A
Celebration of
MAY DAY
by Mike Nichols
“Perhaps it’s just as well that you won’t be here
...
to be offended by the sight of our May Day celebrations.”
—Lord Summerisle to Sgt. Howie from The Wicker Man
There are four great festivals of the Pagan Celtic year and the modern
Witches’ calendar, as well. The two greatest of these are Halloween
(the beginning of winter) and May Day (the beginning of summer). Being
opposite each other on the wheel of the year, they separate the year
into halves. Halloween (also called Samhain) is the Celtic New Year
and is generally considered the more important of the two, though May
Day runs a close second. Indeed, in some areas—notably Wales—it
is considered “the great holiday”.
May Day ushers in the fifth month of the modern calendar year, the month
of May. This month is named in honor of the Goddess Maia, originally
a Greek mountain nymph, later identified as the most beautiful of the
Seven Sisters, the Pleiades. By Zeus, she is also the mother of Hermes,
God of magic. Maia’s parents were Atlas and Pleione, a sea nymph.
The old Celtic name for May Day is Beltane (in its most popular Anglicized
form), which is derived from the Irish Gaelic Bealtaine or the Scottish
Gaelic Bealtuinn, meaning “Bel-fire”, the fire of the Celtic
God of Light (Bel, Beli, or Belinus). He, in turn, may be traced to
the Middle Eastern God Baal.
Other names for May Day include: Cetsamhain (opposite Samhain), Walpurgisnacht
(in Germany), and Roodmas (the medieval church’s name). This last
came from church fathers who were hoping to shift the common people’s
allegiance from the Maypole (Pagan lingam—symbol of life) to the
Holy Rood (the cross—Roman instrument of death).
Incidentally, there is no historical justification for calling May 1
‘Lady Day’. For hundreds of years, that title has been proper
to the vernal equinox (approximately March 21), another holiday sacred
to the Great Goddess. The nontraditional use of ‘Lady Day’
for May 1 is quite recent (since the early 1970s), and seems to be confined
to America, where it has gained widespread acceptance among certain
segments of the Craft population. This rather startling departure from
tradition would seem to indicate an unfamiliarity with European calendar
customs, as well as a lax attitude toward scholarship among too many
Pagans. A simple glance at a dictionary (Webster’s 3rd or O.E.D.),
encyclopedia (Benet’s), or standard mythology reference (Jobe’s
Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore & Symbols) would confirm the correct
date for Lady Day as the vernal equinox.
By Celtic reckoning, the actual Beltane celebration begins on sundown
of the preceding day, April 30, because the Celts always figured their
days from sundown to sundown. And sundown was the proper time for Druids
to kindle the great Belfires on the tops of the nearest beacon hill
(such as Tara Hill, Co. Meath, in Ireland). These “need-fires”
had healing properties, and skyclad Witches would jump through the flames
to ensure protection.
Sgt. Howie (shocked): "But they are naked!"
Lord Summerisle: "Naturally. It's much too dangerous
to jump through the fire with your clothes on!"
—from The Wicker Man
Frequently, cattle would be driven between two such bonfires (oak wood
was the favorite fuel for them) and, on the morrow, they would be taken
to their summer pastures.
Other May Day customs include: walking the circuit of one’s property
(“beating the bounds”), repairing fences and boundary markers,
processions of chimney sweeps and milkmaids, archery tournaments, morris
dances, sword dances, feasting, music, drinking, and maidens bathing
their faces in the dew of May morning to retain their youthful beauty.
In the words of Witchcraft writers Janet and Stewart Farrar, the Beltane
celebration was principally a time of “unashamed human sexuality
and fertility”. Such associations include the obvious phallic
symbolism of the Maypole and riding the hobbyhorse. Even a seemingly
innocent children’s nursery rhyme “Ride a cock horse to
Banburry Cross …” retains such memories. And the next line,
“to see a fine Lady on a white horse”, is a reference to
the annual ride of Lady Godiva through Coventry. Every year for nearly
three centuries, a skyclad village maiden (elected “Queen of the
May”) enacted this Pagan rite, until the Puritans put an end to
the custom.
The Puritans, in fact, reacted with pious horror to most of the May
Day rites, even making Maypoles illegal in 1644. They especially attempted
to suppress the “greenwood marriages” of young men and women
who spent the entire night in the forest, staying out to greet the May
sunrise, and bringing back boughs of flowers and garlands to decorate
the village the next morning. One angry Puritan wrote that men “doe
use commonly to runne into woodes in the night time, amongst maidens,
to set bowes, in so muche, as I have hearde of tenne maidens whiche
went to set May, and nine of them came home with childe.” And
another Puritan complained that, “Of forty, threescore or a hundred
maids going to the wood over night, there have scarcely the third part
of them returned home again undefiled.”
Long after the Christian form of marriage (with its insistence on sexual
monogamy) had replaced the older Pagan handfasting, the rules of strict
fidelity were always relaxed for the May Eve rites. Names such as Robin
Hood, Maid Marion, and Little John played an important part in May Day
folklore, often used as titles for the dramatis personae of the celebrations.
And modern surnames such as Robinson, Hodson, Johnson, and Godkin may
attest to some distant May Eve spent in the woods.
These wildwood antics have inspired writers such as Kipling:
Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,
Or he would call it a sin;
But we have been out in the woods all night,
A-conjuring Summer in!
And Lerner and Lowe:
It's May! It's May!
The lusty month of May!...
Those dreary vows that ev'ryone takes,
Ev'ryone breaks.
Ev'ryone makes divine mistakes!
The lusty month of May!
It is certainly no accident that Queen Guinevere’s ‘abduction’
by Meliagrance occurs on May 1 when she and the court have gone a-Maying,
or that the usually efficient Queen’s guard, on this occasion,
rode unarmed.
Some of these customs seem virtually identical to the old Roman feast
of flowers, the Floralia, three days of unrestrained sexuality that
began at sundown April 28 and reached a crescendo on May 1.
There are other, even older, associations with May 1 in Celtic mythology.
According to the ancient Irish Book of Invasions, the first settler
of Ireland, Partholan, arrived on May 1, and it was on May 1 that the
plague came that destroyed his people. Years later, the Milesians conquered
the Tuatha De Danann on May Day. In Welsh myth, the perennial battle
between Gwythur and Gwyn for the love of Creiddyled took place each
May Day, and it was on May Eve that Teirnyon lost his colts and found
Pryderi. May Eve was also the occasion of a fearful scream that was
heard each year throughout Wales, one of the three curses of the Coranians
lifted by the skill of Lludd and Llevelys.
By the way, due to various calendrical changes down through the centuries,
the traditional date of Beltane is not the same as its astrological
date. This date, like all astronomically determined dates, may vary
by a day or two depending on the year. However, it may be calculated
easily enough by determining the date on which the sun is at fifteen
degrees Taurus (usually around May 5). British Witches often refer to
this date as Old Beltane, and folklorists call it Beltane O.S. (Old
Style). Some covens prefer to celebrate on the old date and, at the
very least, it gives one options. If a coven is operating on ‘Pagan
Standard Time’ and misses May 1 altogether, it can still throw
a viable Beltane bash as long as it’s before May 5. This may also
be a consideration for covens that need to organize activities around
the weekend.
This date has long been considered a “power point” of the
zodiac, and is symbolized by the Bull, one of the tetramorph figures
featured on the tarot cards, the World and the Wheel of Fortune. (The
other three symbols are the Lion, the Eagle, and the Spirit.) Astrologers
know these four figures as the symbols of the four “fixed”
signs of the zodiac (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius), and these
naturally align with the four Great Sabbats of Witchcraft. Christians
have adopted the same iconography to represent the four Gospel writers.
But for most, it is May 1 that is the great holiday of flowers, Maypoles,
and greenwood frivolity. It is no wonder that, as recently as 1977,
Ian Anderson could pen the following lyrics for the band Jethro Tull:
For the May Day is the great day,
Sung along the old straight track.
And those who ancient lines did ley
Will heed this song that calls them back.
Document
Copyright © 1986, 1995, 2005 by Mike Nichols.
Permission is given to re-publish this document only
as long as no information is lost or changed,
credit is given to the author, and it is provided or used without cost
to others.
This notice represents an exception to the copyright notice found in
the
Acorn Guild Press edition of The Witches' Sabbats and applies only to
the text as given above.
Other uses of this document must be approved in writing by Mike
Nichols.
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