May Day by Janie Hampton

'Bringing in branches at Maytime', from 

A Book of Hours by Jean Poyer, 1500

The first of May has been important in our family ever since my grandmother Rachel Gurney was born on that day in 1886. Two years later, her sister Richenda was also born on 1 May. Both survived into their 80s and enjoyed many shared birthday parties.
For over 30 years I have lived in Oxford, where May Morning has been celebrated since mediaeval times with garlands of greenery, dancing and music.
The new growth of Spring has been celebrated in Europe since ancient times: the Romans celebrated Floralia, the Celts observed Beltane, and Germanic peoples had Walpurgisnacht. The early Christian church incorporated the lively pagan traditions involved in  bringing in the May, but by 1250, the Chancellor of Oxford University felt the need to  forbid ‘alike in churches, all dancing in masks or with disorderly noises, and all processions of men wearing wreaths and garlands made of leaves of trees or flowers or what not.’ However Spring is Spring and not easily repressed, so by 1550 in Thame, the churchwardens had again bought fifteen yards of green and yellow fabric and bells to make coats for their Morris dancers. In Abingdon in 1566, the churchwardens‘paid for setting up Robin Hood’s bower, eighteen pence.’ ‘Church ales’, or festivals, were often used as  fund-raising events. The church financed the amusements and sold the ale. Profits then paid for the maintenance of the parish church, and  alms to the poor.
Philip Stubbes’ Anatomie of Abuses (1583) describes how hundreds of people of all ages ran into the woods on May Eve and made merry all night. At dawn they returned with branches of trees, pulled by twenty or forty yoke of oxen, each with a sweet nose-gay of flowers placed on the tip of his horns. ‘Their chiefest jewel they bring home from thence is their Maypole (this stinking idol rather) which is covered all over with flowers and herbs, bound round about with strings, from the top to the bottom, and sometimes painted with variable colours, following it with great devotion. And thus being reared up with handkerchiefs and flags streaming on the top they straw the ground about, bind green boughs about it, set up summer houses, bowers and arbours hard by it. And then fall they to banquet and feast, to leap and dance about it, as the Heathen people did at the dedication of their Idols.’

St. George's Kermis with the Dance around the Maypole', 

Pieter Breughel the Younger, 16th century. 

Note the drinking bower on the right  

In 1598 there was a May Day clash between Town and Gown in Oxford when youths, including the mayor's son William Furness, fought the University authorities. Nineteen years later, a group of  young men were found guilty of insulting the Mayor by dressing up on May Day.  William Stevenson an apprentice, Frost the cobbler, Peter Short the cutler, Tilcock the painter and Pigeon the chimney sweep were held in the stocks for two hours the next market day, with paper notices pinned to their hats describing their offences.

King James I was entertained by ‘Suites for morrice dancers all lyke with garters of bells’ on his first Royal Progress to Oxford in 1605. He described Maypoles and Morris dancing as ‘harmless recreation’ in his 1618 Book of Sports.

17th-century woodblock from the ballad sheet 'The May Day Country Mirth'

During Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate , May revels were shut down everywhere. In Oxford, Anthony Wood reported on May Day in 1648 . ‘ This day the Visitors, Mayor, and the chief officer of the well-affected of the University and City, spent in zealous persecuting of the young people that followed May-Games, by breaking of Garlands, taking away fiddles from Musicians, dispersing Morrice-Dancers, and by not suffering a green bough to be worn in a hat or stuck up at any door, esteeming it a superstition or rather an heathenish custom.’
With the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, May Games returned, to widespread public  rejoicing, and Wood reported, ‘the people of Oxon were so violent for Maypoles in opposition to the Puritans that there was numbered 12 Maypoles besides 3 or 4 morrises.’
However, to  Thomas Hall, Flora was a heathen goddess. He wrote in 1660, Funebria florae, the downfall of May-games, that Flora was ‘the whore of the city of Rome, in the county of Babylon’. She attracted a pack of ‘ignorants, atheists, papists, drunkards, swearers, swash-bucklers, maid-marions, morris dancers, maskers, mummers, may-pole stealers, health-drinkers, gamesters, lewd men and light women’.
By the late 17th Century, singing from church towers was widespread in Europe, and Oxford diarist Anthony Wood, recorded in 1695: ‘the choral ministers of this House do, according to an ancient custom, salute Flora every year on the first of May, at four in the morning, with vocal music of several parts. Which having been sometimes well performed, hath given great content to the neighbourhood and auditors underneath’. They then processed to St Bartholomew’s Hospital on Cowley Road, with ‘lords and ladies, garlands, fifes, flutes and drums to salute the great goddess Flora and to attribute her all praise with dancing and music.’ This was only abandoned after too many  clashes between Magdalen men and ‘the rabble of the town’.

Hornblowers accompany the May garland, from Hone's Table Book of 1827. 

During the 18th century, boys in Oxford blew horns early on May morning. In 1724, Thomas Hearne writes: ‘The custom of blowing them prevails at Oxford, to remind people of the pleasantness of that part of the Year, which ought to create Mirth and Gayety.’ ‘Whit-Horns’ were made from strips of willow bark wound into a funnel and fixed with hawthorn or blackthorn spines. The reed was made of bark and the mouthpiece pinched to create a primitive oboe. From about 1800, Oxford town boys blew their horns at the foot of Magdalen Tower to drown out the choristers.

May Day outside the parish church Great Tew, Oxfordshire, 1911.

The Victorians forgot about the pagan origins of May Day celebrations as they embraced the myth of Merrie Olde England. Three Victorian men helped popularise May Day: Alfred Tennyson with his poem The May Queen; William Holman Hunt with his painting May Morning on Magdalen Tower; and John Ruskin who taught trainer teachers May Day dances at Whitelands College in Chelsea.
By the early 20th Century when my granny Rachel married a vicar, choosing the May Queen was an important part of the parochial calendar. Once seen as a pagan goddess in human form, she was now chosen not for her beauty, but for her regular attendance at Sunday School!

Grand-daughters and great nieces celebrate Rachel and Richenda's
80th and 78th  birthdays, May 1 1968.  The author is on the far left. 

The people of Oxford still celebrate May Morning, starting at 6 a.m. with Magdalen College choir singing the 17th Century Hymnus Eucharisticus from the Great Tower. Church bells then peal out over the city for 20 minutes, and the carousing begins. In Broad Street the Whirly Band  play 'Rough Music'; Sol Samba perform on Magdalen Bridge; and Oxford's community street band Horns of Plenty in Queen’s Lane. Pubs and cafés are open from dawn.
An alternative May Day was started in 1972 by the sculptor Michael Black (1928-2019). His daughter Chess recalls, ‘Michael built a 30 ft high scaffold replica of Magdalen Tower. A full-size plaster ox was decorated with flowers and filled with beer. The Headington Morris men danced outside the Anchor Pub near Aristotle Bridge.Then the dancers came to a slap-up breakfast at Michael's house, cooked by us daughters! Much more drinking and singing followed.’ This year, there will be a wake for Michael in the form of more dancing, drinking and singing at dawn.

www.maymorning.co.uk   www.dailyinfo.co.uk/mayday

 www.janiehampton.co.uk
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'King Holly, Queen Ivy and Murphy's Law' by Karen Maitland

I love dipping into a book by Philip Gooden called "Skyscrapers, Hemlines and the Eddie Murphy Rule." It is a collection and history of those quirky laws that seem to govern every aspect of our life from Murphy's Law - "If anything can go wrong, it will" to the hemline theory - "Hemlines go up with rising stock market and drop with falling one". And the one I really enjoy, Hartman's Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation -

"Any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one error."  

(It has been pointed out that this statement does contain one punctuation error if you are British, though not if you are American.)

It is a delightfully funny and informative collection, but though it contains sets of laws from different genres of writing from crime to ghost stories, there isn't a list of "Historical Novelists' Laws", which I think is a great pity, so I thought I might kick off with one law that might have appeared on that list -

1) The author will discover the most interesting historical snippet which would have been perfect to use in their novel immediately after they emailed the final draft of the manuscript to the publisher.

I can personally attest to the truth of this law. One of the themes running through my new novel, The Plague Charmer, is medieval riddles and I use riddles as some chapter headings. I thought I had scoured every available source of genuine medieval riddles, but the day after I'd submitted the manuscript I discovered two little gems in a museum, recorded in 1460, which perfectly capture the bawdy medieval mind -

Q - What is the most joyful thing in all the world?
A - 'Tis a fart for it sings from its birth until it fades away.

 Q - What the most noble king of all the trees in the forest? 

Sir Gawain beheads the Green Knight

 A - 'Tis the Holly, for no one uses it to wipe his behind.


For the medieval audience, this second riddle would have been a trick question, for they all knew the holly was the king of the forest, but for a very different reason than that given in the answer to the riddle. We will soon be approaching the end of October and the Celtic festival of Samhain, which marks the beginning of the dark months of winter. At Samhain the Holly King defeats Oak King in battle and conquers the land, only to see the Oak triumph at Beltane and rule over the summer.


This ancient myth is symbolised in the medieval tale of "Gawain and the Green Knight," in which the Green Knight comes to King Arthur's court bearing a holly bush. Sir Gawain chops off the Green Knight's head, but the Green Knight still lives on and, as the medieval audience knew, he would return as the year waned, to cut off Sir Gawain's head.

Holly and Oak in winter in Gritnam Wood, New Forest
Photographer: Jim Champion

Another myth involving holly was centred around May Eve, the first night of Beltane, when the Bel-fire, or fire of light, was kindled. This involves not a king but a goddess, the ancient blue ice goddess, Cailleach Bhear, the old woman of darkness, who reigns from Samhain to Beltane. On this night she throws her magic staff under a holly bush for safe-keeping and is turned to stone. In that form she is guarded by the holly and its spirits until she can take up her queenship once more. That is why no grass grows under holly trees.

But the early medieval Church, always pragmatic in these matters, knew they could not suppress the 'pagan' customs of bringing holly into the house and all the many local traditions that went into gathering it, so they Christianised the holly tree. The holly's old names, holeyn, holme, hulvar or hulfere, were probably Old Norse in origin, but the Church decided they must be derived from 'holy' and said that holly bore white flowers to remind the faithful of the white sheet in which the newborn Jesus was wrapped and the shroud in which his crucified body was laid. The prickles represented Christ’s crown of thorns and the red berries, the blood or wounds. In Cornwall, holly was delightfully known as dear Aunt Mary's tree. Aunt Mary being a reverent term for the Virgin Mary.

But as the Middle Ages progressed holly was to become victorious in a different battle, not between summer and winter, but between the sexes. Early medieval troubadours sang of holly as the man and ivy as the woman who each brought different but equal virtues and gifts to the marriage. But as medieval women increasing lost their rights, the holly became the strong, tough, protecting male, and ivy, the clingy little female who couldn't even stand up by herself without his support. As one carol written in 1456 puts it -

"Nay, Ivy, nay: it shall not be, I wys:
Let Holly have the mastery, as the manner is."

By the 16th century we even have a carol that describes how pigeons eat the ivy berries then shit on the ivy, something we are assured they would never do to holly. Although another 15th century carol is more encouraging or perhaps prophetic -

"Ivy, chief of the trees it is,
Veni, coronaberis."

Old Christmas riding a goat and crowned
with holly

 Holly was believed to be a shelter for good spirits who entered with it if the boughs were brought into the house, and therefore holly was always be hung before mistletoe at Christmas, otherwise bad luck would follow. Holly protected houses and byres from evil spirits, witchcraft, fire and lightening. So, a staff made from holly was a useful defence when crossing the moors or mashes to protect you from the mysterious glowing sprites such as the Will-o-the-wisp that might lure you into a bog.


Doorsteps were often made of holly wood to prevent witches crossing them and holly hedges, as well as keeping out animals and thieves, would also stop evil spirits from entering. It was useful plant to carry when you were herding livestock too, because if a beast suddenly bolted, and you threw holly after it, the runaway would trot meekly back to the herd, summoned by the power and authority of this royal tree.

But holly bushes can turn nasty. On a road near Claonaig, on the Kintyre peninsular, a holly bush is said to dance out of the woods to confuse travellers into loosing their way, which I imagine they could easily do, if faced with prancing holly bush. In which case, they might do well to remember the laws of survival in very cold climates which Gooden lists in his book -

1) You can survive three hours without shelter.
2) You can survive three days without water.
3) You can survive three weeks without food.

So, in the spirit of dear old Murphy's Law has anyone got a favourite law for the Historical Novelist?

*

(Karen Maitland's new novel - The Plague Charmer - will be published by Headline on

20th Oct 2016.)

Beltane by Mary Hoffman

What else can I write about on my first First of May? Beltane (spelt in a rich variety of ways) is one of the four great Celtic Festivals, the other three being: Lughnasadh (1st August), Samhain (31st October), and Imbolc (1st February). They are all "cross-quarter days" falling between equinoxes and solstices and each has its own special significance.

This is may-blossom, in other words, hawthorn and this is a particularly fine pink specimen. Since Beltane is linking to dancing and fertility rituals, the heavenly scent and blush-tinged appearance of the blossom contribute to the theme. (Incidentally "cast ne'er a clout till May be out" means "don't shed any clothes till the hawthorn is in bloom" not, as a schoolfriend of mine thought, "don't hit anyone till the beginning of June." I think this year that the real advice of the saying is good, at least in the UK).

It is no coincidence that Arthur's  queen, Guinevere, was out "a-Maying" when she was ambushed and kidnapped by an amorous knight. Tennyson might have been on to something when he made that Mordred in his Idylls of the King but Sir Thomas Malory says, in his sublime Morte d'Arthur, that it was Sir Meliagaunce.

A beautiful queen gathering may-blossom with her retinue of ten women is captured by a knight who has long lusted after her but been afraid to come near her, not because of her lawful husband but because of her champion Sir Lancelot. Now, Guinevere has knights in her train but not Lancelot.

Still, Guinevere gets a message to her champion, he fights Meliagaunce but is betrayed into falling through a trapdoor into a dungeon; he escapes by wrenched the iron bars out of the window and bloodying his hands. He comes to Guinvere's chamber where next day blood is discovered on her sheets and her honour impugned (Meliagaunce, the jealous and frustrated beast, accuses her publicly of having slept with one of her wounded knights).

Lancelot of course eventually kills  Meliagaunce for such unknightly behaviour and his lack of courtesy is recorded on his tomb.

Are we a long way from Beltane fires and fertility rituals? I think not. All these festivals are times when the gates to the Other World are easier to penetrate and the story of the flower-picking queen and her abduction is very close to the myth of Hades and Persephone. Guinevere is imprisoned and released, not by her mother but interestingly not by her husband either. She doesn't have to stay half the year with Meliagaunce but she must have eaten something during her confinement in his castle.

Anyway, she is released and the flowers can bloom again; all is right with the world.

Aubrey Beardsley

What Guinevere or the ancient Celts would have made of Morris dancers and Maypoles would be interesting to know.

 I live near Bampton, a village rich in Mayday traditions, with many "sides" as Stephen Fry told me on QI we are supposed to call them, of Morris Men. There is intense rivalry between them and on May 1st much beer is consumed from the many local pubs. The dancing becomes less and less inhibited as the day goes by but that's the only link with fertility I know of (though what goes on behind closed doors is another matter).

The Folies Bergères opened in Paris on a May 1st, which seems appropriate (1869).

Saint Walpurga was canonised on this date and because of her associations as a "grain mother" the Eve of her celebration has become paganised as "Walpurgisnacht" in Teutonic countries. I wonder what this Christian saint would make of her festivities becoming a Witches' Sabbath?
(I've actually sung Die Erste Walpugisnacht, a cantata by Felix Mendelsohnn)