The folklore year - May - Beltane. The death of the May fair ?

Yes it's a lovely time and we can still resect the old traditions . Every season has its beauty and I think we should acknowledge it.

I always wanted to experience this as a kid, I remember reading about it in books.

Derdriu Hello there !

NO I haven't seen that film but it sounds very quirky and super talented. I like quirky tihngs and his guitars were just amazing.

Veronica, The Route 66 guitar makes me think of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay's instruments! Have you seen the film Landfill Harmonic, short-listed for the environmental award at the 2015 or 2016 Sheffield International Documentary Festival?

Integration is how it should be.

In Britain After Rome Professor Robyn Fleming cited an archaeological site in the Midlands where a British village was sited next to a village of Anglo-Saxon incomers.The graves were revealing. The first generation of incomers kept their distinct burial customs. These were the older people, but by generation three the differences had disappeared. It was one community.As she says"When the women of both villages have the same babies to coo over, you have a community."

That suggests that maypole dancing could be both Celt and Saxon. Excellent. What a remarkable page this has turned in to.

If you want to seek the German roots of English customs, look to the far north of Germany and Denmark. The Saxons came from Saxony in Germany, but the Angles from Schleswig-Holstein, then part of Denmark, and the Jutes, according to King Alfred, from the Danish island of Fyn. The Angles and Jutes were South Scandinavians, belonging to a broad group known as the Ingwine [ Ings, hence we are English.] You can read more of this in Beowulf and Grendel by Grigsby.

Tacitus says that the Angles, a tribe friendly to Rome, were one of the tribes dwelling on the Baltic coast who worshipped the goddess. So they brought her cultus to England with them when they migrated, and it almost certainly fused with similar cults in British society.

Thanks, both the article and comments including Frank's are very enlightening. This is indeed a place of learning.

Veronica is right on the term Celtic, which is a term that denotes language class rather than race. But the "Celts" and the Germans [including Saxons] had much religious culture in common, so maypole dancing could be both British [Celtic] and Anglo-Saxon.

Don't make the very common mistake of over-distinguishing Saxons and Britons [Celts/Welsh.] When the Saxons arrived they mixed very easily with the Britons. The Romans brought in Saxon troops [male] but the Saxons left descendants, but that fact needed British females to make it happen. Southern Brits are descended from Saxon men and British women to some degree. It was different in the North.from which I and Veronica come.

BSG, I recall that your ancestors came from the area inhabited by the British tribe, Atrebates, but that area became part of Wessex. However. Francis Pryor, an eminent, now retired British archaeologist, says that in the area from which your ancestors came there is no evidence of population replacement during the Saxon settlements, but that Saxon and British settled together quite happily. [See his book Britain AD.]

In the nineteenth century racial theory, which taught that the Germanic races were superior to others arose [we know where that led.] Thus certain British decided that to be truly Germanic and therefore superior we had to have no Celtic ancestors. As the Celts had dwelt in Britain ere the Saxons arrived they had to invent the belief that the Saxons were genocidal savages who murdered every Welsh [British] person who did not flee to Wales. Sheer poppycock! Much of Western England is more British than Saxon. Indeed Welsh was spoken across parts of Western England until the eighteenth century. Even as a boy I found this view repulsivea nd incredible.