Tomorrow week [I write on Fri 23 April] is Mayday, traditionally one of the chief dates in the Irish calendar of olden customs.  It was a day when ordinary mortals could empower themselves with forces of the supernatural to cast spells [and the like] on their neighbours, to steal their butter, or to collect into their own coffers the luck destined for an entire parish.

Ýe know ye daren’t put the May Bush up on May Day itself’, whispered the old man.

‘’Why not, if I liked?’ I asked.

For my trouble I received his sudden, withering stare.

‘Sure man,you’d have the devil’s own luck if ye done that. Man, sure they used to say it wasn’t right to pluck a May flower afore May Day.  Oh aye – ‘coorse, it was alright t’ pluck them to put on the May Bush; that was no harm at all, at all – not a bit.’’

‘Well’, I asked, for something to say, ‘what’s the idea of putting egg-shells on the bush and crushed May flowers on the roof over the door?’

He looked long at me in drawn-out disdain.

Éven Billy The Bowl knows that!’  he said eventually.  ‘The egg-shells on the bush bring good luck to the laying hins for the year, and the flowers on the roof keep harm away – devilment and hellery, if there’s any about.  It would help to put the come-ether on anyone out t’steal yer butther.

In the oul’ times avick, they could take house an’ all from the likes o’ you an’ ye’d never know it till it was over!  Didn’t ye ever hear of how to take the butther away?

Ah, but sure ye didn’t.  Sure man, all ye had to do t’ take the luck o’ the place was to draw the first can o’ water on May morning afore the owner of the field that the well was in.  Azy enough. 

But it wasn’t that azy!  I’ll houl’ ye it wasn’t.  Everyone wouldn’t be on their lugs, me bucko.  If someone tried t’ take the luck off them drawin’ from their well, there was a remedy to put the come-ether on it!’

‘Stop them getting at the well?’ I ventured.

‘Not at all.  Ye let them get the canful of water.  Then ye whipped it off them and fired it round them.  THAT put the come-ether of the thing upon them. 

Then the butther.  For that, ye dragged a sheet on yer neighbour’s land till it soaked with dew – afore sunrise, mind you!  Ye brought it home – if ye got lave – an’ poured yer churnin’ milk down on the sheet, after ye’d put it in the churn.  Ye rinsed it out – an’ churned away!  Ye’d have all yer neighbour’s butther then.’’

He saw me looking askance at him.

Ýe needn’t gawk at me like that – I saw it happen with me own eyes.  The neighbour would only know of it when after churnin’ for hours, damed the hate but froth would come instead o’ butther.

Then ye were till go to a man who knew how to upset the like of that – get the butther back.  Ye warmed a horseshoe and a silver coin, an’put it under the churn.  No one was to talk or lend anything.  Them that took the butther would come to the house – the charm coaxed them! – an’ ye got yer butther back.  I could tell ye more, ach but it’s coul’ for an aul’ fella to be sitting on ditches.’

I took a last look at the ‘pisthogues’ adorning the hawthorn bush before I left.     These, strips of rags tied to branches and upturned egg shells balanced on the ends, are little acknowledgements of the existence of the supernatural, a sort of appeasement to the gods that ruled the destinies of earlier generations of inhabitants.  Maybe those old rites of Mayday were the remnants of the art of the ancient peoples, rent and tattered by the ravages of centuries.

And I remember myself – maybe it still goes on, for all I know – that the nuns of my first primary school [Mercy nuns of St Joseph’s, as well as their colleagues of the senior school, Our Ladies] celebrated with great pomp and pageant [the May Day Procession up the Nuns Hill] this special time of the year.  It is scarcely surprising, nor unprecedented, that an ancient pagan custom should be re-tailored to the Christian ends of these pillars of the Church - in this case, a tribute to the Virgin Mary.

I can hear those songs still ring out over the years and over that vast expanse, in my mind’s eye.

‘Bring flowers of the rarest,
Bring blossoms the fairest,
From garden, and woodland
And hillside and glen …’

I have to admit too, that more that fifty years later, my eyes water and my heart beats a little faster to the memory.  Yet I scarcely remember anything I learned at that school I attended from the age of five to the age of eight.  Isn’t that strange?

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