Bluebells and song birds: it’s Beltane!
…or I toyed with the title,
Cuckoos and cracks between the worlds of magic and of Merry (Wo)Men.
May is cuckoo time, Robin Hood time, Magical and Human time. Scroll down to the bottom for the suggestions for seasonal activities, or stick around for the chat, starting with our our oldest written folk song (how is your middle English, folks?)
Sumer is icumen in
Lhude sing cuccu
Or, in nine-centuries-later-speak, ‘loudly sing cuckoo’. And she still is cuckoo-ing away in the UK (we heard her song on a nature reserve, May 2nd) although in declining numbers. Time to listen to one of the Wake Up Calls, created over nine years. These are wonderfully evocative, and use recordings of actual birds on the red and amber lists of endangered British birds. Here’s The Cuckoo Song by Cosmo Sheldrake.
And, helping to keep our traditional knowledge alive, why not learn its habits from the nursery rhyme and pass it on to our favourite child -
Cuckoo, cuckoo, what do you do?
In April I open my bill;
In May I sing all day;
In June I change my tune;
In July away I fly;
In August away I must.
And to finish honouring this most distinctive songster, make time for a 2 minute retro-wallow, enjoy ‘April, come she will’ by Simon and Garfunkel interpretation, here.
Cuckoo associations
There is a wealth of mythology about our avian visitor. If WEALTH is your object, best to go all out to hear a cuckoo on the 28th April, and have money in your pockets to turn over when the call sounds. If you’re really dedicated, you’ll be putting that in the 2022 calendar now. Will turning a credit card do?? I’d say no, but if you disagree, ask yourself if, next time you pass a wishing well, you would throw said card in instead of silver coin.
I don’t think so – for precious metals carry a resonance lacking in plastic: not to mention romance and historical precedent.
Last on this subject - and there’s plenty left unsaid - see the cuckoo’s significance over Europe, for which I thank folklorethursday.
Scotland, France and Germany: Bad luck to hear a cuckoo before breakfast.
Germany: The sound of a cuckoo during a meal signified a year of hunger to come.
Denmark: On hearing the first cuckoo of spring, women would ask the bird, ‘When shall I marry?’. Each call in response represented one year.
Norway: If a cuckoo is calling from the west it will grant your wishes, but if heard to the north it is a ‘death cuckoo’.
Beltane: the time of Robin Hood and Maid Marion
Robin Hood and Little John
Have both gone to the fair-o,
And we shall to the merry green wood,
To hunt the buck and hare-o!
(From Hal an Tow. Traditional, UK)
So says a most ancient song for the season, from Cornwall - it also makes reference to the invasion of the Spanish Armada and the British archer’s goose-feather fletched arrows. Although we weren’t in magical Cornwall, here we are singing it for fun and celebration.
So, the million florin question is, is Robin Hood the archetypal Green Man of the Woods?
We would love to think so, but, historically, he was deeply Christian, having a tame friar amongst the Merry Men, upholding church-sanctioned marriage and reverencing the Virgin Mary especially. Now, we can say that is the Mediaeval overlay onto a Goddess figure, but trying to fit jigsaw pieces together may be a bit of a red herring. The important point is this: if a figure is archetypal, it responds to the needs of contemporary culture. We remake it according to our need, and, as long as there is a need for justice for the ordinary person in a world of establishment power, we will keep expressing Robin as that figure. But his role changes subtlely all the time, and he has recently been awoken to excite popular imagination as attempts are made to rebalance the disparities between the obscenely wealthy and desperately poor (for example, the UK’s proposed the ‘Robin Hood Tax’). But, at the forefront of all, there is an eco-imperative to save our world. So designated Robin’s primary role for our generation is as the spiritual protector of The Greenwood. And, in tune with our instating gender equality in society, that is increasingly the role of Maid Marion.
So, let’s both celebrate with them, and pledge to aid these energies of the wild: and may the forests of the world always flourish!
Who knows, Marion and Robin may still be heard at liminal times; as poet Alfred Noyes has it -
Sherwood in the twilight, is Robin Hood awake?
Grey and ghostly shadows are gliding through the brake,
Shadows of the dappled deer, dreaming of the morn,
Dreaming of a shadowy man that winds a shadowy horn.
Robin Hood is here again: all his merry thieves
Hear a ghostly bugle-note shivering through the leaves,
Calling as he used to call, faint and far away,
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.
Fae and woodland sprites are out on May Day dawn, when milkmaids bathe their faces in the dew. So, as we walk in the woods this month, who knows whether on the periphery of our vision we may see -
Where the deer are gliding down the shadowy glen
All across the glades of fern he calls his merry men;
Doublets of the Lincoln green glancing through the May,
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.
(A song of Sherwood, Alfred Noyes)
Stranger things have happened… in broad daylight, on an allotment in city-centre Bristol last week, we witnessed two deer trotted through, unhurried and unafraid. Magic is always there, if our eyes are open to it.
May Eve and May Day – a chancey time!
This Beltane/Samhain axis is very interesting, as each has the kernel of resonance to the other. But interestingly, whilst all the spooky magic now seems to have accrued around Samhain, old sources from Celtic lands tell us that May time is chancy!
Folklore and myth support this, in both date and seasonal flower. Although traditionally young people went out into the woods to gather may blossom, (‘For we’ve been out in the woods all night, a’conjuring summer in!) and it was used for maypole and other decorations, it is thought unlucky to bring it into the house,
… It is on May day that King Arthur decreed the annual battle for the maiden Creiddylad will take place, until the end of time. This is between two combatants, Gwyn ap Nudd and Gwythyr ap Greidawl, Arthur’s knights in Culhwch and Olwen. And, like Olwen, Gwynyvere and Fleur, Creiddylad is one of that pantheon of Celtic demi-Goddesses whose nuptials mark the turning of the solar year. Gwyn is White, son of Mist, riding from Glastonbury Tor to gather souls at Samhain: Gwythyr is Victor, son of Scorcher – clear indications that they represent the dark and light halves of the year, changing position on May Eve. Here’s a wonderfully evocative image of the Goddess of the Green, guardian of the animals and plants, in her incarnation as Danu. Thanks for permission to Andrea Redmond, Cailleach Moon Cottage on fb.
It is on May Night, Ysbryd nos, the night of the spirits, when the world of magic and of men might bleed into each other. In the first branch of the Mabinogion, when a pall of sleep descended on the land and Rhiannon’s new-born, unnamed son, was stolen, leading to her punishment of having to offer to carry nobles on her back like a horse. On the same night, a great clawed monster attempted its annual custom of stealing a foal from a stable. But that year the lord, determined not to lose another, stayed awake. He saved the foal by cutting off the claw, which also left a noble baby behind…The Lord and his wife raised the child, and when Rhiannon’s story filtered through to them, returned the youth – with the foal – to her.
These mixed messages, of magic, conflict and danger, all come from our ancestor’s firm understanding of May as a time of magical activity, when the veils are thin; when power and energy are high. So, we read them in due season and are glad of reminders to be sensible, alert and polite, just as when we might encounter any different culture and give offence unintentionally. I cannot tell at what distance anyone might feel happy viewing the realm of faery, but I’d suggest that it should be a very respectful one. The guidelines for contacting all sentient beings are to be taken seriously: being polite, giving offerings, setting an internal contract with yourself as to what is permissible and what is not.
And then, having done that and sent our good wishes to the rest of the living world of nature, we will toast the coming summer with joy with a libation of wine or juice infused with the first sweet woodruff,
Some activities for May:
If you’ve missed May Day, never mind. Beltane is a season, so plenty of opportunity still to celebrate. So, we will notice, love, play and create, with birdsong and flowers. And maybe choose from these options…
· Sleep with the windows open, to wake with the dawn chorus
· Walk in the greenwood, and sing to its spirit
· Garden, blessing the fruitful earth and all sentient life that grows from it
· Look for flowers on the trees
· Which leaves are on the trees? Which comes later, oak or elder?
· Make a crown
· Walk under a May tree to be showered with hawthorn confetti
· Watch bats (did you know they were mammals?); listen to them on YouTube
· Dream under the moon and stars
· Make nettle soup & elder flower fritters
· Watch 2-3 Robin Hood films, from different areas. Wince at the sexism! Notice the focus in each one
· Make two small fires, or light two candles, to walk between, from spring into summer
And as we started with one bird, let us finish with many. It’s poem that celebrates the birds’ evening chorus, and time travels back from that miracle to the time when the birds were… what? So, season blends into season, and new life springs constantly from ‘grain and earth’.
PROUD SONGSTERS
The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
And as it gets dark loud nightingales
In bushes
Pipe, as they can when April wears,
As if all Time were theirs.
These are brand-new birds of twelve-months’ growing,
Which a year ago, or less than twain,
No finches were, nor nightingales,
Nor thrushes,
But only particles of grain,
And earth, and air, and rain.
Thomas Hardy
Blessings of May pole, wild garlic and bluebells: Have a wonderful summer!
