A Tale of Two Months

The realization that I've totally "spaced" April as far as blogging doesn't mean that I wasn't out
in the world enjoying April. April was once again a chartreuse month. A tender chartreuse ... punctuated with splashes of violet, lilac, Daffodil and Tulip ... Cardinals, Blue jay and Robins are the footnotes. In the countryside, baby animals were making tender appearances as well.

I saw this little one born on a sort of dreary dampish Monday, the day after Easter Sunday. He was so tiny then and so thin that he looked like a little wrinkly and very damp bag of bones I could have easily picked up and put into my pocket. He stood up very soon after being born and found his mother, who immediately scrubbed his face and pointed him towards his first meal. In the picture above, he is about a week old and he looks as though he's already doubled in size. After his nap, on the day of this picture, he was very adventurous, following a little Angus calf (who is a month older) about the pasture, and even being so bold as to "butt" him into a game of tag. Both mothers, standing side by side, seemed to nod their heads in doting maternal fashion and say, "Aren't they just the most amazing children."

A friend in Denmark, who's blog I enjoy so much, sent pictures of new lambs and I'm pleased to note that spring in Denmark looks a great deal like spring in the state of Indiana, USA.


Shortly after the First of April, my Danish friend and I both noted that the rising full moon was a wonderful shade of orange-red, and I mentioned to her that this same brilliant moon was shinning down in Indiana on a herd of red cattle. Here they are in day time, lest anyone should believe that Indiana is all delicate shades of chartreuse and white.


These calves are part of a very big herd which has close to 50 0r 60 new calves at this point in time. They're turned loose in a large field to glean what is left of a soy bean crop which was harvested last fall. True to many traditions, harvested corn and soy bean fields are left after the end of October and they are full of deer over the winter .... the soil looks bare, but the ground is covered with "leavings," and these cattle are also munching on hay which has been placed in large feeders for them.

And finally, as relief from the stark brown and red of the gleaned soy bean field, we find wild daffodils in the wooded area behind the fields.

And so, April, the month of sweet birth and rebirth passes, for the most part very gently. There are some rough patches of weather, fields become flooded and farmers wait for the waters to recede and the ground to dry in order to "get into the fields" and plow or disk in preparation for
spring planting. April, it turns out is always a rather leisurely month.


Beltane and May Day

"We've been rambling all the night
And some time of this day
Now returning back again
we bring a garland gay"

"The Golden Bough" - Sir James Frazier, 1922

'Dance Around the Maypole'
by Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564-1635)

Beltane, we know, is the only Pagan Holiday that doesn't have a counter-part in the Christian Church calender. Probably because Beltane, in addition to marking the transition into summer, was also the "Day of Fire" in honor of the Sun God Bel.

May poles were cut from the woods, and carried to the village square to be decorated and danced round about ... and it was a day to mark the spring plantings and the birth of baby animals to add to the herds, a day in which inhibitions were set aside and villagers and nobles enjoyed a bit of a walk in the woods and the sacred groves hidden there. A day to celebrate fertility and to just be happy to have survived another long winter ......

In later years, early in the 17th Century, the celebration of May Day was outlawed by British Parliament, due, they said, to the licentious nature of the celebrations. But, as has been pointed out, Beltane is the only Pagan celebration not co-opted by the Church, and workers were given to taking the day off work to celebrate long after the day had lost its agricultural and seasonal significance. Holidays do tend to cut into productivity and if it isn't a church holiday, it is very easy to say it is a "sinful celebration" and outlaw it.

In mid-Twentieth Century America, when I was a child in grade school, "May Day," was still a day which was celebrated and "learned about." I'm sure that it seemed a bit strange to those
of us in my third grade class, because as much as we learned about "May Day" we still didn't quite understand why it was special. We city kids, raised in cement towns with super markets and central heating had lost all awareness of what it had taken for our ancestors to survive a winter season. Instead of "garlands gay" we were encouraged to pick flowers from our own yards, and from the beds in the park behind the school building. The tender blossoms were saved all day long in glasses and vases of water, and flooded the classroom with their fragrance while we eight-year olds listened to very sanitized stories about the celebration of May Day in long-ago times, especially the part where hundreds of flowers were woven into "garlands gay" and attached to a May Pole to be danced around. The story books we shared usually depicted very well dressed Victorian Era children dancing about a miniature May Pole in a well manicured English garden. Having dutifully listened to the stories about May Days past, we would then receive a sheet of colored construction paper and instructions about cutting the paper just so, in order to roll it into a cone shaped basket - with judicious trimming we also managed a strip of inch wide paper to fashion the handle for the basket. We were issued very aromatic, globs of thick white paste into which we dipped our fingers to apply paste to the seams of the basket and to attach the handle. Then came the final, finishing touch of our May Basket.

We each gathered up the flowers we had picked - if one person had a sparse bouquet we would share a stem or two to fill out his offering. The flowers, still dripping water from the vases, were then wrapped in damp paper towels, and then wrapped around again with a sort of oil paper or perhaps oil cloth. The entire bouquet was then placed very carefully into the paper basket.

These offerings we were told, were to be carried home (it was a neighborhood school and we all
walked) for our mothers. The mode of delivery was thus ... we would steal silently up to the front door of our house, hang the basket on the doorknob, ring the bell, or knock, and then lickety split run off the porch and hide in a place where we could witness the expression of delighted surprise on our mother's faces when they found their May Baskets. As Sir James Frazer continued the May Day song in his scholarly study, the Golden Bough;

"A garland gay we bring you here.
And at your door we stand
It is a sprout, well budded out,
The work of our Lord's hand."

I'm not quite sure whether it was the era in which we toiled (it was the early 1950s) and some power- that- was decided May Day Baskets were too much of a tribute to the May Day celebrations which rambled down the streets of Moscow, or if someone else realized that May Day was a truly Pagan holiday and not something to be dwelt on by Cold War Era American school children. Instead, we added "under god" to the Pledge of Allegiance and went on about our third grade business.

A week or so ago, I speculated that the Green Man was taking a bit of a nap because the spring season was being so tentative about arriving. But, obviously, He has followed custom as of old, and has awakened in time to remember this Beltane and take the day off to celebrate his handiwork. His nap is over, and mine is as well; tonight, I'll venture out to the grove and light a lantern, and watch as the shadows of the trees appear ...

"Who will go down to the shady groves
And summon the shadows there
And Tie A ribbon on those sheltering arms
In the Springtime of the year ..."
Loreena McKennitt - Mummer's Dance*

There will be shadows, the moon is waxing, and the Old Ways are with us still!

* http://www.quinlanroad.com/explorethemusic/bookofsecrets.asp (Loreena McKennitt)

http://www.bartleby.com/196/pages/page121.html (The Golden Bough, Sir James Frazer)