A walk on the wildside
O, the month of May, the merry month of May, So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green. O, and then I unto my true love say,
Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my Summers Queen. Now the nightingale, the pretty nightingale, The sweetest singer in all the forest choir,
Entreats thee, sweet Peg to hear thy true loves tale;
The poem The Merry Month of May was written by the English Elizabethan dramatist Thomas Dekker circa. 1572-1632 as part of his play, The Shoemakers Holiday, first performed in 1599.
The poem captures the brightness and joyousness of the month when our country-side turns so gay and so green and the beautiful description of the pretty nightingale, the sweetest singer in the entire forest choir. May Day marks the beginning of the Celtic summer with the lines; May day, the first bright day of summer or in Irish; La Bealtaine, an cead la geal den tsamrad. A significant part of the May Day rituals occurred at dawn when farmers drove cattle through the embers of the previous night’s bonfires in the belief that it would protect them in the year ahead.
The first day of May was believed to be one of the two days of the year when the Sidhe, the fairy folk, also called the Good Folk were abroad in the countryside, they were treated with respect, but were also feared for the harm it was believed they could do. Vergil tells us that Roman youths used to go into the fields on May Day to dance and sing in honour of Flora, the goddess of fruit and flowers and in old English folklore Robin Hood and Maid Marian came to preside as Lord and Lady of the May and that by the 16” century May Day was Robin Hoods Day.
The month of May is a wonderful time to be out and about in our countryside, to see the primroses in the hedgerows and to see bluebells in the woods of Glenabo. Those of us of a certain age will remember our days in school and the May alter where every afternoon, just before going home we would sing; It’s Mary’s month, its Mary’s month, the fields are clad with green, bright flowers spring up through all the land to welcome Mary Queen. It brings back memories; I can almost smell the burning candles.