Happy Month of “Yes You May”!

Happy Month of “Yes You May”! April 25, 2015

“Life went a-maying with Nature, Hope, and Poesy, when I was young!”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

josephine_wall_trees_the-dryad-and-the-tree-spirit_med-2
“The Dryad and the Tree Spirit”, by Josephine Wall

It’s time for my semi-seasonal rant about the Sabbats.  This time, however, I just can’t work up the necessary indignation.  I just love Beltane too much.

According to Ronald Hutton, Beltane was celebrated all over the British Isles and Europe in ancient times, although there were local variations in the forms of celebration.  In the Welsh tale of “Lludd and Llevelys” in the Mabinogion, Beltane is the night when the red and white dragons fought each other, symbolizing summer and winter.  It was also in this date that Gwythyr and Gwynn ap Nudd fight every year for “until the day of doom” for the hand of Creiddylad in “Culhwch ac Olwen” in the Mabinogion.

Many Neo-Pagans today associate Beltane with the marriage of the Oak King to the Goddess.  On the Wheel of the Year, Beltane is the mirror image of Samhain, on which the Wild Hunt is set loose to bring winter into the world.  And in Germany, Beltane is preceded by Walpurgis Night, the last night of the cold half of the year, the last night the Wild Hunt rides free, and a kind of mini-Halloween when the witches come out.

Seasonally, Beltane corresponds to the continued waxing of the light and the new growth of spring (at least here in the Midwest).  In my own mythology, it is the time the Dark God is bound and the Stag King takes his oath to the Goddess, now the May Queen, representative of sovereignty.  The two are married and, by virtue of his marriage to the Queen, the Stag King is crowned and becomes the Oak King.

Beltane corresponds with the English quarter-day “May Day”.  The most common folk element of May Day celebrations which continues today is the maypole.  Beltane or May Day is universally considered a time for joyful celebration.  Despite its phallic suggestiveness, the maypole probably was not an ancient pagan custom.  It probably doesn’t date before the 14th century CE.  We actually have the Protestant reformers to thank for the erroneous belief that maypoles and other folk celebrations were “pagan” survivals.  As Sabina Magliocco explains in Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America, “When Oliver Cromwell and his followers railed against ‘the old religion’ and forbade the performance of popular year-cycle customs, they were targeting the practice of Catholicism and customs associated with it, not the actual observance of pagan religions. A connection however ill-conceived was formed in European, especially British, thought between the practice of folk rituals and customs and ‘paganism’.”

“What chiefly characterized the colonists of Merry Mount, was their veneration for the May-Pole. … Its votaries danced round it, once, at least, in every month; sometimes they called it their religion, or their altar; but always, it was the banner-staff of Merry Mount.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The May-Pole of Merry Mount”

The image of the maypole-dancing, idol-worshiping, and fornicating-in-the-forest folk resonates with me, and is at least part of the reason I call myself “Pagan”.  Despite it’s relatively late origins, there is something primal about dancing around a maypole, and about Beltane generally.  Herman Melville wrote, “If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure back to their birth-right, the merry May-day gods of old; and livingly enthrone them again in the now egotistical sky …”  How Melville finished that sentence (something about sperm whales) isn’t really salient to this discussion, but I think his little thought experiment is an interesting one.  I, for one, think the world would be a better place if more of us went “a-Maying” at Beltane.

To me, at least, there has always been something just a little naughty about May in general.  Maybe it’s the vestigial memory of the free love of “greenwood marriages” which supposedly happened on Beltane.  Maybe it’s because it’s National Masturbation Month.  Or maybe it’s because my mother inculcated in me at a young age a love of the 1967 film adaptation of “Camelot” starring Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave, in which Redgrave as Guinevere sings the song, “The Lusty Month of May”.  Whatever the reason, this Beltane, I wish you “tons of wicked little thoughts” and “divine mistakes”:

“The Lusty Month of May”

Tra la! It’s May!
The lusty month of May!
That lovely month when ev’ryone goes
Blissfully astray.
Tra la! It’s here!
That shocking time of year
When tons of wicked little thoughts
Merrily appear!
It’s May! It’s May!
That gorgeous holiday
When ev’ry maiden prays that her lad
Will be a cad!
It’s mad! It’s gay!
A libelous display!
Those dreary vows that ev’ryone takes,
Ev’ryone breaks.
Ev’ryone makes divine mistakes
The lusty month of May!

Tra la! It’s May!
The lusty month of May!
That darling month when ev’ryone throws
Self-control away.
It’s time to do
A wretched thing or two,
And try to make each precious day
One you’ll always rue!
It’s May! It’s May!
The month of “yes you may,”
The time for ev’ry frivolous whim,
Proper or “im.”
It’s wild! It’s gay!
A blot in ev’ry way.
The birds and bees with all of their vast
Amorous past
Gaze at the human race aghast,
The lusty month of May.

Tra la! It’s May!
The lusty month of May!
That lovely month when ev’ryone goes
Blissfully astray.
Tra la! It’s here!
That shocking time of year
When tons of wicked little thoughts
Merrily appear.
It’s May! It’s May!
The month of great dismay.
When all the world is brimming with fun,
Wholesome or “un.”
It’s mad! It’s gay!
A libelous display!
Those dreary vows that ev’ryone takes,
Ev’ryone breaks.
Ev’ryone makes divine mistakes
The lusty month of May!

Previous editions of Rant on the Sabbats

Lughnasadh: “Lughnasaywhat?”

Mabon: “Mabon, Mabon-Not”

Samhain: “What in Samhain?”

Yule: “Putting Mabon Back in Christmas”

Imbolc: “I hate ewe’s milk.”

Ostara: “Wish upon Ostara”

 


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