vii: Foraging through Folklore
Fetching the summer home Ella Leith Robin Hood and Little John, they both are gone to fair, O! And we will to the merry greenwood to see what they do there, O! And for to chase-O! To chase the buck and doe. With HaI-an-tow! Rumbelow! For we up as soon as any, O! And for to fetch the summer home, the summer and the May O! For summer is acome, O! And winter is agone, O! (in Courtney, 1886)
May Day marks the beginning of summer. It is the month of merriment; of flower-wreathed May Poles, of garlanded May Queens, of village fairs, of young people a-maying in the merry greenwood. They would usually be gathering ‘May’. The plant most commonly known by this name is Crataegus monogyna (Hawthorn, Whitethorn, or Quickthorn), but there are countless other Mays: Lilac (Syringa spp.), Guelder-rose (Viburnum opulus), Cowslip (Primula veris), Furze (Ulex spp.), Narrow-leaved Elm (Ulmus minor), and Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus), to name a few. ‘Literary evidence suggests that May originally meant simply ‘greenery’’, says Brown (1959:416), and it seems to me that those off a-maying would be unlikely to be all that fussy about which green boughs and flowers they brought back. With the rising sap, they may have had other things on their
minds. A-maying in the greenwood probably meant more than merely collecting foliage; ‘chasing the buck and doe’ may be a bit of a euphemism for what the unchaperoned young people got up to (see Pallardy, 2011). Social mores could be suspended in times of festivity; the important thing was that they didn’t return empty handed, but laden with the proof of summer growth— literally, fetching the summer home. The above song was sung in Helston, Cornwall, not on May Day itself but on the 8th— Flora Day, also known as Flurry-Jay and Faddy. This was a day ‘given up to pleasure’ (Courtney, 1886:230-231). After a week of spring cleaning and decorating houses with flowers, the young people— the Hal-an-tow —would dance off into the woods, raucously accompanied by drums, singing, and perhaps 33
