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The Tradition of the Maypole

and the May Day Dance

by D G Mattichak jr

One of the great traditions of Beltane is the Maypole. It is the

focus of May Day celebrations across Europe and especially

Britain where traditionally the boys and girls of a village would

dance around it holding the ends of long green and red ribbons,

braiding them together in an intricate and beautiful pattern until

they all met at its base. For hundreds of years the Maypole has

been a symbol of resistance to oppressive rulers as successive

monarchs have alternatively prohibited it and reinstated its place

in May Day celebrations but it has a much longer history and its

origins are in the unknown past.

The month of May is named for the Greek goddess Maia, the

Roman Bona Dea, the Good Goddess whose fertility festivals

were held in May and was a festival for women only. Romanwomen brought the statue of Bona Dea, also called Fauna, to an

all night feast in her honor where there was music, wine and

games. But even though the name of the Maypole comes from the

Greek, the tradition of the pole itself is thought to have originated

among the ancient Germanic peoples.

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The Maypole is a tall wooden pole erected on May Day as the

focal point of the celebrations and even though the tradition of

the Maypole has survived the Christianization of Europe itsoriginal meaning is lost to us now. There is much speculation as

to what it represents including the axis of the world (axis mundi),

a remnant of Germanic tree worship, the Yggdrasil tree and most

recently it has been seen to be a phallic symbol. The latest

thinking is that they are merely a part of the general rejoicing at

the return of summers bounty much as the May Day garlands

are.

Although the tradition of the Maypole has continued in Europe,

especially in the villages of Bavaria, often it has been moved to

the Summer Solstice celebrations in June. Another common

practice is for young German men to erect a Maibaum in the yard

of their beloved, often decorating it with garlands of red flowers

and writing their sweethearts name in it. In Scandanavia the

practice has continued in an altered form called the midsummer

pole or midsommarstng.

But in the parts of Britain that are traditionally English the

practice of erecting Maypoles has survived to become an

essential part of English folk life. Villages compete for the honor

of having the tallest Maypole and there are often thefts of theneighboring villages pole and there are recorded instances where

this led to violence. Over the centuries several monarchs and

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parliaments have prohibited the erection of Maypoles only to face

defiance and eventual defeat and the tradition of erecting

maypoles has always been reinstated.

Maypoles were often permanent fixtures in English villages and

they prided themselves on the length of their poles. The tallest

Maypole was at the Strand, near the current St Mary-le-Strand

church which stood 130 feet tall until it was blown over in 1672.

Even in the modern day there are many English villages that have

a permanent Maypole as a fixture of their village.

The tradition of attaching ribbons to the Maypole and of the

famous dance around it seem to originate in the 19th

century

when characters like John Ruskin were revitalizing the rural

customs of Britain to encourage a sense of tradition and national

unity. The simplest dance is done by pairs of boys and girls (or

men and women) who stand alternately around the base of the

pole, each holding the end of a green or red ribbon. They weave

in and around each other, boys going one way and the girls going

the other until the ribbons are woven together around the pole

and the youthful merry-makers meet at the base. There are more

complex dances, related to Morris dancing, for set numbers of

practiced dancers called May Queen troupes, but gradually they

have mostly been forgotten.