Worship of the Generative Powers: May-day

May-day

In mediæval poetry and romance, the month of May was celebrated above all others as that consecrated to Love, which seemed to pervade all nature, and to invite mankind to partake in the general enjoyment. Hence, among nearly all peoples, its approach was celebrated with festivities, in which, under various forms, worship was paid to Nature's reproductiveness. The Romans welcomed the approach of May with their Floralia, a festival we have already described as remarkable for licentiousness; and there cannot be a doubt that our Teutonic forefathers had also their festival of the season long before they became acquainted with the Romans. Yet much of the mediæval celebration of May-day, especially in the South, appears to have been derived from the Floralia of the latter people. As in the Floralia, the arrival of the festival was announced

65

The Puritans were deeply impressed with the belief that the maypole was a substantial relic of Paganism; and they were no doubt right. There appears to be reason sufficient for supposing that, at a period which cannot now be ascertained, the maypole had taken the place of the phallus. The ceremonies attending

viva voce by menne of greate gravitie and reputation, that of fourtie, three score, or a hundred maides goyng to the woode over night, there have scarcely the third part returned home again undefiled."

The day generally concluded with bonfires. These represented the need-fire, which was intimately connected with the ancient priapic rites. Fire itself was an object of worship, as the most powerful of the elements; but it was supposed to lose its purity and sacred character in being propagated from one material to another, and the worshippers sought on these solemn occasions to produce it in its primitive and purest form. This was done by the rapid friction of two pieces of wood, attended with superstitious ceremonies; the pure element of fire was believed to exist in the wood, and to be thus forced out of it, and hence it was called need-fire (in Old German not-feur, and in Anglo-Saxon, neod-fyr), meaning literally a forced

66 It was from the remotest ages the custom to cause cattle, and even children, to pass across the need-fire, as a protection to them for the rest of their lives. The need-fire was kindled at Easter, on May-day, and especially at the

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Footnotes

93:65 Stubbes, Anatomie of Ahuses, fol. 94, 8vo. London, 1583.

95:66 Logan, The Scottish Gael, vol. ii, p. 64, and Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary, Suppl. sub. v. Neidfyre.