In my childhood, my family used to take holidays at Padstow, in Cornwall. This is the may song from that town, (one of many versions).. where today the streets will be thronged, with local folk and visitors.
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I am the grit in the gears, the missing bolt, I am the poker of sticks into spokes. I like to know how things work, but sometimes when I take them apart and rebuild them, I have a few pieces left over. I am a man, so I tend to leave reading the instructions until after it goes wrong. And like all men I have a comprehensive mental map of the world and never need to ask directions. I never get lost, only sometimes I'm late, or end up in the wrong place entirely. It's what we do.
Saturday, 1 May 2010
Padstow May Song
'Tis May day, and all around Britain folk were a-dancing around the maypole or otherwise doing strange pagan things to greet the sun, to greet the summer, to greet the growing season, rebirth...
In my childhood, my family used to take holidays at Padstow, in Cornwall. This is the may song from that town, (one of many versions).. where today the streets will be thronged, with local folk and visitors.
In my childhood, my family used to take holidays at Padstow, in Cornwall. This is the may song from that town, (one of many versions).. where today the streets will be thronged, with local folk and visitors.
:-)
ReplyDeleteHow is the glaze testing going?
ReplyDeleteJust mixing some of my regulars plus nine tests!! I know I say always have a couple in each firing, but I'm looking for a decent clear cone 9 glaze.
That means no crazing, ha ha!!
didn't May Day mean go out into the woods with a pretty nekkid woman and see what happened???? I heard that here in America church people weren't that crazy about importing THAT tradition...
ReplyDeleteGZ, real life and procrastination...
ReplyDeleteI just keep coming home absolutely knackered after work, we always seem to be expecting a breathing space after the current project is done, but there's always another three deadlines waiting.
I'm trying to get onto it, I really am!
I need a decent, simple liner glaze too, so I'm not wasting the fancy stuff in the insides of bottle shapes.
Gary:You're absolutely right. It was the day when fecundity was celebrated. In Scandinavia it was more midsummer's day, either way, I have a theory that this day when boys and girls went together into the meadows and the woods, was a way in which genetic diversity occurred, which might be very important to small communities, in the days when few ever travelled beyond the horizon.
ReplyDeleteSo it's a lusty festival. With the Hobby Hoss, in Padstow, theres a crude fertility theme.. A girl who gets beneath the "skirt" of the hoss, it is said, will be pregnant within the year. In more prudish times it was said "will be married within the year", but we know what it's all about really.
Maypoles? Ha!crude symbolism. Each village vied to have a bigger one than the next.
Sportsmen, arouse! The morning is clear.
The larks are singing all in the air.
Thy soaring and sweet refrain
Rings out to fill the air before us.
Bring me the fine ale, and the cider and the wine.
Link arms and join our lusty chorus.
Oh Gamekeeper Roberts, please spare me my life,
Though I bagged a brace of fine hare in your forest.
For I'm pledged to a girl who will soon be my wife.
Link arms and join our lusty chorus.
And I knew when I first saw her
I would marry her, oh.
For I sowed the seeds of love
Upon a May morning.
And I knew when I first saw her
I would marry her, oh.
For I sowed the seeds of love
Upon a May morning.
Go tell your sweet lover,
The hounds are out.
Go tell your sweet lover,
The hounds are out.
Oh Thomas and Bartleby, Gareth and John,
Ryan and Warren, and Hector and Horace,
Come follow, come follow, the musical horns.
Link arms and join our lusty chorus.
"The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit;
ReplyDeletefor like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart that is in
any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers courage,
that lusty month of May."
- Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur
I've got eight clear glaze tests going in the next firing.
ReplyDeleteI'm using potclays 1142 at present (smooth white stoneware)
Will keep you posted