May Day, the predecessor to today’s May bank holiday, used to be one of the most welcome days in our calendar, marking the beginning of the old pagan festival of Bealtaine.

This also marked the end of the dark half of the year, and the start of summer. May was Bel’s month and the word Bealtaine derived from ‘the fire of Belenos’, Celtic God of the Sun. Fires would be kindled, and cattle driven through them to ward off disease.

When Ireland became Christian, the spirit of May persisted. ‘It was a joyous occasion,’ says Cork local studies librarian Kieran Wyse. In Skibbereen, the dawn of May Day was celebrated ‘in a very befitting manner’, recorded The Southern Star, May 4th 1907.

‘At 5 o’clock a.m. the Skibbereen Brass Band played a choice selection of Irish music through the town.’ An abundance of flowers – marigolds, buttercups and primroses – decorated anything from dressing tables to cows’ tails. Ribbons and egg shells were tied to ‘May Bushes’, leaves strewn on doorsteps and windowsills; Cape Clear fishermen even tossed them into their boats for good fortune. The salmon-fishing season started on the River Ilen, tenancy agreements were signed and servants hired at fairs.

‘Bringing in the May’ began at dawn, when flowers and small branches were gathered in the woods. Houses were decorated with garlands, and summer would be ‘put on the door’, in the form of a sprig of sycamore – or left protruding from the letter box. It would bring good luck and plenty of milk that summer.

‘Hanging a green leafy item on the front door was usually done in the morning,’ says John Leonard who now lives in Cork city. Brendan McCarthy from Skibbereen also recalls attaching a green branch to the hall door during the 1950s and 1960s, and placing daffodils and furze throughout the house.
Children were involved in the festivities, with newborns exhibited in ‘May Baby’ processions. To be born on May Day was considered very fortunate, and ensured that the infant would grow strong before the winter.

Children would help make the May Altar, which consisted of a statue or picture of Mary, decorated with fresh primroses and cowslips. At school, they’d compete with other classes to make the finest altar, adorned with lights.

Young women bathing their faces from the grass, Southampton Common, Hampshire, May 1st 1924.

On the day itself, children were present at parades, and helped crown Our Lady with flowers. Some might ask passers-by for ‘something for the May Basket,’ a practice dubbed ‘pernicious’ and ‘an excuse for begging’ by the Skibbereen Eagle in 1916.
That same year, the paper described drivers adorning their horses with ‘sprays of fresh green leaves… as is usual on the First of May’. A sapling might be taken from the woods and brought into the village to form a Maypole, which children and single men and women would dance around, grasping ribbons until they became entwined with their ‘true love’.

Bathing one’s face in morning dew was thought to maintain youth and prevent wrinkles. Women in Courtmacsherry continue the practice to this day, letting their faces dry in the wind. ‘The plainest girl will be beautiful if she rises early on May Day and bathes her face in morning dew at sunrise’, notes historian Bridget Haggerty. ‘If she was daring enough to undress and roll naked, she was given great beauty.’
Well water, too, was believed to have special properties, maybe to relieve eye problems. In Cape Clear the first person to drink water from the top of the well on May Day would be lucky. The story goes that one local woman rose very early but sadly fell asleep again, and a neighbour beat her to it.

A 1930s entry from the Schools’ Folklore Collection explains: ‘In the road leading from Lough Ine bridge to Creagh Post Office there are old wells called ‘The Holy Wells’. People having any disease visit them on May Eve, and pick up seven small stones out of the lower well, they go around them and say one Our Father, one Hail Mary and Glory be to the Father, and cast in one stone each time for seven rounds.

‘Little Well of the Eyes’, Lough Hyne.
(Photo: holywellscorkandkerry.com)

‘They then go on their knees and say the Rosary, and leave some relic on the tree above the well, and bring some water home with them, and that water will never get bad. They needed to go three years in succession to be cured.’
Belief in the benefit of well water compelled locals from Ballyvourney to make a pilgrimage over the mountain to the shrine at Cathair Crobh Dearg, Kerry – almost 20km each way – to do the ‘round’, pray and collect holy water from the Blessed Well for their farm animals.

Droplets of holy water might also be sprinkled into a churn on May Day to protect butter – unless you lived in Cullomane, where you’d smear butter on the local ‘butter stone’, before doing the rounds and praying for a plentiful harvest.

Then back home, to eat stinging nettles so as to clean the blood. According to an old saying: ‘A pot of nettles in May is health for a year and a day.’ Some people poured nettle sauce over their grilled salmon and Bealtaine oatcake.

Nettles also formed an integral part of the May eve celebration of ‘Nettlesome Night’. Teenage boys and girls went around with a bunch of nettles concealed on their persons and when they came across one of their friends, gave them a good thrashing. When he was a pupil at Lisheen School, John Leonard recalls some of his classmates whacking one another with them!

It was all part of a less pleasant, almost sinister aspect to May Day, when the sight of strangers once spelled danger, and people hid their animals and milk from witches. Perhaps some traditions are best left behind.