Here's Holly's latest creation.

It’s May Eve, known in Ireland as Bealtaine, in England as Beltane.

Ever notice that May first and Halloween are exactly six months apart? These holidays split the year into two seasons. Smallholders in northern Europe would take their cattle to mountain and moorland pastures with the coming of fair weather, and bring them back home for winter.

Beltane or Bealtaine is the Gaelic May Day festival, marking the beginning of summer. It is traditionally held on 1 May... midway between the spring equinox and summer solstice...widely observed in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. ... Beltane is one of the four main Celtic seasonal festivals, along with Samhain, Imbolc, and Lughnasadh.

Beltane...marked the beginning of summer, when cattle were driven out to the summer pastures. Rituals were performed to protect cattle, people and crops, and to encourage growth. Special bonfires were kindled, whose flames, smoke and ashes were deemed to have protective powers.

People and their cattle would walk around or between bonfires, and sometimes leap over the flames or embers. Household fires would be doused, and re-lit from the Beltane bonfire. These gatherings would be accompanied by a feast, and some of the food and drink would be offered to the sidhe, the fairies.

Doors, windows, byres and livestock would be decorated with yellow May flowers...In parts of Ireland, people would make a May Bush: typically a thorn bush or branch decorated with flowers, ribbons, bright shells and rushlights. Holy wells were also visited, while Beltane dew was thought to bring beauty and maintain youthfulness. -Wikipedia

(The best source of information is Kevin Danaher’s historical/geographical survey The Year In Ireland. https://www.amazon.com/Year-Ireland-Kevin-Danaher/dp/1856350932)

One of the oldest songs I know is an Irish maying song, Thugamar féin an samhradh linn, “we are bringing the summer with us…yellow summer of the golden daisies.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8JKyYjaz4g

Berkeley Morris Dancers and neo-pagan roisterers still dance the sun up every May morning at Inspiration Point.


Goin’ Native
Words: ©1996 Aurora Borealis Medicine Turkey
Tune: Makin’ Whoopee, ©1928 Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn

In honor of folklorist/anthropologist Sabina Magliocco, who studied Neo-pagan ritual in the San Francisco Bay area.

Our article “The Real Old-Time Religion: Towards an Aesthetic of Neo-Pagan Song” was published in the Canadian journal Ethnologies (1998) and is referenced in her book Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.)


Another Beltane
Another May
Another folklorist
Has come to stay
She thinks it’s thrilling
That we’re so willing
She’s goin’ native.

She’s got her abstract
She’s got her chant
She’s learned a Neo-pagan chant
The news is leaking
Her mother’s freaking
She’s goin’ native.

Picture a sweet young scholar
Getting her PhD
Picture that same young scholar
After a year or three.

She’s going sky-clad
And riding brooms
She’s doing strange things
With mushrooms
Tell her professor
He can’t suppress her
She’s goin’ native.