“A little madness in the spring
Is wholesome even for the king.”—Emily Dickinson
Rhubarb, fiddleheads, ramps, arugula, and hummingbirds are some of the things to celebrate in the month of May. Eating the first garden produce is a treat and hearing the vibration of a returned hummingbird and seeing it zip by are delights long awaited. Spring has finally taken hold with its newness, youthful greenery, and fecundity. May is a month for celebration and has been through the ages.
In 238 BC a temple was built by the Romans, dedicated to Flora, the goddess of flowers and blossoming plants. Floralia was a a celebration that lasted for six days at the end of April and the beginning of May. Romans commemorated with theater, circus, gladiators, nude dancing, and untamed licentiousness. Garlands of flowers crowned many heads and chickpeas, symbols of fertility, were thrown to the crowds. The Roman poet Ovid wrote that Flora “warns us to use life’s beauty while it is in bloom.” Over the decades the festivities of Floralia declined until the year 173 BC when extreme wind and hail destroyed the crops. The Roman senate immediately ordered the reinstatement of the celebration of Floralia.
In the lands inhabited by the Celtic peoples, Beltane, the fire festival and celebration of fertility, was held on the first of May. All individual hearth fires were extinguished and a communal blaze was created. Cattle were led through the smoke to be cleansed and then out to summer pasture. People jumped over the flames, queens and kings of May were proclaimed, and couples slipped off into the woods and fields for the night. The following morning an erected maypole was the site of singing, dancing, and carousing. Embers from the big fire were brought back to houses to rekindle the home fires. The morning dew was used for face washing, an antidote to aging.
“The fair maid, who, the first of May
Goes to the field at break of day
And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree
Will ever after handsome be. —Mother Goose
Thomas Morton was a British lawyer who emigrated to the Plymouth Plantation in the New World, but he was much more liberal and easy-going than the strict Puritans who he called “moles”. In 1626 he created a utopian community along with former indentured servants, called Merrymount, in what is now Quincy, Massachusetts. Morton came from a more pagan background than the Puritans and on the first of May 1627 a maypole was erected and celebrated, enraging the Puritans. The following year the celebration was interrupted by Myles Standish and his men who knocked down the maypole and put Morton in chains. By 1630 the Puritans banished Morton and burned down Merrymount. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a short story, “The May-Pole of Merry Mount”:
“Bright were the days at Merry Mount. When the May-Pole was the banner-staff of that gay colony! They who reared it, should their banner be triumphant, were to pour sun-shine over New England’s rugged hills, and scatter flower-seeds throughout the soil.”
In the May garden, surrounded by our rugged hills, I will scatter flower seeds, and vegetable seeds, throughout the soil. I will think of the goddess Fora, the celebrations of Floralia and Beltane, the uplifting history of Thomas Morton and Merrymount. The winged pollinators will visit the garden; the bees buzzing along, the butterflies fluttering by, and the hummingbirds hovering and zipping in the air. The robins will drop a blue half shell for me to marvel at. I will walk with naked feet in the morning dew, at the break of day, into the glory of May.
“A fragrance lingered, you could know a goddess had been there.” —Ovid
May 2021
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