The May Day festival, Beltane, is a survival, or revival, from the Iron Age, celebrated in Celtic communities – Scotland and Ireland particularly – and revived as a full festival in Scotland in the 1980’s by the Beltane Fire Society. Beltane was a fire festival, although nothing of that remains in the festivities carried out in England. Beltane was first mentioned by name in Irish writings from the late 800’s / early 900’s.
The English version of this festival involves cutting flowers and greenery and dancing around a maypole, which things are also carried out during Beltane, celebrating the beginning of Summer which begins on May 1st. When I was a child, dancing around the maypole was the chief, possibly only, activity carried out on May Day. I have a photograph of my brother, my cousin, and myself, dressed up for the May Day Fair at which there was maypole dancing, but no obvious indication of surplus greenery. Past generations in England celebrated May Day with a day of celebrations which while including maypole dancing as an important manifestation of encouraging the fertility of the soil (and the festival-goers!) would also have included plenty of food and drink and general gaiety.
Mayhem, if you like.
This year, I managed two May Day days out.
On Saturday, two days before May Day, I visited Kingston near Lewes, in Sussex, for the Caught by the River Mayday event. Caught by the River describe themselves as an arts/nature/culture clash and you can read all about them here. I have followed them now for several years, and this seems as good a time as any to mention that their coverage of arts, nature, and culture are second to none and if you’re not yet following them, well, you should be.
There was mask-making to begin with, especially to involve the children, the makers encouraged to incorporate flowers and greenery into their masks, and almost inevitably a certain amount of folk-horror found its way into some of these.
Nice, Richard.
This was followed by a promenade around the maypole, after which the activity moved indoors.
There were films, talks, and discussions, subjects including rivers, village life in the early eighteenth century, art, standing stones and the like, and the environment. After which, in the late afternoon, we all promenaded up the hillside to the Gurdy Stone.
This is the Gurdy Stone, a modern standing stone on a hillside overlooking Kingston. Here, Local Psycho (Jem Finer and Jimmy Cauty), held a gathering to encode the music of their Hurdy Gurdy song into the stone “To mark the 50,000 year return of the Green Comet and release of The Hurdy-Gurdy song on Heavenly Recordings.”
Throughout the day, naturally, we all had access to the pub.
And then on Monday, which was May Day, we went down to Hastings. It rather felt as though everyone in South East England must be in the town, either at the Jack in the Green festivities or watching blokes on motorbikes roaring up and down the seafront for no discernible reason. I don’t much like crowds, and some of this was very difficult. But away from the huge horsepower and testosterone nonsense, amongst the Jack in the Green celebrations the atmosphere was brilliant and the large numbers of people perfectly acceptable. Jack in the Green is a manifestation of the spirit of spring, related to the Green Man, a dancing figure covered in greenery.
The festival in Hastings has grown over the years into a large event involving musicians, dancers, Morris sides, huge figures in addition to Jack in the Green such as the Queen of the May, a witch, and others, plus any number of people joining in the procession around the town, all decorated with as much, or as little, greenery and/or flowers as they feel suitable.
There you go, a Morris side.
Followed by a large witch with a cat. Why the witch? I’ve no idea. Why not? I suppose.
And there you have it. Music. Drumming. Greenery. Crowd involvement. Summer is icumen in and winter’s gone away-o.
And there was beer again, of course.
Mick Canning 
Back in the dim and distant past (well pre 2019 when I stopped dancing) I was in a Morris dancer the Jack in the Green procession, I didn’t look like those chaos though! (Those chaos being Mad Jacks Morris I believe)
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*chaps not chaos
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I think chaos fits quite well!
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Actually you are probably right about chaos!
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Mad Jack’s Morris they are, Sam. In the even more dim and distant past when my first wife danced with Invicta Morris (um…forty years ago plus…) I believe they danced a couple of gigs with them. They never did Jack in the Green, though. It would have been fun.
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Honestly it’s not as much fun as it looks… it’s a long procession and when I did it it was pouring down and we had a samba band directly behind and a drum side I front… it made dancing hard 🤣 I liked most things we did with Mythago, but not that one
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The samba band were there again this year, too. I can see it would have been a bit of competition too far. And yes, it’s a long procession. Very long.
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So very interesting. Wonderful to read/ see the pix of these age old festivals, still being maintained so faithfully . Sounds like a lot of fun! Thanks for sharing.
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It was lots of fun, Diti. I know Holi is a Spring festival, but it seems to have a little in common with Beltane.
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No similarity at all except for the fun and the imbibing.😃 How warmly spring is welcomed in almost all parts of the world! I suspect, the best part of the year for many.
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It was certainly fun when I joined in, although it was at least a week before all the colours had been scrubbed off!
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Not surprising at all.😃
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Thank you for letting me glimpse this revived Earth celebration.
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You’re welcome, Laura. It was all great fun.
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Sort of like Halloween in Spring!
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They don’t really have much in common here, Jan, but I’m not familiar with the details of how you celebrate Halloween in the US. I guess the witch and the cat wouldn’t be out of place, though.
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Halloween is about funny costumes and scary stories here in the US – there really isn’t any deep reasoning behind it.
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For most people over here Halloween is the same, although it actually has a long history of ritual and tradition. I already have the bare bones (Mwa ha ha!) of a blog post ready for Halloween this year, about those traditions.
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A pleasure to see all these happy heathens hopping about! Was the mist around the Gurdy Stone natural, or did someone bring along a fog machine? (Or was it vapors from the pub-goers).
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Oh, it was a mysterious vapour that seemed to emanate from the ground and from the very stone itself! It brought peace and forgetfulness to the crowds gathered around. Or was that the beer?
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💗
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Wow!!! You guys go all out, whereas here it’s … well, just another day. Your celebrations remind me of the Cinco de Mayo celebrations in some parts of the country here, parts where there is a heavy Hispanic population. Love the pictures … thank you!!!
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Thanks, Jill. I don’t know anything of the Cinco de Mayo celebrations, although I’m sure the Spanish have May Day traditions going back thousands of years, as we do. I’ll have to take a look at that some time. And, of course, for most people over here it’s just another day, too.
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May baskets were our primary way of celebrating when I was young, although there are places in the U.S. where maypole dancing still is part of the celebration. In fact, I associate maypoles with Swedish culture. My grandparents came from Sweden,and Grandma would tell me stories of maypole dancing when she was a girl in ‘the old country.’
As for Beltane, a friend gave me a copy of Alexander Carmichael’s Celtic Invocations. It’s just wonderful, and certainly appeals to my Irish heritage. It includes the hymn of the Beltane Procession. If I’d thought of it, I would have posted about it for this May Day. Next year!
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I forgot to add — in Sweden, maypoles also are part of midsummer celebrations. Any excuse for a party!
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I wonder where the maypole first originated? Suggestions are it went to Sweden from Germany but was used there in Midsummer celebrations, as Spring in Sweden comes somewhat later. I wasn’t aware of the May basket tradition, though. That seems to be purely American and, from what I read, not much followed, now.
I think I might do a more detailed Beltane post next year, too.
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Interesting. I guess the origins of these type of practices were originally from Paganism and later these must have undergone a lot of change.
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Certainly from paganism, Arv. How much change there has been, I don’t know, but I suspect quite a lot of the original pagan celebrations have been retained.
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And now I have a Jethro Tull song dancing through my head… (Jack in the Green)
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There are far worse tunes to have stuck in there, I guess.
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Sounds like May Day was more fun in your part of the country, we should bring back more fun.
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It definitely was. The Jack in the Green festival has been going for years, but it was the first time we had gone. I think we’ll definitely go again. Yes, we need more fun.
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So very interesting. I love these festivals Anita
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