Well, here we are, approaching the midpoint of 2023. “Time flies when you’re having fun,” as they say.
Somehow I seem to have muddled through this most recent April, “the cruellest month.” I don’t care what Eliot says, my lilacs don’t bloom until May; in fact this is the first time they’ve bloomed, ever, but they bloomed in May. Glorious scent, still holding up pretty well:
May 2023–When lilacs first in the dooryard bloom’d
So I’m disposed to like May, especially since–with any luck–we can usually kiss the frost-kissed nights goodbye at some point, and get some serious gardening underway.
This year, May got off to a lusty old start with @arahant’s post highlighting the song from Camelot:
Tra la, it’s May, the lusty month of May
That lovely month when everyone goes blissfully astray
Tra la, it’s here, that shocking time of year
When tons of wicked little thoughts merrily appear
It’s May, it’s May, that gorgeous holiday
When every maiden prays that her lad will be a cad
It’s mad, it’s gay, a libelous display
Those dreary vows that everyone takes
Everyone breaks
Everyone makes divine mistakes
The lusty month of May
I can’t remember when I first saw the movie, but it was a long time after it came out. And by then, the adjective that defined the month of May to me was “merry.” And I thought the phrase was first used in a play, The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1599), by Thomas Dekker. And, indeed, that’s usually cited as its source.
O the month of May, the merry month of May,
So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green!
O, and then did I unto my true love say:
“Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my summer’s queen!
It wasn’t until I was a graduate student at Duquesne University in the late 1970s, and working on the logistics and print materials for a large international Spenser (the poet, not the P.I.) conference, that I really paid attention to one of Spenser’s shorter works, The Shepheardes Calendar.
It’s a collection of twelve eclogues, or short, pastoral, seasonal poems, and some of them are quite charming. (Those who’ve read my animadversions on Spenser in the past know that this is really quite a gracious concession on my part; perhaps the fact that these little poems and stories, separate but interconnected, are on topics that are dear to my own heart is at the root of it. Pretty sure that if the Sheapherdes Calendar was as long and thematically complex as The Faerie Queene, I’d probably feel differently. Lord knows, even broken up into much shorter chunks, Spenser’s language is, as usual, its own worst enemy.
Anyhoo.
I found myself working on the production of a poster-size actual calendar for 1979, featuring a print of the woodcut from the first edition of the Sheapherdes Calendar and some other text from the original, and–of course–the days and months of the year. It was a fun project, on which I worked with Frank Zbozny, one of the English professors, so that we could get them finished in time and off to the printers. Each attendee at the conference received a calendar as a memento, and–even if I say it myself–a very nice memento it was and remains.
While doing this, I thought I might as well read the original thing. So I did. And found the May poem, which begins:
Is not thilke the mery moneth of May
Yeah, I know. Thilke. I really wish Spenser hadn’t done that, all his life, throughout all his poetry. Talk about pretentious.
But there it is: “The merry month of May.” From 1579, twenty years before Dekker, and–as far as I can see–rarely acknowledged.
I daresay it’s possible that there are other appearances of the phrase, perhaps even earlier than Spenser. But those are the facts in evidence, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
May all your Mays be full of merry stories. Please share some, if you would.
For the late Mr. She, whose birthday it is today.
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