The Story Behind "May Morning" - Pagan Song: Music for Your Magic

I’m often asked about my inspiration for the songs I write, and very often there is no easy answer. May Morning is different. But to fully explain what happened we have to go back a bit further, to the start of my own pagan journey and apprenticeship.

How It Started

I was asked, back in the early 90s, to run a storytelling workshop for a group of pagans. This came about after I’d been at a weekend with John and Caitlin Matthews looking at the Ladies of the Lake in Arthurian literature. Although I was a total novice to paganism and somewhat daunted by the ritual robes and jewelry of those there, it seemed to me that I had found my Family. A rare thing! And I was never one to turn down the opportunity to run a workshop.

At the start of the workshop, as we sat in a circle introducing ourselves, I noticed a woman with a dog. Someone nudged me. “She’s a real one,” they said. I had no idea what they meant. The dog came over and sat next to me, and we began the session. Later the dog’s owner, Morwenna (not her real name) came over to me. “Would you like to learn how to talk to trees properly?” she asked me. And that was how it all began.

It turned out that Morwenna’s dog Sal never normally went and sat with anyone but Morwenna, and that Morwenna had gone outside on one of our breaks and was “told” very directly that I was her next student. Morwenna had been brought up in North Wales, in a Family Tradition, taught by her grandmother, and as she had no children herself or female relatives who might carry the Tradition, she had started teaching those she thought would benefit. I’m being cautious about what I say here, as her Tradition has never been written down and I don’t intend to start now. But the combination of factors – Sal, the direct message, and the fact that when I sang she said she could hear Them singing with me – were enough.

Six Generations of Tradition (at least)

Morwenna’s tradition is very clear – labels can be misleading. If I attempt to define “Them” we’re into dodgy territory. I’ll just say that there are Locals, specific to a place, and there are others (she generally calls them The Big Boys, whatever their gender) who are related to the calendar and also to life in general. Sometimes They make Themselves obvious.

This Tradition itself dates back six generations at least – she never makes claims that she can’t be sure about, and her family knowledge goes back six generations. I suspect it’s much older. It is knowledge for a largely agricultural society, involving planting, healing, predicting, and occasionally punishing, working with crops, gardens, trees, hedges, and pathways.

Some of her stories or sayings connect directly to traditional songs I know. Occasionally we did some work together which had a noticeable effect on my life – I think I even found my husband because of it.

There were a small group of us as her students. Mostly I would go alone and spend a weekend with her. The apprenticeship involved a lot of walking, often late at night, looking at stars and trees and tripping over Sal. But on the big feast days we would often get together as a bigger group and attempt to honour what the traditional customs were. Which brings me (at last!) to my song May Morning.

Who Was Singing?

The first time it was just the two of us. I was woken before dawn and told to dress quickly. We then went together to find a pathway which took us to the brow of a hill. Along the way we picked white blossoms and green branches, to weave into a garland. When we reached the brow of the hill, the sun was rising.

We sat down (Morwenna always brought some sheets of bubble wrap for this purpose) and watched, and listened. And I became quite annoyed to hear music coming from somewhere, and said as much to Morwenna. She couldn’t hear any music at all. The song lodged in my brain and wouldn’t shift all day, so eventually I had to write it down.

We walked down from the hill and placed our garlands in a hawthorn bush, which is the tradition, and took some sprigs of hawthorn to take back to the house. It’s the only day of the year you should bring hawthorn inside.

May Morning

That was how May Morning came to be written, and it has remained one of my most requested songs (at the right time of year, of course). I have heard that some Morris dancers have danced to it, and I know it traveled to the US because my dear friend Grace Griffith recorded it on her album Passing Through.

May Day dancers on the streets of Padstow in Cornwall; Photo by Anne Lister

Dancing In the May

I have to tell you, though, that there were other May Day moments. My favourite was a gathering of the whole group of us one year, in the Somerset hills.

Morwenna told us that we had to split into groups. The men would find a suitable Maypole, while the women would create garlands. The men set off. It was raining and it was just before midnight.

Our job was to collect flowers and leaves and branches and make the garlands. It was a damp business. (I don’t think I’ve mentioned that in this Tradition there’s no such thing as ritual clothing – the clothing needed when working with Morwenna needs to be waterproof and warm, with a pair of good boots or Wellingtons.) Then Morwenna told us that the women had to kidnap the men’s pole, with suitable ribaldry about the size and shape of it, and the men had to recapture it. She hadn’t told the men, though, and they simply allowed us to take it, so it took quite a lot of taunting to goad them into action.

Finally the pole was set up in a suitable location, in a small clearing in the forest, and we made a fire and set a kettle up to boil – because of course you need a cup of tea for most occasions in the UK. We added the garlands and the ribbons, and then the instructions were to dance around it until the sun rose. The only problem was that it hadn’t stopped raining and, if anything, it was now raining harder than ever.

A mud slick developed at one point of the maypole. This meant that as we danced around there were moments of a stand-off as we approached the growing quagmire. Sal the dog thought we had all gone mad and sat to one side, whimpering to show her disapproval.

Finally, finally, the sun rose. As it did so, the kettle slowly toppled over on the fire and quenched the flames with the boiling water. We walked back to the house, dripping wet. There we took turns in a hot shower, had a copious breakfast and the much-needed tea. Then we all went to sleep for a few hours.

Hidden Meaning in May Morning

Did you hear the sun on a bright May morning?
Did you hear the sun when he played at dawn?
Did you hear the sun on a bright May morning,
Call down a blessing on the growing corn?

Excerpt of lyrics from “May Morning” by Anne Lister, from the album “A Flame in Avalon” (c) 1995

A few notes on May Morning … the sun is playing “pipes”, which will be one of the many versions of bagpipes found all over Europe. And the Lady is the hawthorn. May Day is the ceremonial marriage of the young king and the flower maiden, although that isn’t referenced in this song. In Morwenna’s Tradition there’s no reference to gods or goddesses, but the Lord and the Lady. Oh, and of course, you can call it Beltane if you like.

I was in Ireland at the beginning of May once, on the Beara peninsula, and I was asked to sing at a retirement home for the residents. I told the story behind this song, about gathering the white blossoms and the green leaves, and a couple of the more elderly women grinned widely enough to bring the sunshine out. Sadly, there was no opportunity to ask them in more detail what they remembered of the tradition, but clearly they knew about it. Not just a Welsh Family tradition, then.

May Morning is on my album A Flame in Avalon. Musicians on May Morning are Steafan Hannigan (percussion, whistles), Julia Lane (harp) and Mary McLaughlin (harmonies).

My music is available at www.annelister.com and at Music | Anne Lister.