The Rover's Almanac: May

Spring unfolds with songbirds, surging seas and sexual awakening

Introduction

At the beginning of each month I like to locate myself, metaphorically, within what is happening around me: the annual cycles, the celebrations and festivals of the calendar, the arc of the stars, the waxing and waning of the moon and the passage of nature whispered on the wind.

This is the seventh instalment of a regular monthly almanac I write to share with you. It is, in the main, a figurative contemplation, seasoned with some of the more prosaic anchor points and markers that I personally cherish.

Inspiration comes from many sources and I have listed some of these below.

Here we look ahead to the month of June in the year 2024.

• Wednesday 1 May - Mayday

• Wednesday 1 May - Beltain

• Monday 6 May - Early May Bank Holiday

• Monday 20 May - Gemini Season

• Monday 27 May - Spring Bank Holiday

Moon Calendar

• Wednesday 1 May - Last Quarter (12.27pm)

• Wednesday 8 May - New Moon (4.21am)

• Wednesday 15 May - First Quarter (12.48pm)

• Thursday 23 May - Full Moon (2.53pm) Mother’s Moon, Milk Moon, Bright Moon

• Thursday 30 May - Last Quarter (6.12pm)

Sky Calendar

• Thursday 9 May - Best morning to see Mercury before dawn

• Monday 13 May - Close encounter of Moon and Pollux after sunset

• Thursday 16 May - Moon and Regulus get up close and personal after sunset

The Rover’s Almanac: May 2024

Ocean.

The surging, spellbinding sea.

I’m standing at the end of a pier on the north-east coast of Scotland, on the cusp of May, facing the potency and power of the fuming fertile goddess.

Rolling, roiling, hissing, splashing.

The moon is heaving the water inshore, squeezing her through the narrow harbour mouth, until she sprawls wantonly, recklessly, on the beach, dashed against the stones.

On meeting these masculine piers and muscular harbour walls, laid down by men, stone by stone, purposefully, deliberately, more than a hundreds years ago at the height of the herring boom, she is vexed.

So she harries and worries the stonework disdainfully, frothing and slapping, picking apart man-made work, before flowing around moodily.

Her dress is dark green, black and blue, transparent when she draws back, affray o’ the sea¹, to muster the next surge.

I can see big boulders sitting stoically on the seabed, letting it all wash over them.

Now and again, when I turn my back, she comes at me, announcing herself with a distinctly louder rumble and roar.

Surfing in past the first harbour wall she crashes into the end of the pier, head on, creating a great eruption of spray and white water, which I simply step back to avoid, fuelling her fury.

Her tang and taint is in the air, thrown up by the restless waves, hanging like fog, creating a chill. I smell seaweed and salt.

Above her the sun is rising behind the eastern cliffs of Latheronwheel Harbour, bestowing on the Caithness headland a warm glow, setting the scene for the coronation of spring: Beltain.

We are heading into the peak of the season: the rise of sunlight, the power of potential, flowers are everywhere, birds and animals are having their young, there is morning birdsong, sap is rising, there is blooming and flowering, a whirlwind of creative energy, love, sexuality and fruitfulness, potency, life-force and power.

The sun wakes up the songbirds all down the glen and they tentatively join in with the seasonal celebrations, although in this part of the Isles they don’t sound totally convinced.

A sheep teeters precariously on the top edge of the cliff, nibbling at some choice morsels which are out of reach for the faint-hearted. There’s already one of its dead kin at the bottom, smashed on the rocks below, eyes gouged, body being slowly devoured by the sea.

The lambs will be having their tails cut in May, to stop flies laying eggs in the wool. They will be ear-notched, ear-tagged and many will also be castrated.

Livestock will be stopped from grazing the silage fields, and fertiliser will be spread.

The Anglo-Saxons called May Thrimilci: the month when cows were eating the abundant new grass and could be milked three times a day.

Fertiliser and muck-spreading will continue on the farms, and potatoes, cereals, sugar beet and peas, will be sprayed.

A few days ago back in Nybster, by the remains of a two-thousand-year-old broch, with my youngest son North, we watched two tractors plough the earth which had suffered a dose of Roundup: the soil and grass the blades were turning had that telltale brown, dead-red look.

As spring unfolds, I’m back to turning the pages of Wild Flowers Of Britain by Roger Phillips, which has been sitting on the shelf during winter.

In April, yellow was, and still is, predominant in Scotland: daffodil, dandelion, celandine and gorse, primrose and the central disc florets of daisies. Purple violets added contrast.

Are the violets already here!
Show me! I tremble so much to hear it, that even now
on the threshold of spring, I fear I shall die.
Show me the violets that are out.

Oh, if it be true, and the living darkness of the blood of man is purpling with violets,
if the violets are coming out from under the rack of men, winter-rotten and fallen,
we shall have spring.²

If they can avoid the weed killer, bluebell, forget-me-not, red campion and herb Robert might make an appearance alongside the sparkling white mayflower, hawthorn, which will be abundant, if we’re lucky.

The old nursery-rhyme Here we go gathering nuts in May was originally a fertility rite and probably referred to knots, rather than nuts, and the branches of the hawthorn tree.

The mayflower was gathered by young people in the woods to make posies to mark the coming of new life, and would be presented with exited and lustful fervour to the one whose heart they hoped to win.

They would then stay out all night and not come home till morning. Not a few Christian weddings would have to be retrospectively solemnised in the following months.

But I’m sure it was the greenwood marriages that would forever hold the true essence of their sexual awakening, having been consummated in advance in the woods when the new growth was verdant.

Here We Go Gathering Nuts in May
Nuts in May, nuts in May,
Here we go gathering nuts in May,
On a cold and frosty morning.

Who will you have for nuts in May,
Nuts in May, nuts in May,
Who will you have for nuts in May,
On a cold and frosty morning.

We’ll have (the lassie) for nuts in May,
Nuts in May, nuts in May,
We’ll have [the lassie] for nuts in May,
On a cold and frosty morning.

Who will you have to take her away,
Take her away, take her away,
Who will you have to take her away,
On a cold and frosty morning.

We’ll have [the laddie] to take her away,
Take her away, take her away,
We’ll have [the laddie] to take her away,
On a cold and frosty morning.

The church changed the focus of Beltain from a night of revelry and sexual potency to the May Day celebration whose May queen was a symbol of virginity, purity and chastity. This transformed the wild sexually potent fertile goddess into her opposite and began the steady repression of sexual expression, especially in women.³

Beltain, or bel-tene, means a goodly fire. A special fire was kindled after all the other fires in the community had been put out. This was the Tein-eigin, the Need Fire.

People then jumped the fire to purify, cleanse, and to bring fertility. Couples jumped the fire together to pledge themselves to each other. At the end of the evening, the villagers would take some of the embers to start their fires at home anew.⁴

Gulls are nesting in nooks on the rock face: splashes of white on a grey-green cliff.

Two oystercatchers career past wildly: weep, weep, weep. Alighting on the harbour wall together they look out and watch the fisherman in a small bobbing boat pulling up creels⁵. The bird on the right hand side seems to be standing on one leg.

Back inside the van everyone is still dozing. I set sticks in the log-burner and light a fire, then put the coffee on. A few minutes later I listen with delight to the layers of morning sound: roaring flames, rhythmic waves and the hissing, gurgling stovetop espresso maker, the three of them very much enjoying each other’s company.

On the last day of April I found a ledge along the harbour wall on which I could lie down and enjoy shelter from the wind. As the sun was shining I turned my face to it and dozed while the children built dams out of rocks and sent rudimentary wooden sailing boats down the river. Later, the skin on my face has that pleasant, glowing, taut feeling.

On another sunny harbour the day before an old man came down the winding road quick-smart on a shiny white mobility scooter with go-faster stripes. He pulled up close by and watched us whittling wood and I went over to pass the time of day.

With his flat cap, labourer’s blue overalls, pipe, stubbly face and mischievous eyes, he didn’t quite match the sleek exterior of his vehicle.

Feeling optimistic in the sunshine, I asked him if he thought spring had sprung.

‘No,’ he said, ‘this is just a blip.’

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• The Almanac: A Seasonal Guide to 2024 by Lia Leendertz

• Sacred Earth Celebrations by Glennie Kindred

• Folklore Myths and Legends of Britain published by Readers Digest

• Sky Guide (App)

• BBC Countryfile

1. A spent wave receding from the shore (A Scots Dictionary of Nature by Amanda Thomson)

2. Craving for Spring by DH Lawrence

3. Sacred Earth Celebrations by Glennie Kindred

4. Sacred Earth Celebrations by Glennie Kindred

5. A lobster pot