Dear Anna,
Our traditional May Pole ceremony happens about one year in ten given the typical weather on the first of May. This May Day gave us the usual weather: a cold, driving rain with just enough sleet to make it truly miserable. Fortunately the extended forecast suggested this would happen, so we planned ahead and for a full day of indoor activities.
Mrs. Ware and her staff hosted a full May Day breakfast for everyone on the Estate, complete with waffles with whipped cream and strawberries I grew in the new Greenhouse, Turkish coffee, Irish Breakfast tea, rashers of bacon and plump sausages, smoked salmon, fresh baked Turos Lepeny (Hungarian yeast bread with cheese topping) out of the brick ovens for Béla (who provided the recipe), orange juice from the trees that Estate Gardener Alexandra planted a century and a half ago, and various baked goods with really dark chocolate in them.
After breakfast, Mackenzie had the Several Annies retire to the Robert Graves Memorial Reading Room for a look at May Day practices down the centuries which led into a lively conversation on modern Neo-Pagan May Day practices versus May Day celebrations in countries like Sweden, where April 30th is a de facto half day because it is the Walpurgis Night and the main day for celebrating spring. (The crackling fire in the Reading Room certainly encouraged folks to attend.) Several fiddlers showed up during the conversation with a half keg of cider and offered to lead us in some appropriate May Day music, including ‘Come Lassies and Lads,’ ‘Staines Morris,’ and ‘Bonny Green Garters.’
Jean-Paul, our House Steward, decided that the coming of Spring on such a rainy day would be a good day to clean the Pub, under cellars, and brewery area. He got a lot of volunteers, including Iain and his Several Annies, so they spent half a day cleaning everything, including scrubbing the Great Fireplace in the Pub! Mrs. Ware sent down sandwiches and cider (not the hard stuff) for a late lunch.
Late afternoon was, as near as I can tell, nap time for most folk here. Not I as Katrina and I were meeting with other members of Chasing Fireflies as we’ve got an expanded band for the contradance this evening as Béla somehow discovered that Tamsin, the relatively new Estate Hedge Witch, is a crack flautist! So we got together to play some tunes and go over with Kate, our Caller, what she’d like for tunes late this evening.
We ate a light supper, took a short nap, and were up in time to catch performing an acoustic concert in the Pub. (We could have retired to the Conservatory where the Neverending Session was playing through the tunes of Ale Möller.) Both of us drank only water given we’d be playing through the night.
About half hour before midnight, we retired to the Great Hall where the stage had been prepared for Kate and us. (It was sleeting hard enough that we could hear it hitting the leaded glass windows.) At just midnight, we started to play and, with the aid of several Neverending Session musos, played ’till we could see the dawn light over Oberon’s Wood. The very last tune was one composed by Aly Bain — ‘Da Day Dawn.’
It was a truly lovely day!
With deepest affection, Gus.
