The merry month of May – it’s a poetic thing.

One of my friends suggested that the homepage title of the ‘Merry, merry month of May’ sounded a little … Christmassy!? (‘It’s a bit too Merry, like Christmas …’)

Somewhat bewildered I mentioned ‘the Merry Month of May’ nursery rhyme to him. NO response.
So here it is; a sparkling spring gem:

‘In the merry month of May
When green leaves begin to spring,
Little lambs do skip like fairies
Birds do couple, build and sing.’

Ahhh! But there’s also this fab poem courtesy of Thomas Dekker, a poet of Elizabethan fame:

‘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.

Now the nightingale, the pretty nightingale,
The sweetest singer in all the forest quire,
Entreats thee, sweet Peggy, to hear thy true love’s tale:
Lo, yonder she sitteth, her breast against a brier.

But O, I spy the cuckoo, the cuckoo, the cuckoo;
See where she sitteth; come away, my joy:
Come away, I prithee, I do not like the cuckoo
Should sing where my Peggy and I kiss and toy.

O, the month of May, the merry month of May,
So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green;
And then did I unto my true love say,
Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my Summer’s Queen.’

Okay, so I may have added another ‘Merry’ into the title, but I reckon it’s worth it.

James