day to drink the health of “all friends around the Wrekin”. There was so much drunkenness and licentiousness that the magistrates banned the custom.

Tall stories
On May 1 at Temple Stowerby, England, they traditionally tell tales on the village green. The prizes have long been one grindstone and twenty razor hones, as well as cheap whetstones; all are for the noble art of lying: the more improbable the yarn, the greater the honour. Once the Bishop of Carlisle told the crowd “I have never told a lie in my life”, when suddenly the crowd threw the grindstone into his carriage.

Printers’ Festival
In seventeenth-century London there was an annual May Day procession for printing guild members, with officials showing themselves off bedecked with ribbons and flowers They used to proceed to the Stationers Hall, where a feast was held, followed by a highly involved procession and rituals in the hall.

May music
At Penzance, in Cornwall, on May Day, youths used to make May music, played on a tube of May bush bark, like a whistle. The lads would then bring home the May, by dawn, with whistles, drums and violins playing as they danced. Following all this merriment, they actually went to work.

Welsh May Day
In old Wales, in the weeks before May Day, a girl would collect ribbons to give to a boy on the day, and also to decorate a white linen shirt that she would wear. One young person collected watches and silver to make a bright shiny garland which was left either with the most generous donor of silverware, or the town’s most generous master.

The cadi
In old Wales, on May Day, folk used to assemble in local taverns. There, the chief orator, clown and money collector was called the cadi. He was dressed in petticoats and wore a hideous mask, or blackface with red cheeks and lips. People celebrated in groups of thirteen, wearing decorated shirts over their clothes, and decorated hats.

Hitchin May
In Hitchin, Hertfordshire, England, on May Days long ago, people used to march in procession starting at 3 am, the men singing the mayers’ song, the second verse of which went:

We have been rambling all this night,
 And almost all this day,
An d now returned back again,
  We have brought you a branch of May.  

People used to place branches of May bush on doors of houses in the town. If any servant had given offence to any of the mayers, a branch of elder and a bunch of nettles were left instead, so servants used to rise early to look for a May branch.

The mayers were dressed as characters such as black people, lords, ladies and hunchbacks. A regular couple of costumed characters were Mad Moll and her husband. Moll’s husband would chase with a broom anyone who insulted his rag-woman wife.

Milkmaids’ holiday
On May Day in eighteenth century London, milkmaids used to take about town their garland ( a pyramidal frame covered in silver plate rented from pawnbrokers), with flowers and a milk urn, placed on a wooden horse and carried by two men. The maids made music and cried “Milk below” up at the London houses.

Birchen boughs
In old Cheshire on May Day, young men used to place birchen boughs over the doors of their mistresses, but over the door of a scold (virago) they would place an alder bough.

La na Beal tina
Such was the old name of May Day (or, Beltane - day of the god Bel or Beal’s fire) in Ireland, where young men and women marched, two abreast, the men dressed in white or gaily-coloured vests and ribbons, the dressed-up young women carrying holly bushes. All day long there was the joyous music of fife, bagpipe, tambourine and drum, not to mention clowns, dancing, and plenty of drinking.

Cross-quarter day
Beltane, or, May Day, is one of the cross-quarter days of the calendar. These fall half way between the solstices and equinoxes. Beltane is bang between the March Equinox and the June Solstice. The others are Imbolc (February 1), Lammas (August 1) and Samhain (November 1).

The bone-fire
In old Ireland on the ancient pagan Beltane (May Day), boys would collect May bush and bones from tanneries and abattoirs, to burn in the bonfires of Beltane, which echoes the ancient Beltane human sacrifices. There is a saying, “I will drag you like a horse’s head to the bone-fire”. At about dusk the boys made their fires, and later jumped through them.

Jeux Floreaux
May Day commemorations began with the festival of Flora, goddess of flowers, in ancient Rome. This custom was echoed in pre-Revolutionary France, with the Jeux Floreaux (or Floral Games, a floralia), starting in 1323 when seven men of rank invited the troubadours of Provençe to come the next year for competitions in balladry. In 1540, Lady Clémence Isaure bequeathed a fortune for the provision of gold and silver flowers as prizes.    

More on Jeux Floreaux and May Day in Robert Chambers, (Ed.), The Book of Days: A miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar, etc, W & R Chambers, London, 1881 (1879 Edition is online and 1869 edition here with CD-ROM available; See also The English Year: A Personal Selection from Chambers' Book of Days)

For the May
At least until the late nineteenth century, if you were strolling the streets of a French town on May Day you were likely to see little girls dressed up in white and garlanded with flowers, in memory of the Virgin Mary, the patron of the month of May. The girls would sit still on a church porch begging of passers For the May, to which people gave offerings.

Elf cakes
On May Day at Oberberg, Germany, in olden times, people laid beside streams eggs for the woodland elves, who used them for making cakes, or so it is said.

Cow slapping
In old Westphalia, Germany, cowherds on May Day used to drive their cattle by slapping them with branches of rowan (which the English and Scottish called the witch-tree because it protected from witchcraft). The cowherds would eat eggs while doing so, and use the eggshells to decorate the branches. Eggs are charms against witches, or, so it is said.

Hens don’t sit
In Poland there is an old and strong superstition that chickens born today will be misshapen, so farmers do not set broody hens. In some districts this belief is so strong that it applies for a whole year to the day of the week on which May Day fell. In America and England it was customary not to set broody hens at all in the month of May.

May songs
At Heidelberg, Germany, students traditionally brought May in with singing.

Blow ins
In parts of Germany, trumpet players traditionally 'blow in' the month of May. 

Cologne water
In old Germany, May water was supposed to have magical powers. At Altenrath near Cologne, it was traditional for children to clean the local stream at midnight, strew it with flowers and sing from door to door “The stream has been swept” (Bonne gefaech, Bonne gefaech).

Apprentices of Bochum
In 1398, at Bochum, Germany, Count Engelbert thanked the town’s apprentices for their help in settling one of his feuds by allowing them to fell an oak from his forest each year and to use the proceeds for a May Day celebration. Apprentices have a procession in which they wear traditional peaked hats and blue and white sashes.

Up the hill
In some parts of Germany, May 1 is traditionally the day on which cattle are driven up to higher pastures with the coming of warmer weather. In other areas the time for this is Whitsuntide, around the seventh Sunday after Easter.

Tag der Arbeit
In Germany, as in much of the rest of the world, today is not only May Day but also Labour Day, which the Germans call Tag der Arbeit. In 1919 the National Assembly in Weimar made it a public holiday.

Men’s outing day
In some parts of Germany, May Day is a day for men’s outings. In villages of southern and central Germany, groups of young bachelors form into groups called burschenschaften and enjoy parties together. They erect a maypole which they must guard from raids by men from other villages keen to win the district prize for best maypole (der Maibaum).  A May wreath is suspended from its top, containing sweets and sausages as inducements for the young men to climb.

The pole is the hub of May Day activities such as dancing, athletics and even horseback tilting at a wreath (Krantzechen). The winner of this is the May King, the loser the May Boy.

Topfschlagen
In the German town of Thuringia on May Day, girls traditionally try to hit a pot while blindfolded (Topfschlagen).

Young men used to make miniature maypoles out of birch twigs and place them outside the homes of their beloved. In some villages the girls were even “sold”, in a mock auction.

May running
In Antdorf, Bavaria, May running (Mailaufen) still takes place on the first Sunday in May every three years. A group of boys sits with two brooms and a lantern on a bench in a meadow. A party of girls, three fewer in number than the boys, rushes the bench and each selects a boy by the hand. The three boys not chosen must dance with the brooms or lantern.

Hobby Horse (Obby Oss) Parade, Padstow, Cornwall, UK  

Formerly all the respectable people kept the anniversary decorated with the choicest flowers, but some unlucky day a number of rough characters from a distance joined it, and committed some sad assaults on old and young – spoiling all their nice summer clothes, and covering their faces and persons with smut. From that time – fifty years since – the procession is formed of the lowest.
George Rawlings, September 1, 1865; on the Obby Oss parade
Robert Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England, 1903, 3rd edition

Every May Day since time immemorial the people of Padstow, Cornwall have enjoyed their Hobby Horse (or, Obby Oss) parade. The first written reference to this ancient procession of the Obby Oss was written in 1502. The Hobby Horse might come from ancient fertility rites (horses are a potent symbol; see Epona, the Celtic goddess of horses) or from the legend of the Cornish saint, Petroc (f.d. June 4), who led a monster into the ocean as banishment.

Preceded by white-clad men (teazers) is the horse, forty kilos of stick, cloth and horse’s head with big red eyes and snapping teeth. The men prepare for their singing procession for days before and sing an ancient song with special words that change for each householder they are serenading ...
Read on at May 1 in the Book of Days

Bees in May
If bees swarm and leave in May, you’ll get good honey that year. You are allowed by custom to follow them over anyone’s land and claim them when they rest. You must, however, make a beating sound on a metal utensil. This will also make the bees stop.
Hillman, Tusser Redivivus, 1710 (Kightly, Charles, The Perpetual Almanack of Folklore, Thames and Hudson, London, 1987)

O’Donoghue’s white horses
O’Donoghue’s white horses is a picturesque old expression for the foamy, choppy waves which come on a windy day. O’Donoghue, an Irish hero who once walked across the ocean and disappeared, reappears every seventh year on May Day, and is seen gliding over the lakes of Killarney, to celestial music, on his favourite white horse. Preceding him are fairies strewing flowers in his path.

Robin Hood of the May
In England, particularly in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the people were often entertained on May Day by performers acting stories of the life of Robin Hood and Maid Marian. The people of the village often acted out the parts of the outlaw, his lady and the merry men themselves, with a distinct set of actions, as well as dancing round the maypole.

More on Robin Hood May Day games in Robert Chambers, (Ed.), The Book of Days: A miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar, etc, W & R Chambers, London, 1881 (1879 Edition is online and 1869 edition here with CD-ROM available; See also The English Year: A Personal Selection from Chambers' Book of Days)

Unreason
In Scotland, as in England, Morris dancing and Robin Hood plays were very popular on May Day. The people of pre-Reformation Scotland also enjoyed acting out the plays called The Abbot of Inobedience, or Unreason, satirising religion, and a drama called Queen of the May. The actors were chosen by a village committee, on forfeit of a fine for those who didn’t want to act.

Maid Marian Drag
Originally, Maid Marian was a character in the old May games and Morris dances, usually portrayed as Queen of the May. As time went by and Robin Hood plays became associated with May Day revels, Maid Marian became Robin Hood’s lover. Her part was usually played by a man in female costume.

Ram Feast
In the “Ploy Field” at Holne, Dartmoor, England, on the morning of May Day, it used to be the custom to catch and roast  a ram, complete with fleece. As it was said to be good luck to eat a slice, the villagers scrambled for the meat. More recently at Kingsteignton, Devon, a similar custom has been practised on Whit Monday, the day after Whitsunday.

Unlucky weddings
From as early as Roman times comes the tradition mentioned by Ovid, and still prevalent in Europe, that May is an unlucky month in which to be married. This is probably because in Rome this was the month for the festivals of Bona Dea (the goddess of chastity), and the feasts of the dead called Lemuralia.

May’s Mab
It is said by some that the Roman god Hermes (Mercury) named the month of May after his mother, Maia. She was one of the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades. The Irish Queen of the Celts, Medb (or Maeve) was a representation of the Roman goddess. Medb was also Shakespeare’s Fairy Queen, Mab, whose sacred plant is the hawthorn, or May bush.

Sproutkale
An old Saxon name for the month of May was Sproutkale, indicating vigorous plant growth in this, the last Spring month in the Northern Hemisphere. 

May Eve (April 30) customs and folklore at the Book of Days

Index of articles on folklore and other topics

Folklore, customs, pre-Christian origins of: 

More on May Day, by Mike Nichols

May poems and folklore

Otley Maypole website

'First of May' song by Jonathan Coulton (adults only)

The Shepheardes Calender:

Ianuarye	Februarie	March	Aprill