Happy Beltane!

Beltane Dance

Rowan and hawthorn blossom in twain
The oak and the ivy in trance
The May tree is decked out with ribbons
Come wreath you hair for the dance!

Tie up spring flowers in bunches
Lilacs of purple and white
To be gifted with laughter and blessings
And found with the mornings first light

Deck the doorway with Mountain Ash
Stack kindling from nine sacred trees
Bring sweetcakes, new cream and honey
The sweet dripping gift of the bees

The Greenman calls from the woodlands
The May Queen answers his song
With a cup over flowing with Maywine
Clear and renewing and strong

For the fires will blaze on the hillside
The darkness bring riches and chance
The year turns fertile and giving
Come join in the Beltane dance!

©Edwina Peterson Cross


Beltane is a joyful, happy time, when the veil is thin and the earth returns to it's fertile cycle (all that Green!)

My happiest Beltane memories are of my little girls making May Baskets for their friends. It started when they were in Elementary School and the project just kept getting bigger and bigger. By the time they were in High School, they were delivering 60 bundles of flowers on Beltane Eve, we could no longer even consider ‘baskets.’ The girls would go out and cut arms fulls of lilacs - because lilacs usually blossom at the correct time, are very prolific and FREE! The gathering started about dusk on Beltane Eve, lilacs and the multicolored flowers from the hillsides, then all during the night they sat on the floor of the living room in a sea of rich purple perfume, laughing and talking and tying the bunches together with a big roll of hemp string. Each bundle had lilacs and a few other flowers. I bought tulips so each bundle could have one big, very bright flower. When a bundle was finished, it was tied with several different colors of flowing satin ribbon. All night long, my living room would be filled with the beautiful, crystal sound of little girls laughing. It would smell like someone had opened the gates of heaven.

The next thing was to ‘mark their route’ - figuring how they were going to get to 60 different houses and deliver these bundles of joy before dawn without back-tracking all over town. Once the route had been identified and mapped, they loaded the flowers in huge tubs of water and put these, sloshing, into the little VW rabbit. Then they headed out into the night, tape player blazing out Vivaldi. They usually finished, not by dawn, but just in the nick of time. Sometimes it was well over the nick of time, and the last few on the list would be already up and getting ready for school. The need for stealth grew greater with the light! For the recipient must not catch the giver. The recipient should wake up and finds the flowers - just as if they had been left by the faeries!

It became the thing to wear your flowers to school the next day, so during the day of Beltane all of their friends were decked with flowers and ribbons. It is amazing how many people have told the girls, in the years since, that they looked forward to May 1st all year and that those beribboned bundles were a major memory of their High School years. For an astonishing number of them, especially the boys, it was the only time in their lives that they ever received flowers.

Below is another Beltane poem that I wrote. This one has a very different feeling. I wrote it on the first May Day when all my daughters were all away at college; when suddenly the night seemed very cold without the smell of lilacs and the sound of laughter.

Last night, while I painted my fey May Poll, I sprayed the air with an expensive lilac room spray and I lit two lilac candles. I don’t feel so terribly sad anymore, just nostalgic and happy for the beautiful memories of laughter and lilacs.


Beltane Cold

Beltane morning
Cold and dark before dawn
Where have you turned your three faces
Anna-após
Anna-futuro
Anna-interno
Where are the rainbow ribbons, the flowers?
That giving warmth, that opened May
Blooming sweet, scattered petals on the floor?
Cold are the fires on the hill
Broken the ancient circles
The day comes black and vacant
Jack-in-the-Green as flown
With the bright spirits who have left my house empty
The dark, chill air smells of earth and stars
But there is not even a breath
Of lilac

©Edwina Peterson Cross