May Day is a name
for various holidays celebrated on May 1 (or in the beginning of
May), the most famous one being Labour Day. May Day is exactly a
half-year from November 1, All Saints' Day. Marking the end of
the uncomfortable winter half of the year in the Northern
hemisphere, it has always been an occasion for popular and often
raucous celebrations, regardless of the political or religious
establishment. May Day was also originally the Celtic holiday
'Beltane' or 'Beltaine', the "Return of the Sun". It is the
third and last of the spring festivals. We can see traces of
Beltaine when dancing around the maypole or sending a basket of
flowers to your neighbor's door. May Day is a time to celebrate
the onset of May, the month that sees the Earth reaching itself
ready to burgeon to its maximum capacity. Since the ancient days
in England there prevailed a custom of "bringing in the May" on
MayDay. This was why people would go to the woods in the early
dawn. There they picked flowers and lopped off tender branches
to bring them in and decorate the houses.
May Day and Flowers :
May Day has always been strongly associated with flowers. Partly
may be because of their availability in abundance. But that is
not all. There are other reasons as well. For instance, the May
Garland and beggar girls. Making garland is one of those ancient
May Day customs that has survived still today. May garlands, is
meant for the coming of summer. May garlands were also used
while begging by the kids from door to door. At other times of
the year begging would have been an offence. But if it was done
at May time with a garland. This is why groups of small girls,
crowned with leaves and flowers, went from door to door singing
and begging.
Maypole Dance :
Maypole dancing is a traditional form of folk dance from western
Europe, especially England, Sweden and Germany. Dancers dance in
a circle each holding a coloured ribbon attached to a central
pole, known as the maypole. By the movements of the dancers the
ribbons are intertwined and plaited either on to the pole itself
or into a web around the pole. The dancers may then retrace
their steps exactly in order to unravel the ribbons. Maypole
dancing is extremely ancient and is thought to have Germanic
pagan fertility symbolism. It is traditionally performed in the
spring around the festival of May Day, but in Sweden it is
during the midsummer festivities. It was revived in the early
twentieth century in a more genteel form.
The maypole is a tall wooden pole (traditionally of hawthorn or
birch), sometimes erected with several long colored ribbons
suspended from the top, festooned with flowers, draped in
greenery and strapped with large circular wreaths, depending on
local and regional variances. With roots in Germanic paganism,
the maypole traditionally appears in most Germanic countries and
Germanic country-bordering, most popularly in Austria, Germany,
the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Finland
(including the Åland islands) and Sweden in modern times for
Spring, May Day, Beltane and Midsummer festivities and rites. On
the first day of May, English villagers woke up at daybreak to
roam the countryside gathering blossoming flowers and branches.
A towering maypole was set up on the village green. This pole,
usually made of the trunk of a tall birch tree, was decorated
with bright field flowers. The villagers then danced and sang
around the maypole, accompanied by a piper. The Maypole is often
considered a phallic symbol, coinciding with the worship of
Germanic phallic figures such as that of Freyr. Potential other
meanings include symbolism relating to the Yggdrasil, a symbolic
axis linking the underworld, the world of the living, the
heavens and numerous other realms. Also likely related,
reverence for sacred trees can be found in surviving accounts of
Germanic tribes, for example, Thor's Oak, Adam of Bremen's
account of Sacred groves and the Irminsul. The present day
tradition of maypoles coincides geographically with the area of
influence of the Germanic mythos.
Also part of the celebration was the crowning of a May Queen. When the
sun rose, the maypole was decked with leaves, flowers and ribbons while
dancing and singing went on around it. The Queen was chosen from the
pretty girls of the village to reign over the May Day festivities.
Crowned on a flower-covered throne, she was drawn in a decorated cart by
young men or her maids of honor to the village green. She would be
crowned there right on the green spot. She was set in an arbor of
flowers and often the dancing was performed around her, rather than
around the Maypole.
The May Queen is also known as The Maiden, the goddess of spring, flower
bride, queen of the faeries, and the lady of the flowers. The May Queen
is a symbol of the stillness of nature around which everything revolves.
She embodies purity, strength and the potential for growth, as the
plants grow in May. She is one of many personifications of the energy of
the earth. She was once also known as Maid Marian in the medieval plays
of Robin Hood and of the May Games - she is the young village girl,
crowned with blossom, attended by children with garlands and white
dresses. Some folklorists have drawn parallels between her and Maia, the
Roman Goddess of Springtime, of Growth and Increase whose very name may
be the root of "May". The May Queen is a girl (usually a teenage girl
from a specific school year) who is selected to ride at the front of a
parade for May Day celebrations. She wears a gown and usually a tiara or
crown. Her duty is to begin the May Day celebrations. May Queen is also
the name of a ketch-rigged barge built in 1876 at Franklin, Tasmania.
She is the oldest boat of her type afloat in the world and is on the
International Register of Significant Ships.
Morris Dance :
A Morris dance is a form of folk dance. Another colorful feature of the
this celebration was the energetic Morris dance. Groups of men dance
together in costumes of traditional characters, often animal-men, in
ceremonial folk dances. The central figure of the dances, usually an
animal-man, varies considerably in importance. The name Morris is also
associated with the horn dance held each year at Abbots Bromley,
Staffordshire, England. This dance-procession includes six animal-men
bearing deer antlers, three white and three black sets; a man-woman, or
Maid Marian, and a fool. These dances are still performed in England.
And also survive in various parts of Europe, Asia, and, America. One
such comparable surviving animal custom is the May Day procession of a
man-horse, notably at Padstow, Cornwall. There, the central figure, "Oss
Oss," is a witch doctor disguised as a horse and wearing a medicine
mask. The dancers are attendants who sing the May Day song, beat drums,
and in turn act the horse or dance in attendance. The name 'Morris' is
also associated with groups of mummers who act, rather than dance, the
death-and-survival rite at the turn of the year. Throughout history, the
Morris seems to have been common. It was imported from village
festivities into popular entertainment after the invention of the court
masque by Henry VIII. The word Morris apparently derived from "morisco",
meaning "Moorish". Cecil Sharp, whose collecting of Morris dances
preserved many from extinction, suggested that it might have arisen from
the dancers' blacking their faces as part of the necessary ritual
disguise. The name Morris dance is sometimes loosely applied to sword
dances in which a group of men weave their swords into intricate
patterns.
There are English records mentioning the Morris Dance dating back to
1448, which is also the year of the first known morris dance performance
in England, and dances with similar names and some similar features are
mentioned in Renaissance documents in France, Italy, and Spain. The
origins of the term are uncertain, but one of the most widely accepted
theories is that the term was "moorish dance" and "Moresco", which was
gradually corrupted to "Morris Dance". Another is that it derives from
the Romanian "morisca", which means "little mill". Another, perhaps
simpler, explanation is that "Morris" comes from the Latin "Mores",
meaning "a custom". This is consistent with the word (with various
archaic spellings) sometimes being used to describe some other folk
customs such as folk plays. In the modern day, it is commonly thought of
as a uniquely English activity, although there are around 150 Morris
teams in the United States. Expatriates form a larger part of the morris
tradition in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. The dance is
also practised in Barcelona, Spain, where it is performed by girls or
women, and there are isolated groups in other countries, for example
that in Utrecht, Netherlands. The traditional Căluşari dance of Romania
resembles morris in many ways. Today, there are three predominant styles
of Morris Dancing, and different traditions within each style named
after their region of origin. Traditions differ in the form of their
steps and capers.
* Cotswold Morris: dances from the English Cotswolds, normally danced
with handkerchiefs or sticks to embellish the hand movements
* North West Morris: more military in style and often processional.
Clogs are a characteristic feature of this style of dance
* Border Morris from the English-Welsh border: a simpler, looser more
vigorous, style, normally danced with blackened faces (or sometimes
otherwise coloured, given the negative connotations for some of a
blackface).
Lionel Bacon records morris traditions, most of which are in the
Cotswold style, from these villages: Abingdon, Adderbury, Badby, Bampton,
Bidford, Bledington, Brackley, Brimfield, Bromsberrow Heath, Bucknell,
Evesham, Eynsham, Headington Quarry, Ilmington, Kirtlington, Leafield
("Field Town"), Leominster, Lichfield, Longborough, Much Wenlock,
Oddington, Pershore, Sherbourne, Stanton Harcourt, Steeple Claydon,
Upton-on-Severn, Upton Snodsbury, Wheatley, White Ladies Aston, Winster,
Ascot-under-Wychwood, Hinton-in-the-Hedges, Ducklington. There are a
number of traditions which have been invented in the later twentieth
century, though few have been widely adopted. Examples are Broadwood,
Duns Tew and Ousington-under-Wash in the Cotswold style, and Upper and
Lower Penn in the Border style. Sometimes regarded as a type of Morris,
although by many of the performers themselves as a traditional dance
form in its own right, is the sword dance tradition, which includes both
Rapper Sword and Long Sword traditions. The English mummers play
occasionally involves morris or sword dances either incorporated as part
of the play or performed at the same event. Other forms include Molly
dance from Cambridgeshire. Molly dance, which is associated with Plough
Monday, is a parodic form danced in work boots and with at least one
Molly man dressed as a woman. There is also Hoodening which comes from
East Kent, and the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance. Hoberdidance or
Hobbididance was the name of a bad sprite associated with the Morris
dance. Its name is from Hob, an old name for the Devil.
Facewashing in May Dew :
Washing the face with May dew was yet another custom. There was a belief
among the women in Great Britain and other parts of Europe those days
that May Day dew has the power to restore beauty. This why in the Ozark
Mountains, a cradle of American folklore, girls used to nurture a belief
that having their faces washed with the early dawn dews on the May Day
would help to be married to the man of her choice.
