John Barleycorn was a hero bold,
Of noble enterprise,
For if you do but taste his blood,
'Twill make your courage rise.
'Twill make a man forget his woe;
'Twill heighten all his joy:
'Twill make the widow's heart to sing,
Tho' the tear were in her eye.
It was early spring in
southern England, cold as the dickens and unrelievedly damp. There
seemed to be no remedy against the weather except to gather in a pub,
sit next to a small blazing fire, and listen to folks sing the old
songs. The uplifting tale of John Barleycorn, written by Scotland’s
paramount folk poet, Robert Burns, is typical of the deeply rooted
culture of the British Isles. There, pagan rites and Christian ritual
are mixed in a steamy compost with love of strong drink and a hearty
appreciation of the natural cycles of the earth. People sing together,
in public, without instruments and without embarrassment. It takes the
chill off.
All over the world wherever people are still connected
to the soil or where they have reconnected as best they can, the old
holy agricultural days are celebrated or at least, acknowledged. Many
have been co-opted by the church or the communists to suit their own
purposes.
It was from Britain that we got the names of these
sacred days, mysterious gems of language glimmering with arcane
meaning that mark the turning of the earth through the cycle of the
year: Yule, Imbolg, Equinox, Beltane, Samhain, Lammas.
Because the earth always finds its balance, summer in
the north of the earth is mirrored by winter in the south. Our Vernal
Equinox is South America’s Autumnal Equinox. Each seasonal celebration
contains the potentiality of the next phase. To many, the Winter
Solstice, when darkness prevails, is the dreariest time of the year, a
time when people feel suicidal and struggle with SAD (Seasonal
Affective Disorder). But to others it betides the joyful end of winter
because from that day forward, light begins to return in minutely
increasing increments. Similarly, the end of October, known as the
Harvest Festival or Lammas, is a time when plants have died; but is
also a time when new growth begins as seeds are dispersed in the
harvesting process.
I was studying bio-dynamic agriculture at Emerson
College in Sussex that spring, when our teacher, a man not given to
consulting with others, announced one Friday that we must all gather
on Sunday morning – one of our few free times – to celebrate the
Vernal Equinox. His ponderous announcement implied the capital
letters:
“We’re a group concerned with the Seasons and the
significance of the Phases of the Moon. We’re aligning ourselves with
the Farming People of the World who have their own ways of knowing
that the Equinox is coming, without recourse to calendars. We are
obligated to take on the Sacred Duty of commemorating this day when
Spring Begins and the Winter is finally Over.” Our teacher had a way
of speaking in grand terms, bombastic some might say, but there was no
room for refusal though several of us groaned. I might have been one
of the groaners. Weekends were for family, not for school.
I lost. But I already knew not to grouse about these
weird celebrations. The college had already opened my eyes to the
meaning behind the cycles of the year. I had transplanted myself from
my Carolina home, and was living now in a more ancient place where
folklore spanned thousands of years. The lunar calendar of the Celts,
for example, associated every month with a tree or flower, and with a
sense/sacred principle:
The Celtic Months:
|
Month |
Period |
Meaning |
|
Samonios |
Oct / Nov |
Seed-fall |
|
Dumannios |
Nov / Dec |
The Darkest Depths |
|
Riuros |
Dec / Jan |
Cold-time |
|
Anagantios |
Jan / Feb |
Stay-home-time |
|
Ogronios |
Feb / Mar |
Time of Ice |
|
Cutios |
Mar / Apr |
Time of Winds |
|
Giamonios |
Apr / May |
Shoots-show |
|
Simivisionios |
May / Jun |
Time of Brightness |
|
Equos |
Jun / Jul |
Horse-time |
|
Elembiuos |
Jul / Aug |
Claim-time |
|
Edrinios |
Aug / Sep |
Arbitration-time |
|
Cantios |
Sep / Oct |
Song-time |
For many of us, Spring denotes the beginning of the
year, far more accurately than the calendar’s designation of January
First. In Spring the sap rises, the pollen is released, and humans
respond to the generative energy around them with decorative plantings
and the creation of new beds for procreation of new species.
May Day is a holiday that has been co-opted by the
workers of the world, who unite in their refusal to work on May 1. It
is connected to the ancient celebrations of Beltane, or the fire of
Bel, when the goddesses vies playfully with the gods, symbolized by
the Maypole. Do I need to draw a picture here? Remember the sweet
young girls bedecked in flowers, dancing around the, ahem, phallic
Maypole? Beltane, like its calendar opposite, Samhain or Halloween, is
a time out of time. It’s the earliest harbinger of summer fecundity,
when the world of magic mystically permeates the world of nature and
beings may be transformed. It’s a time when courting in the woods and
ditches has traditionally been permitted.
Beltane falls on the gibbous moon, when buds are
forming, and farmers are in a highly ambitious frame of mind
calculating the profits to come. The harvest is underground and we
leave it to the dark feminine principle to heave the plants toward the
potent masculine sun.
I was nowhere more impressed with Midsummer’s Night
than in Sweden, many miles north of anywhere I’d ever been. In Sweden,
where I journeyed to study folk fiddle and the melancholy music called
the “polska,” I experienced winter even more stringently than in
England. The day’s light lasted from just 10 in the morning until 2 in
the afternoon. I survived SAD by taking regular saunas. Then came
summer, with days that lasted until 10 pm and dawns that arrived at 4
in the morning. The bi-polar Swedes, who shut down and weep all
winter, become extraverted heat-seekers in the summer, carousing
without ceasing. Fiddlers conventions, known as “spelmanslag,” carry
on all night.
