IN olden times, May Day was the festival of chimney sweepers everywhere. On May 1st they would bedeck themselves in brightly coloured clothes, blacken their faces with their stuff in trade, trim their hats and coats with golden ribbons, and dance and frolic in the city streets.
But chimney sweeps were not the only ones to celebrate. Back in Roman times, the story goes that on May Day the young men would uproot whole trees and set them up in front of the houses of their paramours no doubt as a none too subtle Freudian token of their love. In due course, as a way of avoiding the destruction and obstruction caused by this annual arboreal migration, the authorities introduced the communal notion of the Maypole, around which the local populace would dance.
The festivities usher in a month that has been called "the pious fraud of the almanac", and in many cultures its notorious volatility has been enshrined in popular lore. The advice, "Ne'er cast a clout til May is out", for example, is variously interpreted. Some take it literally, "til May is out" being regarded as meaning until the end of the month, but an alternative view is that "May" refers to the May blossom, the hawthorn, and that the injunction is to retain winter clothing until its flowers appear.
The May blossom is often associated with ill luck, in the belief that to sleep in a room in which its flowers are displayed will bring on great misfortune. Its bad reputation, in this context, allegedly comes from the recollection that the smell of the hawthorn closely resembles that associated with the Great Plague in London in 1665.
Here in Ireland we tend to relate the idiosyncrasies of this time of year to the annual reappearance of the cuckoo. Irish tradition has it that the last few days of April or the early days of May often bring a short snap of unseasonably cold weather, and since this is the period during which the cuckoo is heard for the first time, our forefathers called such a cold snap Scairbhin na gCuac.
And, indeed, the cuckoo's song is a timely reminder to look around to see if nature locally is up to schedule. Muair a sheinneas an chuach or chrann gan duilleog, diol do bho is cheannaigh aran, another saying goes. The theory is that if the trees have not developed leaves before the cuckoo comes, the growing season is retarded and you may not have sufficient grass to feed your cow: you should sell the beast, and stock up with bread and other foods instead.