Ahem A lot of things happened on Mayday, as they should. In medieval England, it was one of the biggest, most popular and least controversial holidays of the year, the focus of a week of ribaldry, licence and lust, when the rural working class (90% of the population) got drunk for days on fermented beer, […]
Tag Archives: mayday
Long before the boundaries of England’s parishes were definitively mapped, people would walk around the boundaries of their local community every year, a few days before Ascension Day, often on Mayday or Beltane. They would be equipped with sticks, branches or switches and would physically beat the items that marked the boundary, such as large […]


