Probably best known to Americans, that song’s actual title is “The Fountain in the Park” and was based on an old Irish folk song. Popular in the early twentieth century as a number sung by barbershop quartets, the wording has undergone various additions and changes over the years (probably to agree with the situation or era) but usually begins with the familiar first few lines’ “While strolling in the park one day, in the merry merry month of May. I was taken by surprise by a pair of roguish eyes. In a moment, my poor heart was stole away.”
The name of the month itself is much older, beginning as Maia, the Greek goddess of renewal and growth, Maia was later adopted by the Romans as their goddess of plant growth and spring. Celebrated in various ways over the centuries, it became a festival of spring throughout Europe, marked by flowers and dances, especially by young people. The maypole dance, performed by girls holding ribbons attached to a tall pole. They usually repeated an intricate dance around the pole which ended up encasing the pole in a colorful pattern of woven ribbons. Today, we seldom see such traditions performed except in movies and television productions depicting festivals in European girls’ boarding schools or local celebrations in small villages.
Equally lost, is the tradition of my own childhood which we referred to as” May-basket Day.” At one time before my time, the children in a community celebrated the arrival of spring and its abundant wild flowers by delivering bouquets of the fragrant blooms to the elderly women of the community. In most cases, this was meant to be an anonymous gift, and the children took great care to knock on the door and quickly hide nearby, watching to make sure that the women discovered the flowers. My mother had lived in a number of small towns in the Midwest during her childhood and had acquired what I assume was a mixed version of May-basket customs which she passed on to me and my sisters. How much was from her own imagination, I can only guess, but it was the same every year.
She would take us to the woods a day or two before May first to pick wild flowers – mostly Sweet Williams and violets, which were always plentiful. The flowers were kept fresh in jars of water throughout the house where we could enjoy their cheerful colors and scents. The next day, we constructed a number of small baskets using pages from outdated wallpaper sample books that Mother had obtained from the paint department at the hardware store.
After supper on May Day, she made a big bowl of popcorn and brought out bags of candy corn, colored mints, chocolate covered raisins and Chicklets chewing gum. We filled the baskets with popcorn, a few bits of the candy, and gum and a small nosegay of wild flowers. Loading them into shallow cardboard boxes or baking pans, we set out to deliver our gifts, not to the town’s elderly women, but to our friends and neighbors that we especially liked. It was on one of those Mayday excursions that I left my first anonymous token of love for a boy I fancied. And I made sure that whoever answered my knock at the door caught a good glimpse of me in my deliberately inadequate hiding place. Nothing ever came of it, though. Twelve-year-old boys aren’t as interested in romance as are twelve-year-old girls. There were always leftover flowers and extra candy that we never allowed to go to waste. Since that tradition has all but disappeared, you can turn your attention to less fanciful things this month. There is the Kentucky Derby to celebrate, and the Indianapolis 500. The opening of the Empire State building occurred in 1931 and the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937. There are Mother’s Day, Memorial Day and Armed Forces Day. Don’t forget that Memorial Day, on the last Monday in May, is intended to honor the memory of soldiers killed in wartime and that you can honor other service men and women on Armed Forces Day which has its own permanent day as the third Saturday in May. And you still have the rest of May to celebrate National Duckling Month! Go for it!