The Lusty Month of May
by Lady Scholastica Joycors
Tra la, it’s May, the lusty Month of May
That lovely month when everyone goes blissfully astray
Tra la, it’s here, that shocking time of year
When tons of wicked little thoughts merrily appear
It’s May, It’s May, that gorgeous holiday
When every maiden prays that her lad will be a cad
It’s mad, it’s gay, alive, a lust display
Those dreary vows that everyone takes, everyone breaks
Everyone makes divine mistakes
The Lusty Month of May.
from the musical Camelot by Frederick Loewe
Form a wreath of freshly picked flowers, wear it in your hair, dress in bright colors, dance around the Maypole, bless your garden by making love with your lover in it and welcome the warmth and fertility of spring after the long abstinent winter. These were the feelings associated with this day which was set betwixt the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice. I suppose that would explain why so many poets have written about the lusty month of May or the phrase of going a’maying.
Sir Thomas Malory wrote in Le Morte d’Arthur, “SO it befell in the month of May, Queen Guinevere called unto her knights of the Table Round; and she gave them warning that early upon the morrow she would ride a-Maying into woods and fields beside Westminster.”
In Cornia’s Going a-Maying Robert Herrick writes, “The two lovers went a-Maying merrily into the springtime forrest.”
Shakespeare made frequent use of what was called a ‘Maying” or the traditional May Day practice of heading off into the forest or hills for a little disorderly conduct as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream where Lysander and Hermia plan their flight to the woods to escape the repressive marriage laws of Athens, they choose a place where they had earlier met “to do observance to a morn of May.’ He also provides a more civilized encounter in the forest by Duke Theseus and Hippolyta during which they encounter the wayward lovers and he remarks, ‘No doubt they rose up early, to observe the rite of May.’
What exactly is a-maying? A-Maying is when lovers go off by themselves to flirt and have sex and be romantic in nature, as on May day (i.e., the first day of May) during the Renaissance.
Before the Romans came to the British Isles they had a popular feast with festivities called Floralia or Florales Ludi which was a five-day celebration devoted to the worship of Flora, the goddess of Spring, flowers and youthful pleasures which ran from April 28 through May 3. It was a celebration of Nature in full blossom, a carnival of sexual fun and liberty that was marked by the consumption of oceans of grog. Beans and other seeds were planted, representing fecundity. It began as a movable feast controlled by the condition of the crops and flowers, with the purpose of gaining from the goddess the protection of the blossoms.
The city was decorated in flowers, and the people wore floral wreaths or flowers in their hair. Day and night there were games, pantomimes, theatre and stripteases with people of all classes in their brightest clothes. The offerings of milk and honey were made and goats and hares were let loose as they represented fertility. Gift-giving for the season included small vegetables as tokens of sex and fertility.
When the Romans came to the British Isles they brought with them the Feast of Floralia and when it met the Irish/Scottish festival of Beltane the two eventually merged and became the most joyous and loudest festival of the year. Beltane was the second most important holiday of the year as it marked the beginning of the pastoral summer season and was celebrated by lighting fires that were thought to lend life to the burgeoning springtime sun. In Irish Gaelic, the Beltane Fire was called teine eigin (fire from rubbing sticks). The fires were considered sacred and livestock were either driven through it or between two fires for purification and fertility blessings. People would jump over, move through it, dance clockwise around it, or couples ran through the smoke for good luck.
At Beltane, quhen ilk bodie bownis
To Peblis to the Play,
To heir the singin and the soundis;
The solace, suth to say,
Be firth and forrest furth they found
Thay graythis tham full gay;
God wait that wald they do that stound,
For it was their feist day,
Thay said, [...]
Peblis to the Play is a poem about the Beltane celebration in a town of Pebbles in Scotland which can be found in the Maitland Manuscripts of the fifteenth and sixteenth century Scots poetry. It tells of a parade, pageant and the crowning of a Beltane Queen which eventually becomes the May Day Queen.
One of the key rituals of May Day is the coming together of the feathered May Queen, who represents fecundity, with the Green Man, an ancient deity representing seasonal rebirth. The May Queen is an expression of bountifulness. And symbolically at Beltane she is to become pregnant with the child of promise, which is the sun. It is celebration of fertility—a uniting of masculine and feminine energy to awaken the season of bounty. Dancing around the Maypole dates back to the pagan times where the May Pole was a phallic symbol and represents the Green Man or King while the ribbons that wrap around the pole represent May Queen or Flora and symbolizes their unity.
The cutting of a large tree and bringing it into the village was a great event. The bark of the tree was removed, smoothed leaving a few limbs and leaves at the top and decorating it with garlands of flowers and brightly colored ribbons. The May Pole was then erected in the center of the village green, and in some places in England it was a permanent structure and only decorated on May Day.
Oliver Cromwell and his Puritans described maypole dancing as a “heathenish vanity” and passed legislation against it in 1660, however “Merry Monarch” Charles II, however, returned them to national consciousness by erecting a huge 40-metre pole on the Strand in London and remaining there for almost 50 years.
May Day was and is celebrated all over the world in some form or another saying good-bye to spring and hello to summer. In France in 1560, when Prince Charles was a young boy of nine it is said that while traveling through the French countryside that it was customary to give a sprig or branch of some kind of flower on May 1 to chase away the curse of winter and to represent a wish for good fortune and happy new season, soon to be king was presented with a sprig of Lily of the Valley. It is said that he was delighted with the gesture and the fragrant flower and how it hung like little bells. The following year as he was about to become King Charles IX he decided to begin a new tradition gave a sprig to the ladies of his court on May 1 each year. You could say that handing out this fragrant flower took root. In Germany, Finland and Sweden, meanwhile, Walpurgis Night celebrated that saint with a feast on 1 May that included dancing and young women being kissed - and was sometimes seen as a night when witches would await the arrival of spring. In Romania parties are held in nature and roast lamb along with new mutton cheese and the drinking of mug-wort flavored wine to refresh the blood and protect from diseases. The list goes on and on.
Whether you celebrate May Day, Floralia, Beltane or just the coming of summer. It is a good time to enjoy nature and all of its bounties.
Bibliography
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AustralianMedia.com. (2018, April 27). Medieval Holidays; May Day. Retrieved from Medieval.Net: http://www.medieval.net/mayday.htm
Fox, S. (2018, May 1). Beltane Lore & Rites. Retrieved from Circle Sanctuary: https://www.circlesanctuary.org/index.php/celebrating-the-seasons/beltane-lore-rites
History and Origin of May Day. (2018, May 1). Retrieved from The Holiday Spot: http://www.theholidayspot.com/mayday/history.htm
Lestz, M. (2014, April 30). May First and the Spirit of Labor Day. Retrieved from The Curious Rambler: https://curiousrambler.com/2014/04/30/may-first-and-the-spirit-of-labor-day/
Mallory, S. (1485). Le Morte d’Arthur.
May Day. (2018, May 1). Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day#cite_note-14
May Pole Dancing. (2018, May 1). Retrieved from Medieval Life and Times: http://www.medieval-life-and-times.info/medieval-life/may-pole-dancing.htm
Rhodes, N., & Gillespie, S. (Eds.). (2006). Shakespeare And Elizabethan Popular Culture: Arden Critical Companion. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama.
Todd, D. (2012, May 2). Todd: May Day dancing celebrates neo-pagan fertility. Retrieved from Vancouver Sun: http://www.vancouversun.com news/Todd+dancing+celebrates+pagan+fertility/6554073/story.html
Unger, M. (2018, April 27). May Day. Retrieved from Carnaval: http://www.carnaval.com/mayday/
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