For the early Celts, Beltane was signaled by the blossoming of the
hawthorn tree at the beginning of May, therefore known as the "May Tree."
Thematic Images for Beltane Posters
Slideshow gallery. Click image to expand, then scroll through images.
Thematic Images for Blessed & Happy Beltane / May Day
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Thematic Images for Beltane on the Celtic Wheel of the Year & Its Dating
Beltane, traditionally celebrated on the eve of May 1st (“Fixed Date” ), is one of the four “cross-quarter” festivals on the Celtic Wheel of the Year. The word “Beltane” probably originates from the Celtic God “Bel,” meaning “the bright one” and the Gaelic word “teine” meaning fire. Thus, Beltane (or Beltaine) is a “fire festival” celebrating the coming of summer ("Here Comes The Sun"). "Beltane" is the Anglicized form of Irish Gaelic name for either the month of May or the festival that takes place on (or about) the first day of May. In some places, Beltane was referred to as “The May.” Called the “Day of Bealtaine,” it was historically a Gaelic festival celebrated in medieval Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. Beltane also marks a midpoint between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice (“Astrological Date”), technically a mid-Spring festival. Thus, Beltane is about rebirth after the cold and dark of winter and the sprouting season of early spring. For the Celts, it signified the beginning of the pastoral summer season when the herds of livestock were driven out to the summer pastures and mountain grazing lands. Before there were calendars, many Celtic peoples celebrated Beltane with the first pinky-white blossoms of the sacred hawthorn tree, also known as “the May tree.”
Thematic Images for the
Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack
Beltane / May Day:
A Holiday for Pagans & Workers
Prologue to Beltane / May Day Musical Essays: Troubadour Spring Poetry/Song "Nature Introductions"
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Troubadour serenading his lady amongst the hawthorn trees (also known as "May trees" and "Fairy trees") in May. Hawthorn tapestries left and right (William Morris).
The "Nature Introductions": Exordium & Reverdie
In connecting a previous musical essay series, "The Troubadours & The Beloved" to the present "Beltane/May Day" series, GS had discussed poet Ezra Pound's assertion that behind the troubadours was a secret, erato-mystic love cult based upon an ancient pagan fertility religion and quoted Pound: "... the birth of Provençal song hovers about the Pagan rites of May Day.”
Therefore, the GS would connect his current Beltane/May Day musical essay series back thematically to the troubadours, who celebrated in poetry/song the twin joys (joi) of spring and love for the months of April and May.
Concerning the troubadour love poems/songs with the theme of the Spring season, there are "nature introductions" known as exordium in the genre of reverdie ("re-greening") in troubadour poetry/song (usually only first stanza) linking of spring and love. The troubadours often used the exordium when springtime weather inspires and bird songs “teach” the poet to sing. The bird in many troubadour cansos serves as the poet’s “messenger,” who will carry his message to his beloved. Technically speaking, the reverdie specifies time of composition at the end of March and early April. Spring inspires love and song, and the poem’s position is a love plea. As one literary historian tells us: “The reverdie properly belongs to May-Day festivities." (There are some 35 examples of "nature introductions" one can find.)
The earliest extant example of the musical form of the alba (dawn song) is the song "Kalenda Maya" (or "Kalenda Maia:" "The Calends of May") written by the troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras (c.1150–1207) to the melody of an estampida, a dance form played by French jongleurs. (The Romans called the first day of every month the calends, signifying the start of a new lunar phase.)
“On the first of May, gay the plumage of birds,
Song the day, loud the cuckoos.”
(From a 6th-century Celtic Welsh poem, "The Calends of May")
When the days are long in May,
I like a sweet song of birds from afar …
And neither song nor hawthorn flower,
Can please me more than winter’s ice....
~Jaufre Rudel (12th century)
It’s sweet when the breeze blows softly,
As April turns into May ….
Whiter she is than Helen was,
The loveliest flower of May ….
~Arnaut de Mareuil (12th century)
Through her who holds my heart in play;
So I prize not April or May,
For she blithely turns away ….
~Peire Vidal (12th century)
This love of ours it seems to be
Like a twig on a hawthorn tree
That on the tree trembles there ….
~Guillaume de Poitiers (12th century)
May, and among the miles of leafing,
blossoms storm out of the darkness —
windflowers and moccasin flowers. The bees
dive into them and I too, to gather
their spiritual honey. Mute and meek, yet theirs
is the deepest certainty that this existence too —
this sense of well-being, the flourishing
of the physical body — rides
near the hub of the miracle that everything
is a part of, is as good
as a poem or a prayer, can also make
luminous any dark place on earth.
-Mary Oliver
Thematic Images for Origins of Beltane / May Day:
Roman Floralia, Goddess Flora, Pagan Gods, & Festivals
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Pan and Syrinx
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Pan and Flora
The Roman Saturnalia, ancient precursor to May Day revelries
The Roman Bacchanalia, ancient precursor to May Day revelries
German Walpurgis Night, a precursor to May Day revelries
(It is celebrated on May Day Eve and dedicated to the Anglo-Saxon goddess of Spring,
Walpurga, who was later Christianized as St Walpurga and thus "Saint Walpurga's Eve.")
Thematic Images for Beltane Gods & Goddesses
Thematic Images for Beltane / May Day Characters & Themes
May Queen "Come up, come in with streamers! Come in with boughs of May!"
Beltane / May Day Maidens
Thematic Images for Beltane / May Day Maypole & Maypole Dance
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The Padstow Maypole
The Maypole at Merrymount
Thematic Images for Beltane / May Day Dances
Thematic Images for May Day Maypole Fairs & Vintage Magazine Covers
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Thematic Images for the Beltane / May Day Greenwood
Celtic "Otherworld" of the Faerie (Sidhe)
Thematic Images for Beltane / May Day Mid-Spring Festival
Thematic Images for Beltane / May Love: Maypole Lovers, Handfast Lovers,
Bowers of Bliss, Greenwood Marriage, and Sacred Marriage
Memes for Beltane / May Day Lovers Under the Hawthorn Tree
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Beltane / May Day Lovers Memes
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Beltane / May Day Erotic Lovers
“The Merrie, Merrie Month of May” has always been a merry month for lovers, when the swift current of the erotic impulse courses through leaf and vein, and so it was also called “The Lusty Month of May.” In the British Isles, young men and maidens would go “a-maying” on the eve of May Day (Beltane), spending all night in the greenwood to return at day-break, “bringing in the May.” Thus, May Day was a special time for lovers and sexual union, and the maypole played a central part in this ritualized courtship and mating. The maypole, symbolic of male and female sexual energies, was profusely decorated with flowers. Youthful couples disappeared into the fields and forest—in their greenwood “bowers of bliss” (arbor cupiditatis)—to make love under the moon, returning to the village to dance around the maypole.
This all disturbed the sexually uptight Puritans to no end, as they saw these “bacchanals” as smacking of paganism. One morally outraged Puritan wrote that “men doe use commonly to runne into woodes in the night time, amongt maidens, to set bowes, in so muche, as I have hearde of tenne maidens whiche went to set May, and nine of them came home with childe.” Another Puritan complained that, of the girls who go into the woods, “not the least one of them comes home again a virgin.”
The Origin of Jonathan Coulton’s song “The First of May”
JoCo: “And the whole concept of a dirty rhyme that references the first of May is stolen from some kind of traditional dirty rhyme that people used to say. In the past. Honestly I’m not entirely sure where it originated, but my grandfather used to say it, and I have met other people who’s grandparents used to say it…. Anybody have some more definitive explanation?” Mike: “Well, according to at least one source of the arcane wit (‘Another Almanac of Words at Play’ by Willard R. Espy), it's an old English folk saying that originally went: ‘Hurray, hurray! the first of May! / Hedgerow tupping begins today!’ ‘Tupping’ is, apparently, a colorful expression to describe sheep copulation. It's a shame it fell out of use.” Ed: “I heard James Taylor speak this rhyme in concert. He was introducing his ‘First of May’ song and said he heard his dad say it to himself. The lyrics of his ‘First of May’ are based on the idea suggested by the rhyme.” JoCo: “Oh man, you mean I stole this idea from JAMES TAYLOR?” (Taken from JoCo’s blog.)
Beltane / May Day Sacred Marriage (Hierogamy)
The boughs put forth their tender buds, and “Love is Lord of all!”
He bowed his head. He stood so still,
They bowed their heads as well.
And softly from the organ-loft
The song began to swell.
Come up with blood-red streamers,
The reeds began the strain.
The vox humana pealed on high,
The Spring is risen again!
The vox angelica replied—
The shadows flee away!
Our house-beams were of cedar.
Come in, with boughs of May!
~ Alfred Noyes, "The Lord of Misrule"
Thematic Images for the Beltane "Fire Festival":
The Traditional Fire Rituals & The Fires of Love
BELTANE, the cross-quarter fire festival, is traditionally celebrated on the eve of May 1st. It's all about new life and the full re-kindling of the year after Winter. It's about the renewal of Spring; about maypoles, dancing, flowers and the bright greens that only appear at this time of year.
The Celtic high priests, the Druids, kindled the great “Bel-fires” on the tops of the nearest beacon hill. Old Irish “Beletene” means “bright fire.” Gaelic “Bealtaine” means the month of May. At sundown on the eve of Beltane, great bonfires were lit throughout the land to attract the power of the sun back to Earth. The practical purpose of these bonfires was purify and sanctify the community and their livestock in readiness for the new cycle of the year. In rural homes the kitchen fire which burned all year round was extinguished, and the community gathered at the Beltane blaze, carrying away burning sticks as they left, to ignite their blackened hearths from a common flame.
The Celtic word "Beltane" is also said to mean the fires of the proto-Celtic god Bel or Belenos. (The word “Bealtaine” originates from the Celtic God “Bel,” meaning “the bright one” and the Gaelic word “teine” meaning "fire." Together, these words make “Bright Fire,” or “Goodly Fire.” Thus, Beltane (or Bealtaine) is a “fire” festival.” It appears, then, that the ancient Celts called the first cross-quarter festival on their wheel of the year “Beltane,” from the ancient word for “bright fire,” which honored their god of solar light and fertility. Thus, Beltane is sometimes literally translated as “bright” or “brilliant fire,” and is supposed to refer to the bonfires lit on Beltane eve by a presiding Druid in honor of the god Belenos. On Beltane Eve the Druids and their people gathered on high hills with a view of the rising sun and built great bonfires. House fires were extinguished and relit from these hilltop bonfires. These “need-fires” (“tein-eigen”) served to welcome in the summer, to encourage the sun’s warming rays, and to walk between for purification. Those gathered on Beltane were encouraged to leap the flames in a dynamic gesture of the acceptance of the blessing of fertility, creativity, and good fortune. So people leaped the fires to show the exuberance of the season. These joyous leaps turned into ecstatic dancing around the bonfires.
However, there was another purpose for these Beltane fires. The fires of Beltane also represented the fires of passionate desire that flared up though the ground and brought fertility to the land and the people. Couples leaped over the fire together to pledge themselves to each other. Traditionally speaking, then, this was a “fire festival” especially for young lovers, who made it through the cold and scarce winter months. With summer approaching, they could feel the fires of love rising in their solar plexus. Thus, for today’s Neopagans, Beltane signifies the flowering of cosmic sexual energies and mystical union between the goddess and the horned god, a time to be at harmony with the environment.
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May Queen at Beltane Fire Festival (Edinburgh, 2022)
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Beltane Fire Festival (Edinburgh, 2022)
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The choice is between partial incorporation and total incorporation (integration). Participation (playing a part) or fusion. Total incorporation, or fusion, is combustion in fire…. The one is united with the all, in a consuming fire…. The word consummation refers both to the burning world and the sacred marriage…. Learn to love the fire. The alchemical fire of transformation …. Love is all fire …. The truth concealed from the priest and revealed to the warrior: that this world always was and is and shall be ever-living fire. Revealed to the lover too: every lover is a warrior; love is all fire. ~N.O. Brown, Love’s Body
The Sacred Marriage (Hieros Gamos):
Then fire, make your body cold,
I'm going to give you mine to hold,
Saying this she climbed inside
To be his one, to be his only bride.
And deep into his fiery heart
He took the dust of Joan of Arc,
And high above the wedding guests
He hung the ashes of her wedding dress.
It was deep into his fiery heart
He took the dust of Joan of Arc,
And then she clearly understood
If he was fire, then she must be wood.
~Leonard Cohen, "Joan of Arc"
Thematic Images for Beltane / May Day Festivals
William Blake, "May-Day In London" (1784)
The May Day Parade in Minneapolis is the largest and longest-running parade in the country. The last time it took place was Sunday May 5th (“True Beltane” date), 2019. The annual parade, hosted by “In the Heart of the Beast Theatre,” draws large crowds and showcases large puppets, floats, and entertainment by performers. The event also features a festival in Powderhorn Park and a "Tree of Life Ceremony" involving more than 300 performers. Each year's parade/festival has a theme, ranging from Spring and environmental topics to social topics like peace and racial justice—blending the spring May Day with the sociopolitical May Day. This all-inclusive type of commemoration has been termed the “Green Root” and the “Red Root” May Day traditions.
Thematic Images for May Day "World Turned Upside-Down"
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"The Topsy Turvy World" (or "The Dutch Proverbs" Brueghel, 1559)
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The Lord of Misrule
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In the 16th century, with the advent of Protestantism, the Puritans viewed these Maypole celebrations as smacking of paganism, as immoral, and a form of idolatry. (This was during the years following the Civil War in England, when Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans controlled the country during the Interregnum, 1649-1660.) One form of celebrating, dancing round the maypole, was described as “heathenish vanity” generally demonstrating “superstition and wickedness.” Because of the “unseemly” behavior of these celebrations, the then Protestant King of both England and Wales, Edward VI, ordered that these Maypoles to be destroyed, such as the famous Cornhill Maypole of London. The Puritans were outraged at the licentiousness and general immorality that often accompanied the drinking and dancing, sometimes referring to these May Day revelries as “bacchanals.” (One Puritan Reverend lamented: “I could not suppress these Bacchanals.”) Thus, in 1644 legislation was passed to ban village maypoles throughout the country, and dancing did not return to village greens until the restoration of Charles II in 1660.
This act of outlawing the maypoles has been identified by “carnivalesque” historians today as “the repression of collective joy.” Throughout Northern Europe (and especially England), a series of laws were passed in order to curtail the erection of maypoles among the common people, which had a devastating effect on all forms of collective pleasure. “At some point, in town after town throughout the northern Christian world, the music stops. Carnival costumes are put away or sold; dramas that once engaged a town's entire population are canceled; festive rituals are forgotten or preserved only in tame and truncated form. The ecstatic possibility, which had first been driven from the sacred precincts of the church, was now harried from the streets and public squares.” (Barbara Ehrenreich)
However there was another motive behind this church and state backlash against maypoles other than the one of outraged morality—a political one. During this period, the maypole began to take on an increasingly political edge, with common people expressing their socio-political grievances by setting up maypoles. They ultimately wanted the inversion of the social hierarchy—“the world turned outside down”—on a permanent basis and not just played out in their May Day games (officiated by a “Lord of Misrule,” who increasingly was the impersonated outlaw-philanthropist Robin Hood, famously known for “stealing from the rich and giving to the poor”) for a few festive days. Of course, the church and state became greatly alarmed at such politicized May Day festivities. “From the sixteenth century on, the carnivalistic assault on authority seems to become less metaphorical and more physically menacing to the elites.... People again and again dressed up their rebellions in the trappings of carnival: masks, even full costumes, and almost always the music of bells, bagpipes, drums. Similarly, the maypole, around which so many traditional French and English festivities revolved, became a signal of defiance and a call to action.” (Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie) “In this context, we find the pagan maypole popping up again. Although traditional festivities had been largely vitiated or expunged by the Church at the end of the 18th century, rural people were still in the habit of announcing their political intentions by setting up a maypole. Such maypoles served a political purpose: to call to riotous assembly, a sort of visual alarm bell.” (Mona Ozouf)
Hence, what we have here is totally unique in the history of popular political agitation—the merging of “collective joy” with political activism, or collective pleasure and spontaneous uprising from below (which wouldn't be seen again until the mass demonstrations of the 1960s). Thus, the following account from one town in the south of France in July of 1791 can be seen as a good example of what was breaking out all over Europe. “It is reported that peasants attacked weathercocks and church pews—symbols of feudal and religious authority respectively: “both with some violence and in the effusion of their joy ... they set up maypoles in the public squares, surrounding them with all the destructive signs of the feudal monarchy.” (Mona Ozouf)
Yet, the conventional wisdom would have us believe that this kind of “carnivalesque revolt” was rare and merely coincidental; that for the most part the political agitators carried on without such carnivalesque trappings. However, this is totally mistaken: “It is in fact striking how frequently violent social clashes apparently ‘coincided’ with carnival … to call it a ‘coincidence’ of social revolt and carnival is deeply misleading, for … it was only in the late 18th and early 19th centuries—and then only in certain areas—that one can reasonably talk of popular politics dissociated from the carnivalesque at all.” (Peter Stallybrass and Allon White [My emphasis]) (Of course, the generation who came of age during the mass demonstrations beginning in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, with their ecstatic music and street theater, know better, even though they probably never recognized that their political events were “carnivalesque.”)
Thematic Images for International Workers May Day from Walter Crane
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The figure in these three illustrations (by Walter Crane) representing the International Workers' celebration for May Day 1895 is actually a representation for Flora, the Roman goddess of spring and flowers, whose festival, Floralia, was celebrated in Rome during late April and early May. Because of the stark similarity of customs, cultural historians and folklorists believe that the Floralia festival is the prototype of the later European May Day festival. Hence, this is evidence for the GS's theory that the two separate May Day observances (the seasonal and the socio-political) stem from common historical roots—the "green root" and the "red root."
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The above illustrations for the Worker's May Day are from the nineteenth-century artist, book illustrator, cartoonist, and craftsman Walter Crane. (Some images are modified.) If, like the Gypsy Scholar, you had intuited that the two seemingly separate May Day festivals—the seasonal, pagan May Day and the socio-political, worker's May Day—are really not separate at all, that they are more like two roots of one great historical Flower—a "green root" and a "red root," respectively—, but needed some substantial evidence for such an intuition, then Walter Crane is your man!
Crane was both an artist with pagan sensibilities of nature and a committed socialist (the GS would argue an anarcho-socialist), which meant that he had a foot in both worlds. Thus, these illustrations for May Day are prime examples of a socialist art grounded in an idyllic natural world, expressive of the (Romantic) mythic imagination. More to the point, the Workers' May Day these illustrations portray is not that of the standard Marxist variety of a demythologized and mechanized worldview but rather one presided over by a nature goddess from ancient times—Flora, the Roman Goddess of Flowers, whose festival, the Floralia, took place in late April and early May of the Julian calendar. (Folklorists believe that the origin of May Day as a seasonal festival is the Floralia.) Flora now appears in the illustration "A Garland For May Day 1895," pressed into service for the socialist cause. "Dedicated To The Workers," she is depicted as holding up her traditional garland of flowers, but now wears the Phrygian (red) bonnet (the long-time symbol of revolution, particularly associated with the French Revolution). Likewise in Crane's 1890 illustration (which he drew in 1889, after May 1 had been chosen as International Workers' Solidarity Day), "Labour's May Day: Dedicated To The Workers Of The World," with its theme of the "Solidarity of Labour," she also sports the Phrygian bonnet, but this time she is a winged figure with the word "Freedom" inscribed over her head. (She previously appeared as an angelic figure in Crane's 1885 painting "Freedom.") Here, she is holding banners with the words "Fraternity" and "Equality" on them. The five inhabited Continents are listed, each adjacent to the worker representing that Continent. Workers around the world have all laid their tools down to take a break from their labors and enjoy a simple circle dance in solidarity with each other and with Flora herself, and in celebration of the simple joy of being alive—just like the commoners ecstatically dancing around their maypoles on May Day or (Celtic) Beltane. (This is hardly the type of message put out by the official "scientific socialism" of Marxist artistic propaganda of the time!)
Of all these illustrations, "The Worker's Maypole" (first published in 1894 in the socialist journal Justice) is the one that most revealingly fuses together the two May Days. Here, Crane emphasizes the striking vitality of the modern Workers' May Day by connecting it with the maypole (the preeminent symbol of pagan vitality celebrated in the seasonal May Day—the same maypole that became politicized in the premodern period, serving as a "lightening rod" signal to the oppressed workers to rise up in "carnivalesque" rebellion) and the female form; in this case the May Queen. "The Worker's Maypole" declares "the cause of labour is the hope of the world." The May Queen, wearing the Phrygian bonnet, holds a banner emblazoned with the slogan "Socialization, Solidarity, Humanity." Women are represented by the May Queen at the top of the illustration, with her crown showing the legend "Freedom" with banners from her wings/arms reading "Fraternity" and "Equality". In the centre of the scene Crane's beflowered May Queen welcomes the toilers of the world and carries their banners high. Dancing workers (like those ecstatic maypole dancers of old) interweave ribbons labeled with specific industrial complaints, such as “Eight Hours” (the duration of the work day), "Employers’ Liability," and "No Starving Children, into those that evoke utopian ideals such as “Leisure for All and A Life Worth Living.” Set within an ogee of undulating vegetation, the illustration addresses itself to the viewer in terms of visual profusion. Lines curve and shape upward and downward, a graphic evocation of the joyful expressions of the workers. (What progressive writer Barbara Ehrenreich identifies as the essential element of the medieval and premodern May Day celebrations—"collective joy," which Western culture lost with the Puritan and capitalist repression of this festival.) In this visual celebration of cooperation, the graphic line itself weaves and dances. This, it seems to say, is indeed a life worth living. Here, Crane foregoes the standard socialist tools of satire, parody, and caricature in favor of idealism, in particular the evocation of a pastoral idyll that condemns the industrial present (in a similar way that rural commoners of the premodern period in England demonstrated their rejection of capitalist industrialization by setting up their maypoles and celebrating—at least, that is, before the Puritan authorities banned maypoles in 1644). With "The Worker's Maypole," then, the socialist artist has transcended the strict ideological position of Marxist socialism with his post-revolutionary imagery. Therefore, the GS would argue that Crane's offering for May Day of 1894, "The Worker's Maypole," brings together the English folk tradition of the May Day maypole and the demands of the international labour movement; in other words, Crane was the first, as a modern artist and political radical, to recognize and demonstrate the interconnection of the age-old, seasonal May Day and the nineteenth-century, socio-political May Day.
There is further evidence of Crane's artistic seasonal/pagan sensibilities concerning May Day. They can be seen in his lithograph illustrations for three children's books (part of his oeuvre of "flower books"): (1) The First of May: A Fairy Masque (1881), a story of fairies and flowers, as told and rendered by illustrations to poems written by Crane. (2) Flora's Feast: A Masque of Flowers (1889). That Flora was an important goddess figure for Crane in relation to May Day is also evidenced in two of his works: the painting "Flora" and the set of tiles entitled "Flora's Train." (3) Queen Summer, or, The tourney of the Lily & the Rose (1891). Also worthy of note here are two seasonal paintings, "The Coming of May" (1873), "Summer 1895," an illustration that combines May Day flowers and the workers' May Day, "Flowers For The Labour's May Day" (1898), another that combines the May Day theme of love with socialism, "A Posy For Mayday and A Poser For Britannia" (1910), and yet another along the same lines, "Her Message to Labour for May Day;" a goddess of flowers giving a "May Day" message of hope to the workers" in terms of the coming of the sun and spring. Finally, we can see Crane's seasonal/pagan sensibilities expressed most revealingly in two poems for May Day. The first is part of a sequence of illustrations for the months of the year ("The Procession of the Months"). This "May" illustration features a traditional poem for the season (with verses by Beatrice Crane). The second is a May Day poem addressed to workers, whose first stanza evokes the traditional mid-spring theme of the season:
"World Workers, whatever may bind ye, / This day let your work be undone: / Cast the clouds of the winter behind ye, / And come forth and be glad in the sun."
As much as the traditional socialists want to keep Crane's "floral fantasies" resolutely separated from his serious political cartoons (which he dubbed "cartoons for the cause"), the GS would argue that they are just as "political" (in their evocation of a utopian ideal society) as any typical socialist cause. Again (to reiterate the GS' take on Crane a little differently), the Socialist artist is also the Romantic artist.
The images below are taken from the Crane works listed as prime examples of his seasonal/pagan sensibilities concerning the May Day.
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Crane's Socialist Allegory (1885)
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May Day "Carnivalesque" comes to Socialism in 1895
(Angel of ) "Freedom" (Crane 1885)
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Thematic Images for International Worker's May Day
Workers' May Day festivities
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The Monopolist's May-Pole (Puck Magazine)
"... May Day has its origins ... stemmed from the pre-Christian holiday of Beltane, a celebration of rebirth and fertility."
This opening paragraph (on the meme) from the archives of the Industrial Workers of the World website is copied here as a great confirmation of the Gypsy Scholar's contention that the modern sociopolitical May Day has its roots in the ancient (pagan) Celtic Beltane or "May Day"), traditionally celebrated on May 1. It's even more significant that this great confirmation comes not from some secondary, non-political source but from the organization of the IWW itself, and is therefore beyond question. (This source was only discovered after the GS had finished this webpage and presented his musical essay series for "Beltane / May Day.") The GS' musical essay series for "Beltane / May Day" argued that its main purpose was to demonstrate that the seasonal pagan May Day ("Beltane") and the sociopolitical May Day holidays are far from representing two very different types of holidays with nothing in common (as most people have been led to believe) but rather are related holidays that share a common root—the "Green Root" and the "Red Root" traditions respectively (as the above side-by-side maypole images indicate).
Anarchist Chicago Haymarket Affair May 4, 1886
International Worker's May Day
International Worker's May Day Events
Historical May Day Revolts
May Day 1968: The Student Revolt in France
1968 – No other year in the 20th century is given such a symbolic and iconic status, no other year is studded with myths, evokes associations, viewed with bias, and kindles emotions. A year in which protests, upheavals, and even revolutions took place in numerous countries around the globe: May 1968 stands for international youth and protest cultures in 56 countries, 22 European ones amongst them, but also for an art breaking out of its elitist ivory tower – parallel to this, masses of individuals in the Western world begin to strive for autonomy. It is first through the interaction between students, intellectuals, and artists that a cultural revolution capable of disrupting the authoritarian structures of societies in both East and West could take place. This world-wide wave of protest particularly occurred in May of that year. The protests are sometimes linked to similar movements that occurred around the same time world wide and inspired a generation of protest art in the form of songs, imaginative graffiti, posters, and slogans. Three of these protest movements (two in America and one in France) are worthy of note here.
Beginning in May 1968, a period of civil unrest occurred throughout France, lasting some seven weeks and punctuated by demonstrations, general strikes, as well as the occupation of universities and factories. The unrest and protests were initiated by anarchist university students and were later joined by trade-union workers from a number of factories. The revolt against the antiquated French educational system turned into a general youth rebellion that rocked Paris and nearly toppled the French government. At the height of events, which have since become known as "May 68," the economy of France came to a halt. The protests reached such a point that political leaders feared civil war or revolution; the national government briefly ceased to function after President Charles de Gaulle secretly fled France to Germany at one point. The May '68 student-led uprisings in Paris found expression in provocative and pithy signs and images. The most famous slogan of the student protesters was "All Power to the Imagination," which alluded to the essential power of the creative arts (an aesthetic power) in transforming socio-political reality.
In late April and early May of 1968, a series of protests led by the SDS at Columbia University in New York City were one among the numerous student demonstrations that occurred around the globe in that year. Protesting against the university's ties to the Vietnam War and its segregation policies, the students occupied and shut down the university, only to be violently quashed by the police. A second round of protesting occurred between May 17–22.
In 1968, San Francisco State embarked on a campus strike that lasted five months – the longest student strike in U.S. history. Led by the Black Student Union and Third World Liberation Front, the strike was a high point of student struggle in the revolutionary year of 1968. It was met by ferocious repression, but the strikers persevered and won the first College of Ethnic Studies in the U.S. In 1968, the 2-year-old Black Panther Party had raised Black consciousness and commitment to revolutionary change to a new high, and Blacks led the broad coalition behind the SF State strike. The student and faculty strike started on November 6, 1968 and lasted until March 21, 1969. However, the origin of the strike can be traced back May 2, 1967, when students orchestrated a sit-in at the office of the newly appointed president of the university in protest of the Selective Students Committee access to students' academic standing. Subsequent events, which included the suspension and firing of high profile educators of color, led to the formation of the coalition of ethnic student groups at San Francisco State College known as the "Third World Liberation Front."
May Day 1971 Anti-War Demonstrations in America
On 1 May 1971, some 35,000 protesters camped out in West Potomac Park near the Washington Monument park in Washington, D.C., in preparation for a demonstration against the Vietnam War. But the Nixon administration canceled the protester’s permit, and over the next few days U.S. Park Police, Washington Metropolitan Police, the D.C. National Guard, and federal troops clashed with, and dispersed, many of the protesters. This last and largest national anti-Vietnam War demonstration occurring that week has since become known as the “1971 May Day Protests.” This most influential protest has also been consigned to history as “the protest that changed America.”
“During one remarkable two week period — from April 19 to May 5, 1971 — more than a half-million citizens descended on the nation’s capital for the largest anti-Vietnam War rally, staging sit-ins that clogged entrances to several government agencies, camping out in a park where they put on a rock concert, and blocking streets and bridges that nearly shut down the city. Hundreds of war veterans joined the fray, lobbied Congress, engaged in civil disobedience at the Supreme Court and the Pentagon, performed mock guerrilla theater attacks on unsuspecting citizens on the city’s streets, and threw their war medals onto the Capitol steps.” (“How 1971’s Mayday actions rattled Nixon and helped keep Vietnam from becoming a forever war”)
Occupy May Day (USA)
May Day Anarchists
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Thematic Images for the May Day "Bread & Roses" Strike
As the two images above especially show, the International Workers' May Day has always been associated with flowers (particularly the rose), which came from the Roman May Day festival of the Floralia, in honor the the goddess of flowers, Flora. Furthermore, this association of spring flowering and the day to commemorate the rights of workers is also evidenced in poem and song.
The political slogan of "Bread and Roses" originated from a 1911 speech given by women's suffragette Helen Todd, which contained the line "bread for all, and roses too." This inspired the poet, novelist, and editor James Oppenheim to turn it into a poem in honor of the women's suffrage movement. The poem was first published in The American Magazine in December 1911, with the attribution line "Bread for all, and Roses, too"—a slogan of the Women in the West suffragettes. (In terms of the Women's Suffrage Movement, it is significant here that although the slogan was turned into a poem by a man the original musical setting was by a woman; Caroline Kohlslaat in 1917. The first performance of Kohlsaat's song was at the River Forest Women's Club, where she was the chorus director. Kohlsaat's song eventually drifted to the picket line—in a nice feedback loop of art and life.) By the 1930s, the song was being extensively used by women, while they fed and supported the strikers on the picket line at the manufacturing plants.The song also migrated to the college campus. At some women's colleges, the song became part of their traditional song set. It became associated in popular culture (if not historical accuracy) with the famous successful women's textile workers strike in Lawrence Massachusetts in 1912, now often referred to as the "Bread and Roses Strike." The event of the political slogan being turned into a poem has significance in that it counterbalanced the habitual exclusivity of the economic bottom line in socialist messaging with the co-equal demand for the other side of life—the more intangible necessities of the soul for its nourishment. Thus, the political slogan pairing bread and roses, appealing for both fair wages and dignified conditions, found resonance as transcending "the sometimes tedious struggles for marginal economic advances" in the "light of labor struggles as based on striving for dignity and respect." (Robert J. S. Ross, 2013.)
"As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead / Go crying through our singing their ancient song of Bread; / Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew / Yes, it is Bread we fight for—but we fight for Roses, too.”
Thus, for the GS, this song represents the twin themes of worker's rights and the right to the entire aesthetic dimension—especially music (that makes for "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness")—, which is represented by the eternal "symbolic rose," the flower sacred to Venus-Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, whose Roman festival (like Flora's) also took place during the month of May.
In terms of continuation of the "Bread and Roses" song in popular culture, it had a big revival in the 1960s, after being published in Sing Out! Magazine in 1954. Mimi Farina, sister of Joan Baez and husband of the singer songwriter Richard Farina, composed a new musical setting in 1974. (She started an organization called "Bread And Roses Benefit Agency" in the same year, its mission being to bring music to places that are usually not exposed to it.) Her setting was recorded by many other well-known folk artists. Besides Joan Baez, the earliest among them was Judy Collins, who performed it in 1967.
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Thematic Images for the Roman Rosalia Festival
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Thematic Images for May Day "Dancing in the Street"
Maypole Spiral-Dance
Dancing to fiddle in May Day
Country Mirth (Douce Ballads)
Anarchist Emma Goldman's dancing revolution
Links for Supplementary Beltane Videos
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This article supports the GS's contention (as articulated in his musical essay series, "Beltane / May Day") that (a) the roots of May Day for international workers lie in the seasonal, pagan festival of May Day and (b) the prototype the latter May Day can be found in the Roman Floralia.
"May 1 was a traditional Spring holiday across the northern hemisphere, with numerous rites and ceremonies taking place from Great Britain to Bulgaria. The very first record of May Day celebration appeared with Floralia, the festival of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, celebrated on April 27 during the Roman Republic era, and with the Walpurgis Night Celebrations of the Germanic countries. It is also associated with the Gaelic Beltane, most commonly held on April 30. The day was a traditional summer holiday in many European pagan cultures. While February 1 was the first day of spring, May 1 was the first day of summer; hence, the summer solstice on June 25 (now June 21) was Midsummer."
