31. The May Queen

This post is dedicated to Lourdes, who we loved. I can name her because of what happened, but it doesn’t happen yet. I have a photograph of her in her finery, dancing round the maypole in a blue satin dress, her arm raised in song moments before she met her king, the carpenter who dances behind her. She was Portuguese, Wiccan, dark curls, silk voice. She appeared in the commune that Beltane as the village rose on the hill and the stones were delivered; I don’t remember whose friend she was, who brought her, how she found us, but that year the women of the camp crowned her May Queen. It was she who sat on the throne by the Beltane fire, a wreath of ivy in her hair as the men stripped and trotted away, the carpenter taking off his hat, a crowd of male nakedness disappearing into the woods. They climbed to the top of the hill scaring dog walkers and waited for the bellow of the horn. We were gathered, hundreds of us, dressed in skins and rags and finery, the stones still a pile of rocks in the sequoia trees, as the animal call rang out and the naked men ran. Crashing through undergrowth, ignoring paths, straight down the hill, we heard them before we saw them. The hollering of ancient fire and beast, a camp of dancing Pagans on a sunny Surrey hillside in May calling them in with drums beating, flames leaping, the neighbours alerted by smoke and cries came hesitantly up the drive. Our megalithic giant in velvet top hat and loincloth raised his hands to blue sky while muddy children chased dogs and women skipped about with flowers in their hair. And there, suddenly, the naked men streamed from the wood, a terrifying leap of barbed wire and they were in the field, hurtling across grassland to be the first, to claim the Beltane Queen as their own. The carpenter won her, was crowned May King, and together they leapt the fire; she was his for a year. Tradition had it he would lose his head to the next king the next year but he lost his head to her instead. They fell in love and were joined for more than a year and it wasn’t him who died – but not yet. Five hundred pagans on a hill, we raised a maypole, we raised the first King and Queen and then we raised the first stone.The Literary Obsessive champions free thinkers and independent artists. To support my work, become a subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe