In this excerpt from How to Live in the Country, Tom Hodgkinson suggests a few traditional games and recipes for the merry month of May

May has always had the reputation of being the merry month. It is the time when hope springs in the breast: we have the summer to look forward to, and the winter has at last retreated. The birds are courting, and flowers and vegetables push through the earth and strain towards the sun.

As far as agriculture goes, it is not a busy time of year, which may explain why it was always a festive month: there was simply more time for partying. The days are longer, and there are delicious smells in the air.

At home, the buttercups and red campion are out in full force. Victoria makes risotto with nettles and wild garlic. We start pulling up the first radishes, and everything in the garden thrusts forth with great vigour.

Our May Day rituals are said by anthropologists of the Sir James Frazer school to be a relic of the pagan era, when we would try to hasten the progress of spring by making one hell of a racket.

Some of the maypoles in medieval Europe could stand ninety feet high and were anchored in all year round. It was only on May Day, though, that they would be decorated, with flowers, ribbons and streamers. Maypole dancing was a sort of fertility ritual, carried out by grown men and women. It was later that it became a kiddies’ dance rather than a sexually charged ritual designed to work both men and women into a fever of desire. The sexual nature of the maypole dance was the main reason the Puritans banned it. Today, it is legal again. So why not try it at home? First repeat the following traditional rhyme:

Here we go round the maypole
The merry maypole, the merry maypole,
Here we go round the merry maypole
On a cold and frosty morning!

After working yourselves up into an ecstasy of passion, you all troop off into the woods to “collect the May”, i.e. evergreen boughs of ivy and wildflowers. These are used to decorate the hall (or the kitchen, since that is where most of us do our feasting these days). Writes Chambers in The Book of Days:

In the sixteenth century it was still customary for the middle and humbler classes to go forth at an early hour of the morning, in order to gather flowers and hawthorn branches, which they brought home about sunrise, with accompaniments of horn and tabor, and all possible signs of joy and merriment. With these spoils they would decorate every door and window in the village.

So go out there and cut down the hawthorn branches and the flowers and bedeck the house. The more greenery there is indoors, the merrier you will be.

The most important feast of May was Pentecost, nicknamed Whitsun, which falls on the seventh Sunday after Easter. This annual feast, which commemorates the inspiration of Christ’s apostles by the Holy Ghost, was being celebrated right back in the fourth century. In the later medieval period, the Church organized local communal celebrations known as Whitsun ales, when pursuits such as dances, cards and summer games could be carried out with licence. There would be a feast, generally consisting of beer, milk, cream, bread, eggs, honey, spices, veal and mutton. Dancing was common, and pipers and drummers were often hired. Another popular May tradition dating back to the twelfth century was the custom of the Robin Hood play. Morris dancing was also popular.

Another merry pastime for May is to try to make a green-themed feast. Make bread green with parsley and slice it up to use as plates. Make a green salad with lettuce, spinach, peas, endive, fennel and greengage plums. Wash it down with a light apple cider. Make green peppermint rice, and whipped cream with green mint. After dessert, try making Jack-in-the-Green. This is a large gingerbread man with green lime icing and sprigs of parsley – an edible green man.

Backgammon and chess were popular Old World pastimes, as was billiards. At home, we recently bought a cheap pool table, and I see pool as a good New World equivalent of the old games. I could happily play pool all day, and I am encouraging my children to practise, as I see it as an important life skill.

Another favourite was Nine Men’s Morris, dating from Roman times. Take nine counters each. These can be stones or wooden balls. The game is played on a board on which have been drawn intersecting lines with circles at the intersections. Take turns in placing your counters on the circles and try to get three in a row. You can also play outdoors, using people as counters.

Extracted from How to Live in the Country by Tom Hodgkinson

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