May's ominous connotations

THE month of Jyestha in the Indian lunar year, that rides May and June of the Gregorian calendar, has relatively few sayings and idioms associated with it in the Indian languages. In North India, this time of scorching sun and hot, dusty winds has, most often, ominous connotations. To wit: the Hindi idiom that means "only dogs and mad people venture out in the blistering May sun". Several sayings vouch that rain on a particular day in Jyestha is a sure sign of drought and pestilence.

Similarly, Ani veiyal alai urukum in Tamil warns what the other half of the month of Vaikashi can do to the brain. In the other languages of India as well as in Mandarin Chinese, May is the time when festivities came to an end.

On the other hand, May is invariably the month with the largest number of entries associated with auspicious and cheerful occasions in every collection of quotations that I have seen in English and the other European languages. In medieval England, the custom was to go "a-maying" on the first day of May, and to bring back boughs and flowers to decorate houses and gates, and, in some places, even churches. In some parts of England the superstition still persists that washing one's face in May dew not only gives one beauty and a good complexion, but brings good luck too. Tales of merrymaking and uninhibited fertility rites during "a-maying" are buried in English ballads, proverbs and folklore. Since May was also seen as the time when passions surged and emotions ran amok, those particularly superstitious avoided May marriages for the fear of such unions being either fickle or short-lived.

In Old English, May sometimes appears to mean a maiden or virgin, and is often shown as conveying mirth, youth and warm desire. The use of May and December or January to describe the marriage or romance between young and old might have originated in a tale by Chaucer in which January, an old man, marries the beautiful virgin May.

Shakespeare's plays are full of proverbial and allusive phrases that refer to May as bloom, prime and heyday. "Love's Labour Lost" has:

"At Christmas I no more desire a rose/ Than wish snow in May, new-fangled mirth/ But like each thing that in season grows".

Thus May is a time for regeneration in most western cultures, similar to our Vasantha. As children born on this day in India are often named Vasantha, May too is a popular English name for girls born during the month.

The crowning of "May Queens" in towns and college campuses all over North America and Europe on May Day comes from a custom from the Middle Ages. The fairest village maiden was selected as the Queen of May and presided over the festivities and dances held around a flower-crowned pole called "the maypole". The merrymaking and fertility rites at this time became so rambunctious that the Puritans suppressed the "a-maying" custom in England until it was revived at the Restoration in 1690.

Although it would seem logical, mayhem (English for uproarious activity or confusion) does not come from the "a-maying" custom, but from maim (causing injury). Similarly, "mayday" - the international distress signal for ships and aircraft - has nothing to do with the first day of May; it comes from "m'aider" - French for "help me". But the genuine articles include scores of bugs and beetles that emerge from hibernation in May and are named in English after the month. "May flowers" became a generic term for plants blooming in May after a barren winter. Thus, Mayflower, the name of the ship bringing English emigrants to found the first colony in the newly discovered land of America in 1620 was also a symbol of hope and of a new beginning. Among English idioms, a person, thing or event is "welcome as flowers in May".

Since May was commonly associated with fertility rites, some of the plants that flower in May were thought to arouse passion or have other magical powers. One such plant is mandrake, from which came the name of the famous comic-strip hero of the 1930's and the 1940's. Old-timers in India might still remember Mandrake the Magician, with his African sidekick Lothar who had Mr. Universe pectorals and a leopard-skin leotard. Until indigenous comic- strip heroes began appearing in Indian languages in the past two decades, Mandrake was quite popular and one of my boyhood ideals.

Mayfair, the once fashionable and high class residential district in the west end of London, took its name from the site of May fair. For everyone who has ever wondered why the Broadway musical (and the movie) based on Bernard Shaw's play "Pygmalion" was named "My Fair Lady", here is the answer: That is how a cockney flower-seller (Eliza Doolittle) would have pronounced "Mayfair (fashionable) lady".

Following this example, almost every city and town in former British colonies and dominions (including India) had a street or area named Mayfair.

Theatres and swanky places too were named Mayfair, and that included the only English movie theatre in the city of Lucknow where I grew up.

ANAND

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