The Flower Moon is full at 4:45am tomorrow morning, so tonight is the closest moonrise to full. I suspect in lunisolar calendars like that of the Irish and Cymri, this full moon after the hawthorn bloomed would have marked Beltaine. Or perhaps Beltaine, the beginning of summer, was set to the seventh full moon after Samhaine, the end of summer — which was also likely determined by the moon, not the sun. In any case, it may be that what I (and The Old Farmer’s Almanac among many others) call the full Flower Moon is the ancient holiday of Beltaine, the advent of the summer, or at least the beginning of the upland grazing season. And that makes tonight another opportunity for a May Eve, a Beltaine bonfire under the rising full Moon.
I don’t think Beltaine is a day so much as it is a season for precisely the reason that it is very difficult to tie Beltaine to a day. It was certainly not May 1st in the Irish calendars that observed Beltaine. The one preserved calendar that we have from a Celtic-language culture, the Coligny Calendar, did not contain May, nor even an equivalent. In the Coligny Calendar, months hung on the solar cycle in an elegant cycle of 62 months every five years. There were 12 months in each year, with an intercalary month added every 2.5 years to prevent seasonal drift. Now, this calendar was created by Roman citizens, the elites of Gaul, and yet they refused to adhere to Roman time. So I think it’s rather unlikely that the wild Hibernians well beyond the pale marked time with the Roman calendar, the one we inherited and still use today, the one that has a May 1st. It is far more likely that they marked time by the moon and by seasonal events.
Beltaine, the beginning of summer, was naturally when summer weather showed up. A simple determination of summer weather is when the Green World trusts the temperatures enough to put out their delicate blossoms and frail new leaves. And, in fact, the Celtic cultures of Britain and Ireland have many traditions of summer a’coming in when the hawthorn bloomed. There is one word for both “May” and “hawthorn” in Cymraeg (Welsh). Similarly, the hawthorn in full blossom is so central to so many Beltaine customs, there would be little celebration if the “may” failed to bloom, which is all too likely if the bush had to follow the secular calendar, regardless of the year’s weather.
Now, it may be that the holiday was simply observed whenever the buds opened. But since the moon ruled time in this culture — as in most human cultures, past and present — it makes sense to me that the season of summer would be formally ushered in by the full moon closest to the blooming hawthorn. Which is probably why the Cymri call this whole month Mai, Hawthorn.
There are interesting threads connecting the hawthorn, the summer, the Green Man, and Arthurian legend. Because, of course, Arthur was Celtic. Romanized, to be sure, but if he existed at all, he was born in Tintagel Castle in Cornwall. He had a Cornish mother. He may have spoken Latin, maybe even some of the barbaric German languages; but his native tongue was Cornish, a language that was carried across the English Channel to put down its roots around the Brocéliande Forest of Brittany. This forest is, not coincidentally, where much of the Matter of Britain plays out.
Arthur is sometimes called a summer lord, except… he’s really not. He might have been the golden boy of the Britains, but he died a cuckhold at the hand of a younger man who might have been both nephew and son, depending on the storyteller. And crucially, today, May 30th, at the beginning of summer, is the traditional date of Arthur’s death, Le Morte d’Arthur. Arthur is slain when the summer is waxing to full strength and is ferried off to the Otherworld (Avalon or Glastonbury or some unnamed island in the West) to rest until he is called to service once again. You see, Arthur has much more in common with the Winter Kings, who take the hand of the Land Goddess when she is resting in her somnolent, chthonic state, when she is not in her full productive capacity. When she awakens to walk in the Green World, she turns from the Winter King to the Summer Lord.
Guinevere turns from Arthur repeatedly. Sometimes she is “abducted”. Sometimes she seems to become two or three women of the same name — a common enough theme in many European cultures — all queen in different castles — a rather uncommon plot device. But we mostly remember that she betrayed Arthur with Arthur’s closest companion, Lancelot. And here we might find summer.
Lancelot’s name may be derived from words relating to the javelin, casting Lancelot as the weapon in the king’s hand. It could also be L’Ancelot (it is written this way in many stories), which means “the servant” — or perhaps The Servant, again, the hand of the king. But the name can also be derived from the mythological hero and sometime deity, Llew Llaw Gyffes. These derivations seem a bit tortuous, but I understand the urge to reach. Lance shares too many characteristics with Llew to not be related in some fashion. They are both born of Faerie mothers who apparently believed in tough love. They both are ambivalent characters in their own right, ageless and, apart from a disastrous dalliance with the Flower Maiden, generally genderless. They are both fierce warriors that spend quite a lot of time in positions of weakness, largely voluntarily. They are also both also nearly silent in all the stories.
Llew seems to be a puppet in the hands of his powerful shamanic uncle. He hardly utters a word in the entirety of his story until he is compelled to tell his young wife, the Flower Maiden, the only way he can be killed — which turns out not to be strictly true, since he does not die but flies off in the shape of an ailing eagle. Lancelot says absolutely nothing for most of his story. It is not until he is driven mad and living far from courtly society that he begins to talk. Llew and Lance are not characters; they are tools in the hands of the shadowy Winter King. They may be the young Summer Lord. They both seem summery. They, at least, win the heart of the Land Goddess… for a time.
But there is one other Summer Lord in the Matter of Britain, Gawain, Gwalchmai, The Hawk of May. Or the Hawk of the Hawthorn. In the stories, Gawain is the young nephew of Arthur, but Gwalchmai may be older than Arthur. His story was certainly recorded long before Chretien got ahold of the Arthurian myth cycle. In all the stories, Gawain is perpetually young and strong and not particularly brilliant, but fiercely loyal and true. In Monmouth’s version of Lancelot’s betrayal of Arthur, it is Gawain who tells the king and who then entraps the lovers — not because of any enmity toward either the queen or Lancelot, but because it is the right thing to do in spite of the pain it causes.
It is never explicitly said, but I have always felt that Gawain and Lancelot were actually closer than either’s relationship with the king. They seem to be the same age, or maybe the same agelessness. Gawain’s mother is Morgaine, or Morgause — one of Arthur’s faerie-witch sisters anyway — so both Gawain and Lancelot tend to be something other than human. They are both Knights who fight for the king, servants and swords. They also are both strangely fatherless. In a story cycle built around men, they are cut off from male parentage.
Gawain’s father, King Lot of Orkney, is a dark blot on the edge of Gawain’s tale. Gawain stands by his uncle and one gets the sense that he would not willingly return to Orkney, if Orkney is a place in this world at all, which is not a given. Lot is portrayed as powerful but insular, cold and dark like the land he rules. He is decidedly Plutonic, perhaps even a king of the dead. Similarly, Lancelot’s father, King Ban, is a shadow. It seems that the mythographers were compelled to explain why Lance is raised by women in the mists, so he is styled an orphan from a lost kingdom. The result is that both King Lot and King Ban are distant and, if not dead, then certainly deathly.
(Incidentally, Ban and his “brother” Bors were two of the original Knights before there was a Round Table, and before Arthur was king. Ban, whose name might be eponymous with the name of his land, Benioc or Benwick, fought alongside the brilliant Roman tactician who held back the Saxon invasion for a time. That legionary became Arthur, and Ban became the lost father of Lancelot.)
So Lancelot and Gawain have faerie mothers and underworld fathers. But remember that Lancelot might also be derived from Llew whose totem animal is the eagle, or more accurately, a large bird of prey, like a hawk. And note that Gawain’s name is actually Hawk of May. The Hawk’thorn. Here we have the Summer Lord. It seems to me that Lance and Gawain are two versions of Summer. And they are both as ancient and young as the blooming hawthorn under the Full Flower Moon.
I am not inordinately fond of anthropomorphizing the world, but I do love stories and this story of the complex Summer Lord, the youthful bright elder who comes from darkness and recedes into darkness but does not die — this seems a very good description of the Green World. In my personal mythography, I call this archetype the Green Man, but I could easily call them The Forest. Perhaps Brocéliande. Or the Green Mountains. Today, the Green Man is dancing over the hills around me, full of exuberant growth and bright blossom. It is all potential today. Summer is a’coming in.
But summer is short and potentials often fail. So take today to hail what may be in this season of passionate growth.
Because soon enough the Land will turn from the Summer Lord to return to her dark Winter King, and another Green Summer will fade away into the faerie mists.
Frigg’s Day
Today is also the old Norse holiday dedicated to Frigg, the shadowy wife of Odin. Frigg was the counselor, the inventor of seiðr, the soothsaying and healing magic of the hearth. She was the very definition of a witch, even in her preference for wearing dark clothes and keeping to the dim corners, well away from the center. Frigg watched over women and children. She was the sole deity in the Norse pantheon to utterly reject war because of the harmful violence done to innocents in the name of valor. She spoke few words, but what she did say was diligently recorded and remembered.
As tonight, the eve of the Full Flower Moon, could be seen as another May Eve, it could also be celebrated as another Walpurgisnacht focusing on the original northern witch, Frigg. Truly, Walpurga and her ilk, could be seen as derivatives of Frigg. So if you want, grab your broomstick and dance around the fire, calling down Frigg’s protection and seeking her advice. Perhaps if we all raise our voices, she will intervene once more and bring a halt to the many wars around the globe.
©Elizabeth Anker 2026
By My Solitary Hearth 