Before the Sun Is Properly Up

On the first morning of May, the old custom was to be outdoors before sunrise — not for any grand ceremony, but to wash your face in the dew. The belief ran that May Day dew kept a complexion clear for the year, and in parts of Devon and Cornwall it was said to bring luck to anyone bold enough to walk the grass barefoot. Whether or not you set much store by that, there is a hard practical case for the walk. May is the loudest month in the hedgerow, and the hour before the traffic starts is the only one in which you will hear it properly: blackcaps, chiffchaffs, song thrushes, whitethroats back from the Sahel, and if you are fortunate, a cuckoo somewhere in the coppice.

Take a flask. Wear boots you do not mind getting soaked to the ankle. Walk the same route you would walk in November, so that you notice what has changed — the ash coming into leaf, the cow parsley already up to your waist on the verge.

What the Ribbons Are Actually Doing

A maypole dance is not a performance so much as a piece of engineering with music attached. Each dancer holds a ribbon, and by walking a set pattern — over and under, turn and return — the ribbons plait themselves neatly down the pole and then, if everyone keeps their head, unplait again. Get the pattern wrong and you get a tangle. Get it right and the dance ends with the pole bare and the village cheering.

The ribbons carry the older meanings:

• Red and white for the warming of the year and the return of growth.
• Green for the crops and the hedge, the colour of the season itself.
• Blue and yellow for the sky and the sun, added in most village sets simply because they look well together.

The point was never the ribbons. It was the fact that thirty people had to move in step, and that a mistake by any one of them showed up in the plait. That is a decent lesson for any committee.

The May Hedge and What Is In It

May is hawthorn's month. The may blossom comes out in the first fortnight — creamy, faintly almond-scented, and traditionally unlucky to bring indoors, a superstition that conveniently kept people from stripping the hedges. Bluebells are at their peak in the older woods, and it is worth saying plainly that they should be looked at rather than picked: native bluebells are protected in much of the country and do not transplant well.

Things you can reasonably gather:

• Jack-by-the-hedge (garlic mustard), still tender in early May, chopped into a salad or a sauce for lamb.
• Wild garlic, best before the flowers open and the leaves toughen.
• Nettle tops, the first four leaves only, for soup — wear gloves and pick from clean ground well away from the road.
• Elderflowers, at the very end of the month in the south, later in the north, for cordial.

Only ever take from a plant you can identify with certainty, and never from a site where you have not got permission.

Putting a Pole Up in Your Own Village

If you fancy reviving the thing locally, the practicalities matter more than the poetry. Start by talking to the parish council and the landowner, because a pole needs a hole, a footing and someone to check it each spring before it is raised. A permanent socket is far easier than digging afresh every year.

Then sort the following:

• A pole of around four to five metres for a dozen dancers, planed smooth and stored dry.
• Ribbons of roughly four metres, one per dancer, attached to a swivel at the top.
• A caller who knows the pattern and can shout it over the music.
• Insurance and a risk assessment, dull but non-negotiable if you are on public ground.
• Two rehearsals, minimum, before the day.

Ask the local school, the Brownies and the morris side. Children learn the weave faster than adults do, and they remember it for fifty years.

Weather Lore and the Saying of the Month

Country people watched May closely because it set the tone for the growing season. "Oak before ash, we're in for a splash; ash before oak, we're in for a soak" is the best known of the tree sayings, though it is a good deal more reliable as a bit of fun than as a forecast. A cold, wet May was traditionally welcomed — "a wet May makes a big load of hay" — while a warm, dry one was feared for the fruit set.

What is true is that the last frosts in most of Britain fall somewhere in the first three weeks of May, so hold off planting out tender things until the end of the month unless you are in a favoured coastal spot.

Why It Is Worth Keeping

The maypole has survived because it asks very little and gives a great deal back. It needs no belief, no membership and no special equipment beyond a pole and some ribbon. It gets neighbours standing in the same field at the same hour, which is harder to arrange than it sounds. It marks a genuine change in the year — the moment the countryside stops hedging its bets and commits to summer.

So walk out on the first morning, if you can. Wash your face in the dew, badly and sceptically. Then find your nearest pole, stand in the ring, take a ribbon, and learn the weave. The dance is old, but the reason for it is not: people like to mark the turning of the year together, and May is as good a place to start as any.