It's MAY!

It's May and the Sun

is shining like the rays

of celandines glistening
in the soft sheen of the new grass.

The Merry Month of May

In somer when the leves spryng
The bloschems on every bowe
So mery doyt the berdys syng
Yn wodys mery now.

So one of the medieval Robin Hood ballads.

Merry (myrige), 'mirthful' (as the birds sing), 'pleasant' (as the woods are) all in the merry month of May. Robin and his merry men (outlaws who were not merry until they danced in the May Games – men in green following Robin from grisly guise to Green God) leading revels for the May Queen and all her wanton company under the leaves of lyne.

Love trysts in the greenwood: Dafydd ap Gwilym lingering under “May’s sweet branches” setting up an altar to love “among the birch and hazel, the mantles of May”. The sensuous sweetness of all those blossoming boughs, ribbons of white across a patchwork of green as the hedgerows come alive with the scents of Summer : hawthorn and elder, the air heavy with their pheromones. The bosky shade of copses, small groves, whispy strips of tree cover adopt the depths of forests as the glamour of the greenwood is cast by every green tree.

Dafydd asked Summer where it came from and received the reply ‘Annwfn’. So the Otherworld is with us for a while as the pulse of Spring brings Summer to life.

Little John said to Robin “It is a full fayre time in a mornyng of May”. And Ariel, freed to live as an airy spirit, sings:

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough

released by Prospero, to inhabit a perpetual season of Summer. 


As for us, time-bound as we are, we should follow Dunbar’s advice while we can:

(adapted from an inscription by David Jones)

MAY

So green the hillside, with a message of love

So long the day with the freshness of May,

Such bright greenness could not hide itself away.

Fair breasts of hills' bright bushes in May,

So short the night, it’s no hard journey,

Such fair hawks and blackbirds of May

So lively the nightingale when she sings

And all the small birds of May.

Such quivering passion it would teach me

There’s nothing so glorious as May.

Dafydd ap Gwilym

(my translation of): 

Neud glas gofron, llon llatai,

Neud hir dydd am irwydd Mai,

Neud golas, nid ymgelai,

Bronnydd a brig manwydd Mai,

Neud bernos, nid twrn siwrnai,

Neud heirdd gweilch a mwyeilch Mai,

Neud llon eos lle trosai

Llafar, a mân adar Mai,

Neud esgud nwyf a'm dysgai,

Nid mawr ogoniant ond Mai.