Late April, in Ireland. The days have been sunny and warm, the nights clear and bright. Everything is a rush of dizzying green. We are in the mouth of Bealtaine, the month of May as Gaeilge, and our great fire festival to ring in Summer. Celebrated by some on the full moon closest to May 1st, that Full Moon came in the early hours of Wednesday morning. However, others celebrate it as a fixed date in the Gregorian calendar (the night of April 30th into May 1st) or on the astrological date, pinpointing the exact midway point between the vernal equinox and summer solstice, as such this ancient festival is being celebrated throughout this weekend, throughout the incoming week and beyond into the month of May. Others celebrate it when the hawthorn, Sceach Gheal, is in bloom. Here, along the roadsides where the heat of the cars bring it on sooner it is beginning to blossom, but the Fairy Thorn I can see across the meadow from where I’m writing (in my kitchen) is a good while off blooming still. To observe the sacred turn of the year by the old ways is to observe the land, not an arbitrary calendar. It is to be rooted in the land where you are, and as such the start of summer will vary significantly even regionally within Ireland and greater still if you observe our festivals from further afield. Here, in the north of Ireland we are very much in the mouth of summer but not yet across the threshold. Let me know what the land feels like where you are?
Bealtaine translates as bright fire, or mouth of fire, and marks the transition from the dark half of the year (giamos) to the bright (samos). It was a festival to ensure the fertility of the land, it is linked to kinship rights (often granted by Sovereignty land goddesses) and was a night of revelry and for lovers. Any child conceived on Bealtaine was believed to be a child of the gods. Cattle would be driven between two bonfires to protect them before summering them in the fields. These fires were lit all over the island and men would show off their prowess by leaping the flames. Women would bathe their faces in the early morning dew to increase their beauty, and if brave enough would roll naked in it. It must not be wiped off but allowed to air dry, some areas state it must be the dew off a primrose or under a hawthorn, however in others any dew will do. Homes and byres were protected from the other crowd with yellow flowers strung or strewn across thresholds. In some parts of the country a May Tree, May Bough, May Bush, or Summer Tree was decorated with flowers and ribbons and placed either in the home or the yard to celebrate the coming of summer and protect the home[1].
Workers were hired around Bealtaine for summer work, and hiring fairs were once a common practice across the country. With the introduction of the Gregorian calendar these fairs were moved in Ulster to around the 12th of May and I will bring you a local folktale of the hiring fair on that date. (We’re going to switch things around in May to accommodate this, Na Scéalta on the New Moon and May’s Writing Down the Weeds for the Full Moon.) Today, however, I’m pulling last years Bluebell piece out from behind the paywall, a magical tryst in the woods, and alongside it a lover poem of one Bealtaine night. The Lyrids meteor shower it references is usually visible around now (although it is almost over this year) so keep an eye out on clear nights.
Happy Bealtaine, whenever and however you celebrate. May the fires of summer continue to burn away all injustice in the world, may the light illuminate all we need to see, with clear eyes, may we walk barefoot on the earth and know her again, may we move through our days in love and in freedom.
Grá
Siobhán.
Lyrids
Somewhere under Pleiades or just below Orion you kissed me. That old star-God his belt already half undone. The wild heat of us giving breath to the night. Safe in your arms when the sky fell down and broke on your back As I shattered into the blackness beneath you And we’d just stopped counting.
Into the Woods
Down the hill I went, and then
I forgot the ways of men,
For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool
Wakened ecstasy in me
- Sara Teasdale ‘August Moonrise’.
She can hear the bells. They’ve been ringing for days. High and sweet; the faraway chime of Christmas Morning, except it’s almost May. Not the Angelus, something older still, and wild.
The house is blue with it. A microscopic skim of pollen on every surface.
The bees hum. Full of their summer song they dance around the garden. They bring that dusky peal of bells with them. It’s all she can do not to sway her hips with them as she takes in the washing. That too powdered blue.
At night her dreams are full of it. A charm bracelet chime ringing through her sleep. Lulled deep. The pollen on her pillows a loitering haze weaving itself around her mind. A crown of deepest blue.
She dreams of the woods. Newly green and dappled. Late spring light pouring through the leaves. A hare’s breadth path winding through the undergrowth. Primrose, wood sorrel and those bells. A sea of blue under the trees, rippling in the breeze.
They chime merrily as she passes. Her long skirts setting their heads to ringing. Staining her petticoats blue all about the bottom. She treads carefully, bare feet on the cool forest floor. As light-footed as dreamers go.
Along the path she goes, as it meanders narrowly through the trees. Broad leafed beech and sweet unfurling hazel. Pale, new hawthorn and budding oak. She can smell the fresh, greenness of them, the warming earth, the perfumed, powdered bells.
Up the hill. On soft, sure feet. As if pulled by some silken thread. The light is honeyed, hazy. On she goes. And down. The way is steep and wooded. Slipping through the bed of bells, as the thin path curls down the hillside.
Onward over a tangle of wild woodbine, just greening. Through the mosses and seed-fall. Wild garlic on her tongue as it is crushed underfoot, an earthy tang. And always, always that blue. The sky fallen down amongst the trees.
At last, the way opens into a hollow between the trees. It too laid with bells. Their chime is near deafening. Melodic, nonetheless. An old rhyme called to mind. Older and older still.
The light in the glade is dazzling. Sunlight and shadow, dancing in the breeze. A thousand shades of green. And that blue, above and below. In the air, on her lips, tasting of things she cannot place. Passionate midnights and hazy dawns. Spice from some far-flung land on the southern breeze. Swallows on the wing. The bees.
She turns, arms outstretched. Head tipped back. Soaking it in. The light. The bells. The wonderous blue and green of the world. She feels dizzy, tipsy. Drunk on pollen and dreams. Her skirts swirl on the forest floor, scattering the flowers. Setting them ringing. Wedding bells, sweet and singing.
When she opens her eyes there is a man standing at the edge of the glade. A dreamt-up vision. Eyes as blue as the forest floor. She walks towards him. Slow and sure. The sway of the branches in her hips. Her lips on his before he can catch his breath. And then they’re falling, tumbling through that soft bedded sky. Bright and blue, like truth on the tongue.
*
You followed me boldly into the woods
He must have fallen asleep. He sat down, just for a moment. At noon. Seeking shade from that strengthening sun. His back against an ancient tree, a thick carpet of bluebells blooming all around. But now it is not noon. It is cold and blue. Twilight in the woods. A thick gloaming has settled through the forest whilst he slept.
He thinks for a moment that it is the blue from the bells spilt over into the night. The wood looks unfamiliar and strange. So close to sleep he finds he cannot get his bearings.
And then, he sees her. As if in a dream. Walking through the wood. She is far from the path. Headed surely up a hill, steep and narrow through the trees. Amongst the bells. Her hair tumbles down her back and her dress skirts the forest floor. Without a thought he follows. His feet feel as if they are being pulled forward of their own accord. And it’s all he can do to keep up.
He can hear the faint sound of bells. He thinks it must be her. Some piece of jewellery chiming as she moves. He smiles as he remembers the rhyme. She shall have music wherever she goes.
They’re following a labyrinthine path through the woods. She is, and he her. He can’t tell up from down. He’s all turned around. It’s that time of day where the light turns purple around the edges, the blue above deepening. One star clear and bright overhead through the leafing branches. Venus, alone in her sapphire sky.
She walks on as if sleepwalking, sure footed but unseeing. If she hears him moving through the undergrowth in her trail, she makes no sign of it. Perhaps she knows, perhaps she’s some siren wandered up from the river, or a fairy queen abroad. But her feet snap branches as she treads and somehow, he can feel the animal heat of her, the beating heart of her, from his safe distance.
He tries to stop. He tries to turn around. Find his way back through the trees. But he finds he cannot. If he veers course, he still ends up behind her in the maze of the woods. A tidal tow of that dizzying blue pulling at his feet.
She walks into a clearing. A circle of hawthorn that will soon be in bloom, the floor covered in those flowers, deep blue in the fading light. He watches as she twirls like a girl, giddy on life. He thinks he sees a circlet of the bells twined around her head. A dusky halo. Sky crowned and giggling.
And he can’t move. He knows he is trespassing. His cheeks burn to see her in all her intimate innocence, dancing in the woods. But he cannot look away. He feels intoxicated, drugged. It briefly occurs to him that it’s the bells, but he cannot hold the thought any more than he can make his feet move.
His heart lurches to his throat as she catches him staring and levels his gaze. His breath catches in his chest when she walks towards him. An otherworld queen, that twilight gloam in her hair. His knees give way when she kisses him, there amongst the bells.
*
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
- John Keats ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’
He wakes in the pale of the morning, alone on a crumpled bed of bluebells. His head aches, perhaps from the cold. He slowly realises he’s slept outside all night. The woods are blue in the pre-dawn light. He had the strangest dream. His head is foggy with it, his body aches. He looks around his forest bed. He cannot be sure but somehow he knows it wasn’t a dream.
He slowly climbs to his feet. He’s relieved to find he can walk in any direction he sees fit. Still, it takes him an hour to find his way out of the wood. By then the sun is up and the forest is as green as he feels. Fresh and delicate in the early morning light.
He remembers telling her that he would love her forever. He begged her to marry him. On his knees. She’d simply smiled. But he’d meant it. In that moment, in the blue twilight, his body twined with hers, he had meant every word.
*
She woke in her bed. Clean white sheets dusted the palest blue. She’d stretched and smiled remembering her dream. Wandering through the dappled woods in bare feet amongst the bluebells. And him. Her dream lover. His eyes bell blue.
It isn’t until half-way through the morning that she realises the ringing has stopped. The sweet, high chime of the bells quietened. It takes her longer still to realise that the soles of her feet are stained from damp earth and that mossy green.
[1] For much more detail on all May customs see pgs 86-127 of The Year in Ireland, Irish Calendar Customs, Danaher, Kevin. Mercier Press, 1972.
This is gorgeous, all of it! What it feels like here, in the Upper Midwest of the United States, is like more and more is unfolding on the land, in every tree, bush, garden, lake, wetland, all at a furious, breathtaking rate, and as always, I both relish the rush and fear missing anything at all. Bealtaine blessings to you, may your fire burn brightly. xo
Today is a washout here in Athlone, Co. Westmeath! Let's hope tomorrow the sky clears for Beltane!