Happy May Day - I tried to find a picture of a virgin on Google, but to avoid resorting to criminal activity, the very mention of which would set off alarm bells around the world and have Operation Yew Tree officers banging on my door, I had to use a photo of someone dressed up like one instead (the one on the right - I'm not sure about the others).
May Day, in this country (and the USSR) has been sadly hi-jacked by Socialists. In former times (a phrase my German mate is fond of using), May Day always fell on May 1st, but for the sake of commerce and the banks, it is now the following monday.
Unlike most British pagan festivals, it hasn't been hi-jacked by Christians, though - mainly because it hinges on agriculture, and even Christians have to eat. It wasn't that long ago when taxes in the form of cereal tithes were paid to the Church by every rural community, so allowing the peasants girls to dance around a phallic symbol on the village green was just something that the local abbot had to put up with.
When my daughter lived in Scotland, she was always planning excursions around the 'tattie holidays', when her children had a few days off school. I asked what this holiday period was for, and she told me that - in former times - all the children would be sent out into the field to help pick potatoes, and even though they now had machines to do that, the holiday had been set in folk memory and tradition, protected by trade unions and the like.
The only non-commercial and non-Christian group which have tried to hi-jack Mayday - and to some extent have succeeded - are bloody Morris Dancers.
I have a distinctly Cromwellian attitude toward Morris Dancers, and I'm not alone.
You're up and about early this fine Mayday morning Tom ...... are you wearing your shoes in ?......... mind you, at £400.00 a pop, I would expect them to have been worn in for me !!
ReplyDelete.......... bloody Morris Dancers ! ..... you are certainly not alone. How's H.I. feeling ? XXXX
The boots arrived today - a day earlier than forecast.
DeleteThey do not need wearing-in, which is one of the reasons they cost £400.
H.I. has pretty much recovered, thank you.
Hooray, hooray,
ReplyDeletethe first of May,
outdoor f*cking
starts today.
Outdoor fucking finished for me about 35 years ago, but then again, I am not a Welsh sheep-farmer.
DeleteWhat is the Cromwellian attitude to Morris Dancers Tom? All I know is that I am jolly glad I am not married to one (but then any Morris dancer is probably jolly glad he isn't married to me.)
ReplyDeleteI actually know someone who is married to a Morris Dancer, and she finds him an embarrassment as well. As for Cromwell, read your own history, or read the last Cromwellian declaration I posted up yesterday... (sounds a bit harsh, I know, but there we are).
DeleteIn Germany the 1st of May is the "Day of Labour" which illogically we enjoy as a holiday. The night before is Walpurgis Nacht - all witches are flying to the Blocksberg, so nobody could reach me yesterday.
ReplyDeleteIn a crime novel of W.J.Burley I read the term "a worthy virgin": 'and Wycliffe saw at once what he meant. (..) At any rate there could be no doubt that she had found the temptations of the flesh resistable' - so Aunt Glynn for sure would not have joined in the dance around the maypole.
Any virgin is worthy in my eyes, but that is the advantage of age - so long as it is my age and not theirs. Walpurgis also exists in Britain - ask Heron.
DeleteWorthy of what? A good seeing-to perhaps?
DeleteI hear what you say, but couldn't possibly comment.
Delete