May Day Celebrations, a Witchy Wednesday article
In the merry month of May!
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| Children dancing around a Maypole. 🌿🌸🌿🌸🌿🌸🌿🌸🌿🌸🌿🌸🌿🌸🌿 |
Welcome to another Witchy Wednesday, this weeks article is celebrating May Day holiday.
May Day.
1st of May folklore, or May Day, originates from ancient Celtic Beltane festivals, marking the start of summer with bonfires, fertility rites, and, "bringing in the May" with flowers. Traditions include dancing around a maypole, crowning a May Queen, and protecting homes from fairies and witches, often by decorating doors with yellow flowers and rowan.
Aspects of May Day Folklore:
Beltane/Fire Festivals: Historically a major Celtic fire festival (1 May), Beltane celebrated the return of life, growth, and summer, frequently celebrated with, bonfires to protect against evil spirits.
"Bringing in the May": Early morning, gatherings involved gathering green branches and yellow flowers (primroses, marigolds) to decorate homes and doors, symbolizing protection.
Maypole Dancing: A traditional dance around a decorated pole, representing a, phallic fertility symbol for the coming season.
May Queen: A young woman selected to lead processions, symbolizing purity, spring, and, the renewal of nature.
Witchcraft and Protection: It was believed that witches and fairies were highly active on May Eve, with people using rowan, holly, and, yellow flowers to protect their homes and dairy supply.
May Dew: A popular tradition was washing one's face in the morning dew to, ensure beauty and youth for the year.
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The Merry Month of May" is a poem by Thomas Dekker (c. 1572–1632), an English Elizabethan dramatist and pamphleteer.
"The Merry Month of May" is a part of Dekker's play The Shoemaker's Holiday, first performed in 1599.
In Ernest Rhys's 1887 publication of Dekker's work, he titled the poem The First Three-Men's Song.
The poem is included within Act 3 Scene V of the play.
O the month of May, the merry month of May,
So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green!
O, and then did I unto my true love say:
"Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my summer's queen!
Now the nightingale, the pretty nightingale,
The sweetest singer in all the forest's choir,
Entreats thee, sweet Peggy, to hear thy true love's tale;
Lo, yonder she sitteth, her breast against a brier.
But O, I spy the cuckoo, the cuckoo, the cuckoo;
See where she sitteth: come away, my joy;
Come away, I prithee: I do not like the cuckoo
Should sing where my Peggy and I kiss and toy."
O the month of May, the merry month of May,
So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green!
And then did I unto my true love say:
"Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my summer's queen!"
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| My Queen of the Faeries made from driftwood |
Thank you for visiting my blog page, please join me again next week for another Witchy Wednesday article. Have a magical day Kat 😊
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