Not so merry - Frank McNally on the month of May’s somewhat ominous reputation

This week’s balmy weather will persuade eternal optimists that summer is here already, and that it’s sure to be a long one.

But the month that’s now in it will also revive a small annual controversy as to what one of the best-known pieces of meteorological lore means when warning: “Cast not a clout till May is out.”

Those of cautious temperament take that to be exclusively calendrical advice, urging us to hold on to our overcoats until June.

Against which, there is a competing theory that the rhyme’s “May” refers not to the month but to the hawthorn bush (also known as the “May”), the annual exhibition of which has opened already, giving the phrase a whole different meaning.

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As with many old sayings, terms and conditions apply. Past performance is not a guide to future results. The value of folk wisdom may fall as well as rise.

Pessimists, meanwhile, will give the casting vote to Spanish folklore, which sides with them and goes further. “Hasta el 40 de Mayo, no te quites de el sayo,” they say in Spain, meaning: “Don’t discard your smock til May 40th.”

In general, to judge from folklore, May has acquired an ominous reputation through the centuries, perhaps for its tendency to raise people’s hopes unduly.

My Wordsworth Dictionary of Proverbs, for example, devotes three pages to the month, with recurring themes of agriculture and marriage, to both of which May is considered treacherous, especially if warm.

“A dry May is followed by a wet June,” claims a typical agricultural adage. The nuptial theme is even bleaker, summed up by this: “Marry in May, you’ll rue it for aye.”

May dew, on the other hand, has always been seen as a positive thing, with magical properties in both skin care and (a not unrelated subject) romance.

Considered beneficial for the skin in general, it was thought by some to remove freckles. Among those who believed this was Elizabeth Pepys, wife of the famous diarist Samuel.

In an entry for 1667, he records her going to Woolwich “to gather May dew tomorrow morning, which Mrs Turner hath taught her as the only thing in the world to wash her face with”.

The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland speculates that this being the first recorded reference to the belief in these islands, Mrs Pepys may have fallen for a new fashion, “introduced from the continent”.

May dew was also believed to help young people find a mate. Then again, in folk culture, there seem to have been few substances that did not either foretell your love life or make it happen.

In this case, it was said that a woman who washed her face in dew before sunrise could land the man of her desires by simply naming him as she splashed the stuff on.

The May bush, by contrast, had a baleful reputation once, at least if brought indoors. “Hawthorn bloom and elder flowers/Will fill a house with evil powers” warned one of many verses that associated the plant with death.

The issue was its odour, which recalled the bubonic plague. Francis Bacon, writing in the 1620s, said the plague had “the smell of a mellow apple and (as some say) of May flowers”. A 19th century magazine recorded a popular belief that the hawthorn’s scent was “exactly like the smell of the Great Plague of London”.

Science has since lent some support to this. A book called Plant Lore Studies notes that “trimethylamine, one of the first products formed when animal tissues start to decay, is present in hawthorn flowers”.

There is one other, somewhat bizarre, superstition associated with this month, and relating to the washing of bedclothes. The theory is that laundering blankets in May is very unlucky.

At best, you’ll shrink them till they’re useless. At worst, according to the saying, you could get rid of more than stains: “If you wash a blanket during May/You’ll wash the head of the house away.”

For all its mixed reputation, May has always been a favourite month for poets. Most of them consider it a good thing, like John Clare, whose epic on the subject begins:

Come queen of months in company

Wi all thy merry minstrelsy

The restless cuckoo absent long

And twittering swallows chimney song

A dissenting voice was that of James Russell Lowell, who would certainly not be casting his clout around now. He wrote:

May is a pious fraud of the almanac,

A ghastly parody of real Spring

Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind;

Then there was Christina Rosetti, for whom the month brought mixed memories:

I cannot tell you how it was,

But this I know: it came to pass

Upon a bright and sunny day