Beltane Lore & Poetry

I am the calm, I am the quickening.
I am the intoxication and the force,
I am the silence, I am the singer,
I am the stallion galloping to its source.
I am the bright pavilion and the feasting,
I am the wedding couple and the bed,
I am the morning chorus and the heartbeat,
I am the goal to which all paths are led.

~~ Caitlin Matthews ~~

The Gates of Dawn
The Otherworld of Beltane

Just as each day has four divisions – noon and midnight, dawn and dusk – so the Celtic year has similar divisions. Because Celtic days ran from evening to evening, Samhain – when the Celtic year begins – equates to dusk, when the Moon becomes visible; Beltane – halfway through the year – equates to dawn, when the Moon begins to disappear. By the same analogy, Imbolc and Lughnasadh would represent Midnight and Midday, respectively, the Moon’s zenith and nadir…

These thresholds between one period and another are fissures in the wheel of time – gaps in existence when the normal laws that govern human life are suspended – flashbacks to the primordial chaos of the Beginning, out of which orderly Creation emerged…

Since Beltane is one of the two main transition points of the Celtic year (Samhain being the other), its gap in time and existence is particularly wide. In the language of magic, such an interval is known as a “crack between the worlds”. It is now that the veil between the Otherworld and the world of man thins to gossamer fineness, allowing a glimpse of – or even access to – the Other Side. It is now that the unseen becomes the seen, now that all manner of fairy beings pass through the wide-open doorway leading from the land of the spirits into the land of mortals…

At such a propitious moment as Beltane, it is only natural that incidents of the greatest curiosity and import should occur. It was on May Eve that the invaders Partholón, the Tuatha Dé Danaan, and the sons of Mil arrived in Ireland. It was on May Eve that the child Taliesin, mystical bard, emerged from the royal salmon nets in which he was ensnared. It was on May Eve, too, that a terrifying scream could be heard the length and breadth of Britain, that left barren all animals, trees, water and earth. This scream came from a dragon in combat with another, deep in the heart’s core of Ireland. (These are just a few examples of the many mythological events that happened on this threshold time)…

Every May Eve, the mare belonging to Teyron, Lord of Gwent Is-coed, bore a colt, which mysteriously disappeared. One May Eve he decided to keep watch. After much noise, a giant claw came through the window and seized the colt, but Teyron struck it off at the elbow. When he rushed out to see who the owner of the claw might be, all was darkness, but on returning indoors again he found a baby in swaddling clothes. The child turned out to be the son of Rhiannon and Pwyll, stolen away on the night he was born. When returned to his parents, he was given the name Pryderi, meaning, “care”, because his mother said that she would be delivered of her care if she had news of him…

In the Gaulish Calendrical Tablet, the Coligny Calendar, the month of May-June was called Simivisionios, or “the time of brightness”, as the rays of the sun begin to drench the land with their perpendicular spears of light…

In the Celtic calendar, May Eve was the start of one of the most important festivals of the year – the great feast of Beltane. The origins of the name are not clear. Some believe it derives from bel-dine, “dine” meaning cattle, because newborn cattle were sacrificed on this day to Bel or Bial – a Celtic Baal, counterpart to the Scandinavian Balder. Others believe that the name means “bright fire”, from belos, bright or shining, and taine or tan, fire. Either way, fire certainly formed a central part of the Beltane rituals…

On the other hand, the name “May” is thought to be derived from Maya or Maia – Goddess of Spring – and in Scandinavia the month is dedicated to Maj, the Maiden. In Saxon England, May was “Sproutkale”, or “Tri-milchi” because at this time cows were said to be giving milk three times a day. The day that we call May Day and celebrate on May 1 would, because of alterations in the calendar, previously have fallen on May 13, which was May Day Old Style…

May Eve, April 30, ushers in a most joyful season, as the month of May blossoms forth in all the flowers and greenery of late Spring and early Summer. This is the time to get up before dawn on May 1 to see the sun rise and to gather may – the flowering hawthorn – or perhaps birth or rowan; the time to wear green in honor of the verdant Earth; and, above all, the time to enjoy the pleasures of love…

This blessing for a lover comes from Gaelic Scotland:

You are the star of each night.
You are the brightness of every morning.
You are the story of each guest.
You are the report of every land.

No evil shall befall you,
On hill nor bank,
In field nor valley,
On mountain or in glen;

Neither above nor below,
Neither in sea nor on shore,
In skies above,
Nor in the depths.

You are the kernel of my heart.
You are the face of my sun.
You are the harp of my music.
You are the crown of my company.

The supreme Welsh love-poet, Dafydd ap Gwylym, described himself as “Ovid’s man”. He writes here about the pursuit of his current sweetheart and the retreat that Nature offers to them:

It was sweet, sweetheart, a while
Beneath the birchgrove’s shade to live.
To cuddle up was ever sweeter,
In the wood’s retreat close hidden,
Wandering hand in hand along the wood-shore,
Lying beside each other in the grove.
Mutually shunning fold, complicit in complaint,
Living together with kindness, quaffing mead,
Resting in each other’s love, one heart,
Keeping tryst with love’s secret.

This traditional Irish blessing of a bride and groom lovingly maintains the spirit of Beltane in the marriage:

Length of life and sunny days,
And may your souls not go homewards
‘Til your own child falls in love!

When asked what were the three sweetest things he had ever heard, Cormac mac Airt – the Irish Solomon – replied, “The shout of triumph after victory, praise after wages, and a lady’s invitation to her pillow”…

“Greensleeves was all my joy,
Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves was my heart of gold,
And who but my Lady Greensleeves?”

~~ A Courtly Sonnet from “A Handful of Pleasant Deities”, 1584 ~~

If May is the time for love, it is the extra-marital kind, however. In this case, love and marriage definitely do not go together – after all, the Love Goddess is hardly likely to follow convention, but goes where her heart and her passions lead her. May, then, is the merry month of elopements, of trysts, of illicit meetings in the greenwood. The concept of Romantic Love, of love for love’s sake, was a plant foreign to the soil of Northern Europe. It grew from a seed brought back from the East by returning Crusaders in the Middle Ages, and at the center of the cult was Woman as Goddess – a figure to be adored and worshipped, and attainable only for one worthy enough. The open-air freedoms of blossoming May and its associations with sensual and erotic pleasures, melded with the Romantic ideal, and in the words of minstrels and bards, this, par excellence, was the month “to make much joy” – and where better to make this joy than amidst the beauties of Nature?

For Welsh poets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, May was the time for secret assignations in the “house of leaves”, the lover’s bower, which often stood below a birch tree or in a birch bush (reminders of these rendezvous were offered in the form of birch-wreath love tokens). That which is furthest from reach is often that which is most alluring, and women with the greatest powers of attraction were frequently married rather than single – whether they be the wives of flesh-and-blood men or, even more tantalizingly perhaps, the “brides of Christ” of the nunneries...

The abandon of May was obviously at odds with settled conjugal life by the domestic hearth, and those who chose to wed now did so at their peril. It was said that marriages made in May would only last one Summer, and an old Irish book of law even went so far as to cite Beltane as the most common time for divorce. In this month of love, it was the unloving and the unkind – not the unmarried – that were scorned. In parts of Wales, young men would fix beribboned bunches of flowers to the houses of the young women they loved; to those of prudes, however, or of women who had jilted their lovers, they attached a straw effigy of a man, or a horse’s skull…

On the morning of May Day, Scottish lasses used to go out early and wash their faces in dew, a sure potion for preserving beauty. In Edinburgh the favourite place to do this was Arthur's Seat. Similarly, at Anhalth, Germany, girls did the same to get rid of freckles…

Who first beholds the light of day
In spring's sweet flowery month of May,
And wear the Emerald all her life,
Shall be a loved and happy wife.

Oengus (Angus) Og, son of the Dagda and Boann, is the Irish God of Love, around whose head four birds forever fluttered, representing his kisses. He himself fell in love with Caer Ibormeith, who appeared to him in a dream, and his long pursuit of her became the epitome of all lover’s quests. He was the foster-father of Diarmuid O’Dubhne, lover of Grainne, and transported his body to Brú na Bóinne, Newgrange, after his death, where he was able to breathe his soul back into his body…

In the Irish Tree Alphabet, the letter “H” is represented by hawthorn. The hawthorn is associated with the sexual license of the Beltane quarter due to the overpowering phenomenal scent of its blossoms at this time. It is the one tree which is overwhelmingly associated with the outdoors, with faeries and with sexual sportiveness; its shoots are never brought indoors for fear of overwhelming the orderliness of everyday life…

Maytime is a time for dancing, if not in the magical circle around the Maypole, then in energy-raising processions through the streets. In these troops of dancers, we see the whole cast of Beltane characters – the May Queen, the Green Man, the Horned Animal God, as well as white Summer and black Winter…

Once such dance involved milkmaids leading a flower-garlanded cow, or someone known as a “silver man”. He would be a chimney sweep, a figure of blackened Winter, wearing a cage of green branches and leaves hung with a silver platter and jugs, and thereby transformed into Jack-in-the-Green, trapped in a cage of green and silver-white Summer. Around these central figures danced the imps of Winter – more chimney sweeps in black suits with blackened faces…

The May-Day celebrations at Padstow in Cornwall retain the fullest vigour of Beltane customs. After serenading the town through midnight and the small hours, the Mayers re-emerge with the Oss – a fearsome pointy-beaked hobby horse that covers its wearer by a six-foot hoop covered with black tarpaulin. It processes the streets, led on by its Teaser – a white-clad Mayer. Its dance dives and swoops, ever seeking for a young woman to bring under its skirts; to be the object of the Oss is considered to grant fertility and to be lucky. The chorus of the Padstow May-Day song goes:

Unite and unite and let us unite,
For Summer is acome unto day,
And whither we are going we will all unite
On the merry morning of May.

Lord Summerisle: They do love their divinity lessons.
Sgt. Howie: But they are ... are naked!
Lord Summerisle: Naturally! It's much too dangerous to jump through the fire with your clothes on.

Once almost every village in England had a maypole, but in 1644 the killjoy Puritans had them all destroyed. With the Restoration of the monarchy in 1661 which brought renewed appreciation of old folk ways, May Day again had a place in English society and the maypoles were re-erected.

The most famous of these was a 134-feet monster in Little Drury Lane, which thenceforth was known as Maypole Alley. After just four years, by 1717 it was rotten and had to go ? it was bought by Sir Isaac Newton and erected at Wanstead, in Essex as a support to the new reflecting telescope (124 feet in length), which had been presented to the Royal Society by the French astronomer Christiaan Huygens, the Dutch mathematician and physicist. In 1800 it led an anonymous author to ask humorously: “What’s not destroy’d by Time’s relentless hand? Where’s Troy? — and where’s the May-pole in the Strand?”

The moon tree is often shown in pictures … In one Assyrian picture it has ribbons like our Maypole. Perhaps a dance may have taken place around the tree in those faraway days, like the dance that is still performed round the Maypole on May Day. In such a dance the ribbons would be interwoven, as in our own dance, to represent the decking of the bare tree with bright-coloured leaves and flowers and fruits, all gifts of the moon goddess, giver of fertility.

In England, particularly in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the people were often entertained on May Day by performers acting stories of the life of Robin Hood and Maid Marian. The people of the village often acted out the parts of the outlaw, his lady and the merry men themselves, with a distinct set of actions, as well as dancing round the maypole.

In Scotland, as in England, Morris dancing and Robin Hood plays were very popular on May Day. The people of pre-Reformation Scotland also enjoyed acting out the plays called The Abbot of Inobedience, or Unreason, satirising religion, and a drama called Queen of the May. The actors were chosen by a village committee, on forfeit of a fine for those who didn’t want to act.

Last century the custom for Italian girls on May Day was to dress up and go from house to house singing special May songs. The songs wished: the pleasures of youth; a long life full of love; that all one eats would turn to sugar and oil; that one’s clothes would never wear out…

Up till about a hundred years ago, Beltane (the old pagan name for May Day) was celebrated in Scotland with bonfires to which eggs and dairy products were brought as sacrifices. Beltane was also celebrated with bannocks (cakes), which were marked with a cross and rolled downhill. It might be that the custom of Easter egg rolling came from this practice…

At Callander, a town in Perthshire, Scotland, on Beltane (May Day) boys used to meet on the moors, where they lit a fire and cooked a custard and bannock cake. After eating the custard they divided the bannock, one piece of which was marked with charcoal. Whoever drew this slice had to jump through the fire three times, a relic of ancient bonfire (bone-fire) sacrifices to Bel the god of Beltane…

Then came fair May, the fayrest mayd on ground,
Deckt all with the dainties of her season's pryde,
And throwing flowres out of her lap around:
Upon two brethren's shoulders she did ride,
The twinnes of Leda; which on either side
Supported her, like to their soveraine quene.
Lord! how all creatures laught, when her they spide,
And leapt and daunc't as they had ravisht been!
And Cupid selfe about her fluttered all in greene.

Edmund Spenser (c. 1552 - January 13, 1599), English poet;
Faerie Queen, ‘The Cantos of Mutabilitie’

In the Scottish highlands on Beltane, herdsmen used to each take a piece of cake - on each were nine knobs dedicated to a deity. Each man broke off a knob, flinging it over his shoulder while saying, “This I give to thee, preserve thou my horses”, (sheep, cows, etc). After that they used the same rites for wild beasts: “This I give to thee, O fox! Spare thou my lambs”. Afterwards they dined. When they were finished, what was left was hidden, and next Sunday finished.

At the stroke of midnight ushering in the new May Day in Penzance, Cornwall, young men traditionally went around town with drums, violins and other musical instruments. They called on farmhouses where they were provided with junket, tea and country cake (composed of cream, flour, sugar and currants). Then followed a dance and the gathering of May bush.

At Penzance, in Cornwall, on May Day, youths used to make May music, played on a tube of May bush bark, like a whistle. The lads would then bring home the May, by dawn, with whistles, drums and violins playing as they danced. Following all this merriment, they actually went to work…

In old Wales, on May Day, folk used to assemble in local taverns. There, the chief orator, clown and money collector was called the cadi. He was dressed in petticoats and wore a hideous mask, or blackface with red cheeks and lips. People celebrated in groups of thirteen, wearing decorated shirts over their clothes, and decorated hats.

In Hitchin, Hertfordshire, England, on May Days long ago, people used to march in procession starting at 3 am, the men singing the mayers’ song, the second verse of which went:

We have been rambling all this night,
And almost all this day,
An d now returned back again,
We have brought you a branch of May.

People used to place branches of May bush on doors of houses in the town. If any servant had given offence to any of the mayers, a branch of elder and a bunch of nettles were left instead, so servants used to rise early to look for a May branch.

The mayers were dressed as characters such as black people, lords, ladies and hunchbacks. A regular couple of costumed characters were Mad Moll and her husband. Moll’s husband would chase with a broom anyone who insulted his rag-woman wife.

On May Day in eighteenth century London, milkmaids used to take about town their garland (a pyramidal frame covered in silver plate rented from pawnbrokers), with flowers and a milk urn, placed on a wooden horse and carried by two men. The maids made music and cried “Milk below” up at the London houses.

On May Day at Oberberg, Germany, in olden times, people laid beside streams eggs for the woodland elves, who used them for making cakes, or so it is said.

In Poland there is an old and strong superstition that chickens born today will be misshapen, so farmers do not set broody hens. In some districts this belief is so strong that it applies for a whole year to the day of the week on which May Day fell. In America and England it was customary not to set broody hens at all in the month of May.

In old Germany, May water was supposed to have magical powers. At Altenrath near Cologne, it was traditional for children to clean the local stream at midnight, strew it with flowers and sing from door to door “The stream has been swept” (Bonne gefaech, Bonne gefaech).

In the German town of Thuringia on May Day, girls traditionally try to hit a pot while blindfolded (Topfschlagen).

In Antdorf, Bavaria, May running (Mailaufen) still takes place on the first Sunday in May every three years. A group of boys sits with two brooms and a lantern on a bench in a meadow. A party of girls, three fewer in number than the boys, rushes the bench and each selects a boy by the hand. The three boys not chosen must dance with the brooms or lantern.

If bees swarm and leave in May, you’ll get good honey that year. You are allowed by custom to follow them over anyone’s land and claim them when they rest. You must, however, make a beating sound on a metal utensil. This will also make the bees stop.

In old Scotland and Ireland, May Day rituals were, among other things, an attempt to stop the spread of witchcraft. Whoever received a piece of cake marked with charcoal served as scapegoat for witches, becoming a figure of terror and being pelted with eggshells. (By way of comparison, in Germany it was customary to throw eggshells at a disagreeable stranger)…

On May 1 at Temple Stowerby, England, they traditionally tell tales on the village green. The prizes have long been one grindstone and twenty razor hones, as well as cheap whetstones; all are for the noble art of lying: the more improbable the yarn, the greater the honour. Once the Bishop of Carlisle told the crowd “I have never told a lie in my life”, when suddenly the crowd threw the grindstone into his carriage…

O’Donoghue’s white horses is a picturesque old expression for the foamy, choppy waves which come on a windy day. O’Donoghue, an Irish hero who once walked across the ocean and disappeared, reappears every seventh year on May Day, and is seen gliding over the lakes of Killarney, to celestial music, on his favourite white horse. Preceding him are fairies strewing flowers in his path.

Some May proverbs are:

Be it weal or be it woe,
Beans blow before May doth go.

Come it early or come it late,
In May comes the cow-quake.

A swarm of bees in May
Is worth a load of hay.
A swarm of bees in June
Is worth a silver spoon.
A swarm of bees in July
Is not worth a fly.

The haddocks are good,
When dipped in May flood.

Mist in May, and heat in June,
Make the harvest right soon.

A hot May makes a fat churchyard.
(Meaning that many people will die.)

There is the story of the “Battle of the Seasons”. Rivals in love were not the only ones to battle it out at Beltane. At this crucial turning point of the seasons, there was no reason why Winter should give way to Summer without a fight. Thus on May Day in many different corners of Europe, the representative and followers of Winter, clad in fur and adorned with straw, entered into mock battle with the representative and troops of Summer, dressed in green or white and decked with flowers and leaves. Summer, of course, always won, and Winter’s fate might include being stripped of his straw, ducked in the village well, or driven out into the forest…

On clear nights, we can sometimes see the Milky Way. In Wales, the Milky Way is known as Caer Gwydion; in Gaelic is it called Bothar na Bo Finne (Road of the White Cow). It is significant that the myths of the Milky Way in Celtic countries seem to adhere to the reiving of animals: Gwydion (the Welsh “Trickster God”) steals the swine of Annwn (the Underworld), and both Irish and British legends speak of the theft of the Otherworldly Cow/Bull. The cow was the object of ancient quest, giving milk, goodness, life, restoration, immortality, soma, etc. The Milky Way is known throughout Europe as a galactic pilgrimage route, being called, in Britain, the Walsingham Way, and in Spain, El Camino de Santiago – the road to Compostella…

Musical branches of different metals were carried by the aes dana – “gifted people”. The highest grade of the aes dana was the ollamh – roughly the equivalent to the degree of “doctor” in modern university parlance. The ollamh bore a golden branch with bells upon it, his deputy a silver one, and so on. Musical branches frequently appear as the instruments of Otherworldly people, and it is thought that the poetic and druidic use of such branches was because they represented a scion of the Otherworldly tree. The practical use of the musical branch was to bring attention and create silence, that people might listen more attentively to the aes dana; when in the hands of Otherworldly beings, the musical branch confers a change in consciousness…

During May, Creiddylad – the betrothed of Gwythyr ap Greidawl – was carried off by the God of the Underworld, Gwyn ap Nudd. The case was brought to Arthur, who judged that Creiddylad should return to her house and that Gwyn and Gwythyr should combat for her every May Day until doomsday. Until the early nineteenth century, the people of South Wales enacted the ritual abduction of Creiddylad with two sets of contestants in memory of this event and in celebration of May…

Blodeuwedd, one of many Welsh Goddesses of Flowers, is conjured from the Otherworld by Math ap Mathonwy and magically incarnated through the medium of flowers and blossoms. This is her song:

Not of mother, nor of father, was my creation.
I was made from the ninefold elements:
From fruit trees, from paradisal fruit,
From primroses and hillflowers,
From blossom of the trees and bushes,
From the roots of the earth I was made,
From the bloom of the nettle,
From water of the ninth wave.

Gwalchmai ap Gwyar was the nephew of Arthur, better known from medieval legend as Gawain. His name means “the Hawk of May”. He was the epitome of virtue and courtesy, and is listed in the Triads as one of the three best men with guests and visitors from afar; he achieves more by his courtesy than others achieve by deeds of arms. Gwalchmai/Gawain is unequalled as the champion of women and the Goddess…

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”

Sources:

The Celtic Book of Days - A Guide to Celtic Spirituality & Wisdom by Caitlín Matthews

The Magickal Year - A Pagan Perspective on the Natural World by Diana Ferguson

Lord Summerisle to Sgt Howie, from The Wicker Man Anthony Shaffer, 1973

http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/may.html

Hillman, Tusser Redivivus, 1710 (Kightly, Charles, The Perpetual Almanack of Folklore, Thames and Hudson, London, 1987)

Woman’s Mysteries by Esther Harding

Prospero in The Tempest, Act. 4, Scene 1, by William Shakespeare