Co Wexford’s May Bush Festival is growing by the year
IT’S that time of year again, when on May 1, summer officially begins in Ireland. It’s also the time that many of us in Wexford will put up our May Bushes.
The tradition is on the increase year by year due to the pioneering work of husband and wife team Michael Fortune and Aileen Lambert from Curragraigue, Ballindaggin, who have been promoting our May folklore, traditions and customs countywide for the past 15 years.
Some years back they established the Wexford May Bush Festival as a community event, spreading the word via various channels to help re-ignite the old tradition in our contemporary lives. With the support of various people around the county and including the arts, community and Environment Departments in Wexford County Council, local press and media, The Wexford May Bush Festival has become a great examples of a grass-roots, groundup event in Wexford. Earlier this year they sourced 200 young whitethorn bushes from Wexford County Council and gifted them to people all over Wexford so that they could plant them as May Bushes in their own homes, schools, communities and gardens.
‘The response and uptake to the May Bush planting idea was incredible,’ Michael says, ‘and now those who planted theirs in March are noticing the first leaves appear and become part of their gardens, their communities and their lives. This is a slow-burning project, it is the seeds that we have planted now which will live on for generations across Wexford’.’
As in previous years, Aileen and Michael are encouraging families and communities to erect their own May Bushes around the county and submit their photos to the Facebook page the Wexford May Bush Festival.
‘Putting up a May Bush is one of the easiest things to do,’ Michael says. ‘All you need is to cut down a bough of a whitethorn or gorse, stake it up in a prominent place and decorate it with ribbons, egg shells and flowers. In the past lighted candles were placed on the bush and a modern take on this is to use fairy lights. The bushes were decorated on the eve of May Day or the evening of the first, and were erected to welcome the summer, but also to offer a form of protection for the growing crops.’
Last year they received hundreds of photos from around the county and this year they are hoping for the same response to populate the Wexford May Bush Festival Facebook page with May Bushes from all over the county.
This May Michael and Aileen and their three young girls won’t actually be at home in Wexford. In fact they’ll be 3,000 miles away on the rural Cape Shore in Newfoundland where they are working on a folklore/traditional song residency in a rural community made up of people descended from Wexford, Waterford and South Kilkenny people. This month-long trip is being supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Artlinks in order for them produce a new collection of folklore, customs and songs from the people of Irish descent there. In fact, they won’t be far from a May Bush, as this tradition still survives there after being brought over centuries ago.
If you would like to find out more about the May Bush tradition with direct source material recorded by Michael from throughout Co. Wexford please visit and like their page the Wexford May Bush Festival. The page also features a 70 minute feature on May Bush folklore/traditions which Michael produced last year.
Finally, as they won’t be in their home village of Ballindaggin this year, their neighbours and friends will keep the tradition going and will be erecting