Journal Entry, May 1st..........................................Transition From Spring to Summer

Origins: Beltane (Bright Fire) or May Day is the first day of summer, and once marked when cattle were taken to pastures to graze after being blessed with protective bonfire smoke. In later agricultural societies, when people leapt over bonfires, the height of their leaps were supposed to forecast the height of crops. While a German farmer's calendar of 1493 shows all other months of the year illustrated by hard-working farm folk, May alone represents luxuriating lovers: a man attentively plays a lute to a bare and bathing woman. Beltane especially celebrated love, attraction, courtship and mating--that yearly groundswell of desire we know as "spring fever." Long before our current high school prom king and queen, villages elected a young, attractive couple to represent the King and Queen of the May, also known as John Thomas and Lady Jane. Folk danced around the May pole, the skyward symbol of life; they gathered flowers and spent nights together under the stars in the forest.

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At last I found the herbal garden circled by roses! Set in a lover's knot design from the Middle Ages, all fragrant herbs within its' borders: verbena, lemon balm, fresh shoots of new lavender, comfrey, sage, rosemary, thyme, angelica, with honeybees hovering and humming, gathering pollen from the Queen Anne's lace and full blown pink and yellow and red roses all around me. In this garden the fragrance and warmth makes the very air dreamy and yet growing, alive everywhere, as if everything is buzzing under the surface, the life blood rushing through every stalk and blade of grass.
Here was the gardener: an energetic young man with an open, interested and well-humored face wearing green overalls, a green flannel shirt, green wading boots--so dressed in green I could swear his beard was half made of vine and leaf! His friend, a fresh-faced young woman in a pink and green floral dress, with red stones at her throat and ears made me welcome, and they together offered to tour me around about this remarkably fertile and gorgeous countryside.
But I felt the air between them crackling with electricity, and it looked as if they'd like to be alone as they regarded eachother with a certain shy hunger, their fingers entwined. I assured them I’d like to wander by myself awhile--were they relieved? I thought of Colette writing, "There'll be lovemaking tonight!" as I moved on, and when I looked over my shoulder, together they rushed away holding hands, in a swirl of giddy heat.

Blessed Bees and the Milky Way



May Day Festal Foods

Springtime Lovers--and--
Green Man as Robin Hood

Handcrafts of the May

Elemental Homeschooling

Bring May Flowers

Linking Round the Maypole

Click on the flower any time to return to the Table of Contents.
Follow the bees to the exit.

The Cow

The friendly cow, all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might,
To eat with apple tart.

She wanders lowing here and there,
And yet she cannot stray,
All in the pleasant open air,
The pleasant light of day.

And blown by all the winds that pass
And wet with all the showers,
She walks among the meadow grass
And eats the meadow flowers.

Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child's Garden of Verses 1885

Cushy cow bonny, let down thy milk, and I will give thee a gown of silk;
A gown of silk and a silver tee, if thou wilt let down thy milk to me.

traditional milkmaid's charm

......

Beltane is the time of milk and honey, the primary Pagan time of pleasure, of blossoming and blooming, of desire and satisfaction, so the cow and the bee are both significant symbols of the Goddess at this important celebration. The cow's miraculous ability to create great amounts of milk for calf and folk mirrors the wonder of woman's breast-feeding of children. The beauty of Goddess/all women's milk-giving to the infant is vividly illustrated by various Renaissance paintings of Mary tenderly nursing baby Jesus. And the bee's creation of honey, until only the last two hundred years the sweetest food on earth, its' scientific explanation involving flower pollen and enzymes not understood until the late 19th Century, was likewise absolutely magical.

The symbol of the cow's horns is related to the Earth Mother, the Milk-Giver, in the majority of cultures. Egypt's Isis wears a headdress of the moon embraced by cow's horns; while Hathor is the heavenly cow, whose sprinkling of milk created the night stars: the Milky Way. The cow's Horn of Plenty, the cornucopia, was a Roman symbol for the all-giving, fertile Earth Goddess; and remains a symbol of thanks-giving. Norse Audumla, the cow, is the creator of the world. One important find from the Marija Gimbutas archeological excavations is the clay figure of a cow's head and horns, inscribed with bees. This figure is remarkable for its resemblance to woman's center of reproduction: the uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries. Interestingly, the poet Meredith Stricker confirms in her poem, Bee Mother, that the root Hungarian words for mother, anya or méh can all be found in some form in the words for bee, womb, uterus, to conceive, hive, bee sting, queen bee, cervix, fruit of the womb, apiary, embryo, bee swarm, fetus, and many more similar definitions. And in Lithuania, the ancient feminine art of divination was done by pouring beeswax into water and interpreting its' shapes.

Bees and honey and gold have long been associated with the Goddess, as symbols for harmonious labor and industry, modesty, royalty and deserved blessings or favor. European apiarists believed bees were keepers of morality, and that virtuousity was required for the production of honey, so bees would never produce unless the keeper was honest and good. Fighting, stealing and lying resulted in an abandoned hive. One attracted bees to a hive in many ways, like letting a sow (Goddess symbol of necessary death-bringing and a following regeneration of fertility) eat from an empty hive, then rubbing the inside hive with fresh flowers. In both of these folkways survive the traces of connection between the hive as place of sweetness, as life-giver, as symbol of the uterus.

Like many other insects, bees also symbolize immortality and longevity: the Frankish King, Childric the First, was buried with three hundred golden bees. Likewise, the ancients used beeswax and honey to preserve the dead. In German lore, bees came to earth from an underground paradise where they live with the fates; and mead--liquor made from fermented honey--brings the gift of prophesy and song. The infant Zeus was nourished by bees in the Goddess' cave. In Greece, Aphrodite's temples were maintained by priestesses known as the melissae, the "bees." The Indian God Vishnu is often seen as a blue bee sitting on the lotus blossom, which represents the Goddess. In Christian legend, bees were created by Christ's tears, and this stems from the Norse Goddess Freya, whose very tears are made of gold. Babylonians built temples on ground consecrated by honey, and Peruvians offered honey to the sun. A newborn baby in India is offered this blessing:

I give thee this honey food so that the Gods may protect thee and that thou mayest live a hundred autumns in this world.

Beltane is a significant festival in the folk calendar and is celebrated with honey, oats (sow your wild ones) and dairy foods. The reasons for this are clear when searching for symbols for the altar for Beltane: look to the cow and the bee as images of the Goddess, from the miracles of milk and honey they create. Blessed Bee!

Come thou Brigid, handmaid calm,
Hasten the butter on the cream...

Traditional prayer for buttermaking

The Cow

Thank you, pretty cow, that made
Pleasant milk, to soak my bread;
Every day, and every night,
Warm and fresh, and sweet, and white.

Do not chew the hemlock rank,
Growing on the weedy bank,
But the yellow cowslips eat,
They will make it very sweet.

Where the purple violet grows,
Where the bubbling water flows,
Where the grass is fresh and fine,
Pretty cow, go there and dine.

Ann and Jane Taylor

Zeus, King of the Gods, wandered by a blossoming meadow one day and met a lovely woman named Io. Zeus was accustomed to falling in love very easily, and he greatly admired lovely Io. A good listener, she was big-boned and placid, slow moving with big brown eyes. She loved the way he could tell stories, so they whiled away many hours together, flirting and lazing about in the course green grasses of the meadow.
Now Zeus was afraid of his great Goddess wife, Hera. He feared she might become jealous when she found out about Io. Though, truth be told, Hera had plenty of things to do without worrying about who Zeus was infatuated with. Even so, Zeus used his magical powers and turned Io into a milky white cow lest Hera see them together. Feeling guilty at the manipulative thing he had done, Zeus felt sad when he saw Io having to eat the rough grasses of the meadow.
He created a new flower to grow all over the meadow. A tiny, sweet smelling flower with creamy white and purple petals that reminded him of her. Ever since that time, that royal flower--the violet--has been especially tasty to cows, growing all over meadows where they graze.
Curley locks, curley locks, wilt thou be mine? Thou shalt not wash dishes, nor yet feed the swine; but sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam, and feed upon strawberries, sugar and cream.
Traditional, England

Beltane Table of Contents
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M a y   D a y   
Festal Foods

Simnel Cake

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees, and grease and flour a parchment-lined cake pan.
Cake batter:
• 1 1/2 oz butter (45g)
• 1/4 oz white fat or shortening (20g)
• 2 1/4 oz brown sugar (65g)
• 1 oz ground almonds (25g)...beat together butter, shortening, sugar and almonds until fluffy.
• 3 large eggs...beat the eggs and warm slightly in a pan over low heat. Add eggs a little at a time, while beating cake mixture constantly, until it is again light and fluffy.
• 3 oz plain white flour (85g)
• 1/4 t. allspice...stir together flour and spice, and fold into butter/sugar/egg mixture.
• 3 oz currants or minced, dried apricots (85g)
• 2 oz golden raisins (50g)
• 1 1/4 oz raisins (35g)
• 1/2 oz mixed peel (dried, sugared citrus peels) (15g)
• 1/2 oz glace cherries, quartered (glace cherries are sticky, but not in liquid. If using marachino cherries, dry thoroughly) (15g)...stir in fruit evenly, and place half the batter into the pan, setting aside the rest while you make the almond paste.
  Almond paste:
• 3 large egg yolks
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice
• 1 t. pure almond essence
• 1 Tablespoon brandy...beat together the eggs, juice, essence and brandy.
• 12 oz ground almonds (350g)
• 12 oz confectioner's (powdered) sugar (350g)...Place almonds and sugar in separate bowl and pour egg/flavorings mixture over. Knead together to create a stiff but smooth paste. Roll out one third of the almond paste into a 6 inch circle and place on top of the batter in the pan. (Cover remaining almond paste.) Top with remaining cake batter and flatten down with the back of a wet spoon. Bake in the center of the oven for one hour. The skewer test for doneness will not work on a marzipan- centered fruit cake, but the cake will be done when it is springy to the touch and golden brown.
  Cool cake and remove from pan. Roll out two thirds of remaining paste (reserving a third fo what's left) into a 6 inch circle and place on top of cake. Make thirteen evenly sized balls out of remaining paste and decorate the top edge of the cake. Toast cake under hot grill/broiler for a few minutes to create a warm golden brown tinge to the marzipan, and serve to an honored mother!

Cooked Fruit Dressing for Fruit Salad

• 2/3 cup sugar...mix sugar and flour together, and whisk in juices.
• 2 1/2 Tablespoons flour
• the thin syrup/juice from 1 can (16 oz.)of pineapple tidbits and 1 can (10-14 oz.)mandarin oranges, or from any other good canned fruit...Oregon brand is good.
• the juice of one lemon
• the juice of one orange
• 2 beaten eggs...add the 2 eggs and cook on medium low heat, stirring frequently until the mixture bubbles and becomes thickened.
• whipped cream, and cut up fresh fruits: choose from grapes, peaches, apples, peeled oranges, bananas, melon, berries...mind that bananas should be added at the last moment into salad about to be eaten as they turn mushy, and that soft berries will turn the salad pink.
  Add sauce to fruit then(one third part sauce to two thirds cream) to whipped cream and fold in completely.

Oatmeal Macaroons

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup shortening (1/2 is butter)...cream together sugars and butters
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla...next add eggs and vanilla
• 1 1/4 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 t. salt...mix together flour, salt and soda, then add to wet mixture
• 1 cup shredded, sweetened coconut
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 3 cups quick-cooking oats
• 3/4 cup small cherry flavored chips (optional)...stir in coconut, nuts, oats and chips to dough
• extra white sugar for rolling...shape dough into balls, roll in sugar, bake for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees, taking care not to over-brown. Let stand on sheet a few minutes before removing.

Jam Filled Lemon Tarts

• 1--3oz package softened cream cheese
• 1/2 cup butter, softened...beat cream cheese and butter until smooth.
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon peel...add sugar and lemon.
• 1 cup flour...mix in flour. Gather dough into two balls, chill one hour. Roll out dough, cutting 2" disks out with cutter. Spoon 1/4" of jam into center of disc. Gather edges into three equally spaced corners--like a tricorn hat--and roll points over slightly, pinching shut. Bake at 375 degrees until golden brown, about 15 to 20 minutes.
• tasty jam: rhubarb ginger, apricot, cherry, etc.

May Bowl, or Waldmeister punch

• 1 small bunch woodruff
• 1 bottle Moselle or Rhine wine...remove withered leaves from the woodruff and place the whole bunch (stems and flowers) into a punch bowl or glass jug. Pour the wine over.
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 2/3 cup water...heat the water and sugar until it is dissolved, cool slightly and stir into the wine.
• 1 orange...before serving, slice the orange thinly and add to the punch.

Beltane Table of Contents
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The first time I saw you was last year in May,
In May, bathing in a pool crowded with iris.

Anonymous, 15th century Japanese

Come all ye lads and lassies

Join in the festive scene

Come dance around the maypole

That will stand upon the green.

..... .....

On thousands of churches and civic buildings throughout Europe, a fragment of our past survives as architectural ornament. This element, across miles and through countries, shares the same features: a male figure whose face sprouts and grows leaves and fruits, vines and plants: all of growing life. He is variously known as the Green Man, Jack in the Green, Robin Hood, The Man in the Oak or King of the May, among other names. With very little surviving literature defining him, he is nevertheless known as the foliate deity who sparks life and with love, fertilizes the Earth Mother to fruition every spring. William Anderson writes in Green Man: The Archetype of Our Oneness with the Earth, "The Green Man, as a composite of leaves and a man's head, symbolizes the union of humanity and the vegetable world. He knows and utters the secret laws of nature."

The story of Robin Hood, Robin Goodfellow, Robin the Bobbin or Robin of the Green is a pagan story of rebellion and heroism, which combines elements of myth and reality. According to Barbara Walker, Robin Hood was a real man--or a composite of men--in the 1300's who led pagan circle groups in Sherwood Forest. Robin's strongly pagan name connotes the little or "fairy" people--indeed, he himself was supposed been fathered by the King of the Fairies.
Walker writes, "Pagan gods and goddesses, tribal ancestors, and those who worshipped them all became "fairies" in the traditions of France, Germany and the British Isles." There is also evidence to suggest fairies' legendary petiteness was a genetic reality. European pagans were the original, physically small, native tribes before the larger boned, taller warrior tribes of the north and Romans to the south invaded their lands. Tony Van Renterghem illustrates that native people stood between 4' 8" and 5 feet tall, while the barbarian tribes often reached a height of 6' 4". Stonework survives which shows Romans conducting rituals with such long haired, little folk, their dimunition apparently exaggerated, so illustrating the Romans' condescension toward them. "Fairy" or "fey" defined these pagan people--those words later associated with winged plant devas or spirits--even as the little people intermarried with the invaders. The folk were known to live in harmony with nature in the forest, deifying trees and natural sites. They often lived in hollowed mounds of earth, knew the lay of the land intimately, and wearing all green, seemed to their opponents to be able to blend in with the scenery and magically disappear. Rebelling against their invaders and the new, enforced monotheism, they apparently waged very clever, guerilla self-protection, legends of which survive today in tales about tricky and manipulative "fairies."

Remember that Robin Hood lives in the forest, wears all green, and his tribe is seemingly invisible and unbeatable on their own turf. His people work together in absolute harmony to protect their way of life. In myth, Robin and his band were a metaphor for the spirit or energy of the woodland itself, and expression of the solidarity of the pagan people and their Green Man deity. The real Robin, writes Walker, "...defended unspoiled land against the encroachment of towns. In country districts, each village set aside a plot of raw woodland, which was not to be disturbed, because it belonged to the Goodfellow, or the Good Man." This establishes Robin in the tradition of the Green Man, a protector and caretaker of the environment.

Robin rescues the Maid Marian from those who would abuse her: a powerful alliance between a greedy nobleman and a corrupt church. This connection to Marian contains the theme of courtly love, a religio-mystic belief in the sacredness of love and equality between man and woman that returning Crucades' soldiers learned from North African Tantric traditions. With Maid Marian as a pagan symbol of the earth goddess, (indeed, her name relates to the Goddess Maerin and the Saxon Mary, Mother of the Grove) the Robin Hood story may be a prophetic or traditional myth about the Green Man saving the Goddess from threatening institutions, and merging with her again to renew the magic of nature.

Robin and his Merry Band also take from the rich to give to the poor. In a balanced state, pagan life of the "fey" would have been productive and reasonably abundant: never easy, yet everything they needed would have come from the land. Once the church and the nobility joined forces to exploit the working people, however, their tax system resulted in such terrific impoverishment that surfdom--slavery--later resulted. While such institutions would have defined Robin as a criminal, the pagan people saw him as a hero, returning what had been stolen from them. So Robin Hood, as a face of the Green Man, not only symbolizes the inherent wealth in the natural world, but also illuminates his important ability to protect his people and to regain or rescue their birthright: a state of harmony and abundance in nature, free from the machinations of the new institutions.

We are aware of the horrors we face if earth's bounty continues to be wasted and spoiled without regard to the future. Green Man is a primal symbol of the renewal of nature, and protection of the environment. While the re-discovery of the Goddess gives girls many womanly role models and guides to aspire to, the Green Man's symbolic connection to the legend of Robin Hood is a significant archetype for boys to emulate--one which is not based on domination, conquest and separation from the earth. Green Man's embodiment of the growing natural world speaks to us all. Perhaps his image returns to earth just in time. As William Anderson writes,

When an image of great power such as the Green Man returns--as he does now in a new aspect after a long absence, the purpose of its return is not only to revive forgotten memories but to present fresh truths and emotions necessary for fulfilling the potentialities of the future.

... ...

About the Green Man:

We do not only look at his leaves and blades of grass: we hear them singing and speaking to us; we touch and smell and taste his vegetation and his fruits. When an affection for a particular plant or tree is aroused in us we are linked through an emotional bond, more subtle and immediate than the effect of a scent, to the greater world of vegetation of which the plant or tree is a part. It is a deep, wise world, one to which we can only respond because we possess it in our own natures and in the instinctive symbolism of the soul; in the tree of life that forms the spinal column, in the roots of our feet and legs, in the branches of our arms, and in the flowering and fruiting of our thoughts and feelings in the crown of the head.

..... .....

When I look at her,
Asleep in the dawn
The body of my love
Is like a lily
In the field of May.

Anonymous, 15th Century Japan

Beltane Table of Contents
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Here is a fun May Day game similar to Duck, duck, goose. One child walks outside a circle of children and drops a hankie behind another child. Both race around the circle to take the empty place. The last one back is "it" for the next round.
Here is the traditional, English accompanying chant: (knots mean buds)

The Green Man, as protector and ultimate harmonious gardener is a brilliant ecological archetype to encourage in boys, who can be at a loss for nature-friendly role models in popular culture. Children might enjoy dressing as this spirit of nature, all in green, on May Day, or even dressing their dolls and soft toys in green and white costume.
Make your own Green Man paper dancer! Cut out a head and body shape in stiff green paperboard, two upper arm shapes, two forearm and hand shapes, two upper thigh shapes and two calf and foot shapes. Hook together with brass swivelling grommets (found at office supply stores) at shoulders, knees and elbows--to make a dancing figure. In varying shades of green paper or fabric, cut out a shirt, scarf, vest and the like for him, gluing on your chosen skin tone for his face and hands, if you prefer them to look less green. Draw on facial features. Hot glue on silk and paper leaves all around his costume, and perhaps green and gold/brown yarn for hair and beard. You might create a similar maiden wearing white and decorated with silk flowers and buds. Make a smaller figure (about 12 inches) and attach a straw to its back in order to make a simple puppet.

References to the greenwood, greensleeves and the green are all part of the Green Man's folklore legacy. You can make your own Green Man figure, a Mister Greenjeans, to guard the seedlings and flowers as they grow. He might be a topiary, completely covered with green vine, in the shape of a man. Or he could be a figure, like the scarecrow, a system of 2"X 4" planks screwed together in a human shape, then dressed all in green; with a growing planted pot for a head, rusted pronged spades for hands, and a piece of garden hose for a belt. Making a real Green Man figure will bring him to life!

Create your dream garden! Gather all the flower seed and plant catalogs you can find. On a large piece of bright green stiff paper (poster size), draw in basic shapes of the most wonderful garden you can think of: the house, paths, a pond, animal quarters, where the vegetables and flowers will go. Start cutting out and layering beautiful images of flowers, hedges, trees, trellises and fruit and veggies all over the place. Use large images to represent a whole grouping, and lose any need to have proper perspective! This is great for the kids, and their imaginations go wild in a place of their designing. Images of flowers can also be used to make flower and plant flash cards or lovely greeting cards for Beltane.

Beltane Table of Contents
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Along with the Green Man, Beltane is represented by a variety of Goddesses: Aphrodite, Maia, Xochipilli of Mexico, all sharing similar traits--love of beauty, flowers, Love between people, ornamentation and comfort, peace, and that all of nature is growing to be green and lovely and warm. East and the air element continue to influence this season. The air between people is heady with new things to share, learn and communicate, while the eastern dawn creates new possibilities for relationships. Now is the perfect time to seek friendships, alliances, get the word out and cooperate. The knowledge that we all need each other and are interdependent is clear in the garden: bees pick up the pollen, their flights to each flower leaving off a bit of dust to pollinate fellow flowers and conceive the fruit. The bee creates sweet honey from the flower's pollen, and the flower reproduces via the bee.
People coming together and celebrating with warmth, happiness and fun--this is the central theme of Beltane! Engage in some core experiences at Beltane: dance the spiral or around the May pole, get hands in the soil to plant seedlings, make yourself beautiful, sweet-smelling and renewed through a ritual bath, surround yourself with the colors of all of life. This is a time for physical enjoyment, but also care and renewal of one's body, and so mirrored by the earth's body. Within old/new holistic medicine, strength and sensuality, healing and challenge and pleasure are intertwined. There is no separation of the body and mind and emotion, the Goddess tells us. Consider the birds and the bees, and discuss self-esteem and sexuality with children. Teach them to love their bodies and trust their instincts and senses. Go within to deal with any issues holding you back from experiencing life fully and sensually: whether it be about self-image and worthiness, limited ideas about beauty or inner judgement about sexuality and abandon of the season. Beltane is a feast for the senses and a celebration of the body!

• gardening: flowers, fruits, pollination, bees
• nutrition, wholistic health
• folk dancing, group dancing
• chemistry, electricity
• sexuality and ethics, Love and attraction
• the color wheel, spectrum, rainbow
• bodies, body image in the media, philosophy
• adornment, ornamentation, sensuality
• Goddess societies, Mediterranean area, North Africa
  Egypt, Persia, Greece, Turkey (mideast)
• crafts: soap making, cosmetics/chemistry, braiding,
  ribbon work, face painting, embroidery, floristry, apiary

Beltane Table of Contents
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The Flowers

All the names I know from verse:
Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,
Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.

Fairy places, fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee stings,
Tiny trees for tiny dames--
These must all be fairy names!

Tiny woods below whose boughs
Shady fairies weave a house;
Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,
Where the braver fairies climb!

Fair are grown-up people's trees,
But the fairest woods are these;
Where if I were not so tall,
I should live for good and all.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Young Basia sat at the edge of a grove of birch trees, tending her flock and spinning flax into linen thread. Suddenly there appeared before her a woman she had never seen, dressed in a filmy, daisy white dress, with a circlet of wildflowers crowning her flowing and lustrous hair.
"Do you like to dance?" the woman in white asked the girl.
"I'd like to dance the whole day," Basia confessed. "But I have yet to spin all this pile of flax."
"Tomorrow is another day," answered the woman.
"Yes, I can spin tomorrow," thought the girl. So she jumped right up and whirled together with the woman in dance. They danced so wildly, they laughed out loud with the joy of it. Yet so lightly that the grass was never trampled under foot.
When evening came, Basia guided her flock home but said nothing to her mother. The next day she determined to spin her share of flax, no matter what, at the same birch grove.
Again the woman in white appeared.
"Will you dance?" she asked.
"I can't," Basia replied. "I must spin all day long. My mother is bound to ask me about the flax."
"I will help you spin if only you dance with me," said the woman.
Once again they twirled and spun in a happy dance all day long. Then the woman waved her arms in magic, and! The flax was neatly spun into fine linen thread.
At end of day, Basia guided her flock home and gave her mother the thread, but said not a word.
The third day Basia the shepherdess returned to the birch grove, and there waited the woman in white.
They danced like they never had before, leaping and twirling, bending not a blade of grass, as light as petals scattered on the wind. At end of day, the magical woman spun the flax into thread again, and then reaching toward a birch tree branch, gathered some golden leaves and put them into the girl's apron.
"I have been pleased with our dancing," she smiled and instantly disappeared.
This time, when Basia returned home, her mother checked the linen carefully.
"You did'nt spin this, did you?" mother asked.
The girl then explained to her mother what had happened the last three days.
"It was the Wild Woman of the birch wood!" exclaimed her thrilled mother, "What a blessing."
"When she left, she gave me these birch leaves," said Basia with a laugh. But when she emptied her pockets, in silent wonder she found: the leaves were of pure gold.

The honoring of Kupala, the Slovakian midsummer fertility goddess, corresponds to Western European Beltane celebrations. Folks once engaged in ritual bathing, flower garland offerings to water, bonfire jumping, a birch pole cast to the sky and decorated with ribbons, and they ate many fancy dairy dishes in her honor. Other Slovakian Goddesses include white-wearing Poludnitsa, Goddess of the fields, and Polevoi, another field spirit Goddess who has green hair!

Even into the 1960's in the United States, people celebrated May Day on May first. Children decorated baskets or paper horns with ribbon and paper, and filled them with cut flowers to take to neighbors and friends. Then, hanging the May basket on the door knob, would press the doorbell or knock, and run away giggling, leaving an anonymous harbinger of springtime behind. My mother says this was a really thrilling activity as a child, to become a fairy-like, magical giver on one day of the year. Some people gave garden or May Day parties. In parts of England, May Day was celebrated by honoring mothers with simnel cakes, as an unofficial Mother's Day. May Day as Beltane continues to be celebrated by Pagan groups with a Maypole dance, while American Mother's Day is celebrated with gift-giving and enormous spreads of food at buffet restaurants.

This is the traditional English chant to speak when handing out May baskets...
Good Morning, Mistress and Master, I wish you a happy day.
Please to smell my garland 'cause it is the first of May.
A branch of May I have brought you, and at your door I stand;
It is but a sprout, but it's well budded out...
The work of our Lady's hand.

Bleeding Heart (Dicentra)

Heart shaped dark pink to white drops. Perennial bush.

Allium (giganteum)

Onion related bulbs create huge, perfectly round balls of tiny orchid colored flowers. Perennial.

Snapdragon

By squeezing the sides of a blossom you can make it "talk" like a puppet. Comes in various pinks to red and maroon, white, apricot and lemon yellow. Annual.

Violet

Tiny purple classics. Make a wish while hooking them together (where flower meets stem) and pull apart to make it so! Bi-ennial, often perennial.

Bells of Ireland

Look like green foxgloves. Stand upright and dry into shape for autumn. Annual.

Morning Glory

These magically open in the morning and close at sundown, and climb ever skyward. Range from pinks to purples and blues. The dried round seed heads can be collected in the autumn to save for spring planting. Annual.

Zinnias

Big, strong and bright, they look like a child designed them. One of the Mexican flower Goddess Xochiquetzal's favorite blossoms. Easy to grow in soil but not pots. Annual.

Lamb's Ear

These silvery leaves truly feel as soft and downy as the name. Tolerates heat and poor soil. Perennial.

Chinese Lanterns

The seedpods of this plant dry to a papery bright orange, making ephemeral lanterns in the autumn. Annual.

Grape Hyacinth (muscari)

The first thing up in the spring, these bulbs look like tiny clusters of grapes and have a delicate, refreshing scent. Perennial bulb.

Pansies

Considered to have kittenish faces, pansies contain a tiny sitting person within. Pull off the colored petals, leaving the five green sepals of the calyx. Snip away the two in front, and find a little person, sitting with its' feet in a tub, wearing a tiny red scarf. You can slit the tub, too, in order to see its' feet. Early blooming annual which can self-seed.

Poppies

Mother Goddess Demeter carries red poppies with barley and blue cornflowers in her arms. The bright petals are translucent as tissue paper, and the buds and stems are hairy. To make a poppy doll, turn a full-blown poppy's petals down over the stem. The seed pod looks like a head with bangs, and the petals are the dress. You can use a blade of grass or vine to tie around her waist, and poke a twig through to make arms. Iceland poppies require very cool weather to be perennials, otherwise poppies are annuals.

Honeysuckle

To sip the nectar of flowers as hummingbirds do, bite the end off a little tube of honeysuckle blossom and suck it--it's sweet! Perennial bush.

Columbine

Some people find two doves feeding out a dish when the outer leaves of this flowers are removed.

Rabbit Tail Grass (lagurus)

A plain green grass with puffy bunches of seeds fluffed out at the end, soft as bunny tails. Perennial.

Lantana

A perennial in warm climates, these look like tiny fairy bouquets of flowers. Look for the plants with a mixture of colors: pink, yellow and orange.

Foxgloves

Children can put these freckled pastel tubes on their fingers for floral fingernails. A bi-ennial, this plant is toxic when eaten by animals.

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Legend has it that washing ones' face in the first dew at dawn on May Day will ensure everlasting beauty.

Beltane Table of Contents
Follow the bees to the exit.

Red Rose Forest

See how community forest creation fares today--check out Manchester England's effort in planting 10,000 hectares of woodlands for public, recreative and educational uses in the future.

Beekeeping Home Page

Interested in apiary? Here are links to worldwide organizations and expert advice on how to start a bee colony and continue its' care.

Mead Maker's Page

History, recipes and extra links highlight this place to learn all about this traditional, delicious drink of fermented honey.

Beltane Table of Contents

Move ahead in the garden to sunny Litha.

© 1996, 1997, Jill Pederson Meyer

All rights reserved. May be distributed freely, but not sold, with acknowledgment of source and author.