com·mon·place book| ˈkämənˌplās ˌbo͝ok | noun: a book into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use.
Today is Mayday, a day that held significance for the Celtic lands, where it was celebrated as Beltane—a fire festival marking the half-year from Samhain, or Halloween. Both days are considered to be times when the veil between the worlds is thin, when the spirits of the dead return to briefly visit the living, and especially when faeries abound and need to be appeased from interfering too greatly in people’s lives.
The celebration is a pastoral one, based on the height of spring and the move of cattle into grazing lands. On Beltane, the fires in all houses would be doused, to later be relit with embers from the communal bonfire to be held in the evening. Sometimes two fires would be lit, and the cattle walked through them, to benefit from the good luck and protection of the smoke. Some sources write of young men leaping over the fires. Branches of Rowan and Hawthorne would be brought into homes to decorate, to benefit from the favor of the tree’s spirit. Revelry, guessing one’s future mate, maypoles, and flowers laid on doorsteps have all been ascribed to Beltane celebrations—traditions that continued in Scotland and Ireland up until the 19th century.
As my birthday also falls on this day, I’ve always been a bit biased in loving the history of the Beltane celebrations. And, as I turn a half-century-old today (!)—another marker of time—I wanted to share a few Mayday greetings and good wishes for the coming of summer. As spring and summer finally happen here in the matter of a week in late May—and the day still looks so quite brown and muddy and bare-branched, if bright—I am so looking forward to the idea that green is indeed returning, shyly beginning to appear in the landscape, along with the warmth of sunlight, beckoned by the fires lit by earlier times on this day.
Shy birches….
I also learned of this early May tradition from Japan—celebrated as children’s day with the flying of koinobori, or wind socks to celebrate—but in this tradition, the colorful koinobori are laid in the Sabagawa River, to swim in the current. So beautiful.
THE TREES
by Philip Larkin
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
Happy May Day Beltane to you all—I hope you are able to find some green, light, and blooms where you are today.
A 19th-century illustration combining Beltane/Mayday/Labor day traditions into one. Public domain.
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Happy birthday! I hope you've had a wonderful day. It's funny how much I can mean that while not being able to identify you if you walked up and kicked me in the shin. What a strange world we are in now....
Happy Birthday what an auspicious day for a birth. Here on the island where I live in years gone by we made May Baskets and in secret places would pick the May flowers. I wonder if they still grow there now.
I do like the simple things associated with nature and her seasons
Happy birthday! I hope you've had a wonderful day. It's funny how much I can mean that while not being able to identify you if you walked up and kicked me in the shin. What a strange world we are in now....
Happy Birthday what an auspicious day for a birth. Here on the island where I live in years gone by we made May Baskets and in secret places would pick the May flowers. I wonder if they still grow there now.