Happy May Day! The first day of May in the 21st century rather passes us by, but it was cause for a fine celebration in Holderness for centuries. After the miserable winter we’ve had, it’s a joy to see the fields and hedgerows bursting into life; before the days of electricity and central heating, this sunny, green month must have felt like heaven after the seemingly interminable darkness of winter. It has its roots in the Greek and Roman worship of the goddess Flora and the ancient Celtic ritual of Beltane, but from the medieval period onwards May Day was fêted as the official beginning of summer and became a festival of greenery, flowers and communal jollities. It’s had its ups and downs over the years. Its heyday was during the 1500s, but actual parish accounts from Holderness are rare. This is probably because most surviving records come from the church, whereas May Day was essentially a secular occasion and the trees and flowers needed for it grew freely and abundantly in the surrounding fields.
The only mention I’ve found in the Hedon ecclesiastical records is a payment of 5 shillings for a Maypole in 1660, the month of the Restoration of the monarchy1. The 17th century Puritans and evangelical Protestants had stamped out the fun (“a relic of the shameful worship of the strumpet Flora”, said one disapproving Christian), so it’s possible this timing isn’t a coincidence. Maypoles fell out of fashion during the 1700s and wasn’t until the early 1900s that the custom was revived. A letter from a Hornsea lady named Lois to the East Riding Telegraph in 1899 says that “It is a source of the keenest regret that the dear old May celebrations are dying out… the May pole no longer graces the village green.”2 But she does mention that John Ruskin is bringing the festival back to life, evidence of the early 20th century Folk Revival, and this influence can clearly be seen in various villages across Holderness during this period.
May Day is essentially a celebration of the return of greenery to our countryside. The Gregorian Calendar was adopted in Britain in 1752; prior to this, we had the Julian system which was 11 days ahead, so flowers and trees were in bloom earlier. “Bringing in the May” (gathering greenery and flowers) was first mentioned in Lincoln in 1240, and the most important plant was the hawthorn. This grows well on clay soil, and as such is common in Holderness marking ancient meeting points and Enclosure Act field boundaries. It’s colloquially known as May: the only British plant to be named after the month it flowers. Readers of a certain age might also know it as “bread and cheese’, as the leaves and berries were eaten throughout Yorkshire. Hawthorn blossom, dog roses and cow parsley were gathered to make garlands, and particularly for the headdress worn by the Lady of the May.
But in Holderness and many other rural areas, hawthorn garlands were never allowed inside the house. They were said to have a “deathly smell” and thought to be unlucky, even a portent of death. While some folklorists believe this is due to the tree’s association with Celtic human sacrifice (although there is little evidence for this), there is a more scientific reason. Hawthorn flowers give off triethylamine, the chemical produced by corpses and rotting flesh which, prior to modern embalming and funeral practices, would have been a smell well-known to country folk.
The Lady of the May became known as the May Queen, and many of our villages crowned a local girl. She and her attendants were bedecked with white flowers, personifications of the summer, and their white dresses symbolised purity. There seems to have been a connection with the Virgin Mary, who was particularly venerated during May, and Holderness had many old Catholic families who followed this practice. Pre-Reformation, hawthorn was used to dress domestic shrines to the Virgin which might explain why its presence indoors was frowned upon once the persecution of Catholics took hold. Conversely, the white flowers of May also represented fertility and rebirth and, again, there is a scientific reason behind this symbolism; these early-blossoming plants are mainly pollinated by flies (the association with death once more rears its head) and white or pale yellow is more visible to insects than the more vibrant colours of summer flowers.
In later times, however, much of this symbolism was forgotten and the May Queen was really an excuse to dress up. You can see from the photographs of Burton Pidsea’s May Day that the girls are all in beautiful white frocks with a tractor and trailer as their horse and carriage.
Gladys Beadle of Keyingham recalled that the honour always fell upon the eldest girl at the village school, and her turn came during the Second World War when clothing was “on coupons”. Gladys went to Hull Market where she bought a bag of lace scraps, and a talented seamstress in the village made a dress out of them for her3.
The May pole also made a comeback around 1900, no doubt much to Lois’s joy! The Hornsea Band of Hope, a teetotal organisation, celebrated their May Day in 1900 with a garlanded May Queen and attendants, children dressed as flowers, and the highlight of the day: “the braiding of the May poll”. This photograph of the maypole dance is from Hollym in 19084.
This picture has an eerie Folk Horror quality to it: the white dresses and intense stares. The girls look like they’re about to be sacrificed — or watch someone else be… The ribbons to braid while dancing were a modern embellishment. The earliest poles were a simple tree, usually hawthorn (of course) or birch, although people always danced round them.
Another Holderness custom was the “May geslin”, or gosling. This is our equivalent of an April fool, and the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1791 tells us that ‘A May Gosling… is made with as much eagerness in the North of England as an April Noddy.’ You might fall for being sent to the chemist’s to buy a penn’orth of pigeon’s milk, but if your tormentor plays the trick after midday then:
Twelve o’clock is past and gone
So you’re a fool for making one.
So if someone caught you out on the first of April, you can get your own back today!
Whether it’s with garlands or geslins, May Day is still a cause for celebration: light, warmth and life are returning to our countryside and this deserves to be honoured. This weekend, go for a walk, hug a hawthorn and marvel at the beauty of Mother Nature as she wakes and basks in a new dawn.