With Mayday fast approaching, I thought that we might take a peep at the residents of Padstow, a fishing village on the north coast of Cornwall, England, now best known for its resident chef Rick Stein, as they celebrate May Day.
They prefer to call it Obby Oss (Hobby Horse) day and their festival involves an ancient ritual of parading the Obby Oss through the streets, calling at houses owned by eminent people in the town for suitable refreshment. In return, they ward of evil spirits and ensure good luck for the following year.
This atmospheric video was shot by Reg Vernon (regvernon). At about 3.15 and 8.10 minutes in, you get good shots of the inborn rhythm displayed by the Padstow folk, forget the Sambadrome Samba get behind the Padstow Plod.
May Day is traditionally the first day of the English Morris Dancing season, and Morris Dance troupes will be performing at the many spring festivals. Here is a light hearted variation on their usual dances.
It was posted by FiddlerNick, who writes, "Man to man combat with beer trays. I think it is Dogrose Morris and Bryony Griffiths on fiddle. Thanks to Rich Keen for original footage." The performance was filmed at Warwick Folk Fest.
This year, 1 May, May Day, falls on a Thursday and since in most of Europe it is celebrated as a public holiday, many people will be taking the opportunity to take a four day weekend.
May Day was originally a country holiday to welcome the arrival of spring but for the last 150 years has been closely associated with the labour movement and the rights of workers. Whatever its meanings and origins, the day is now widely celebrated with fetes and festivals throughout Europe. Perhaps the largest is a huge free music festival in Rome, organised by the unions.
If you plan to travel in Europe over the holiday weekend, just remember to plan ahead and check that places are going to be open.
Writing in the Shanghai Daily, Michelle Qiao suggests two great musical shows for anyone in Shanghai during the May Day holiday. "Sound of Cloud Land", which is a true-to-life collection of primitive dance and songs of 18 ethnic groups of the province, celebrating nature, life and eternal love, and "Immortality" which is based on the recently unearthed Jinsha Relics, described as the greatest archaeological find of the 21st century.
The Jinsha ruins, discovered in 2001, were unearthed in a village in the Chengdu's suburbs of South Western China's Sichuan Province. This astonishing archaeological discovery revealed an undocumented civilization around 3,000 years old in the Shu kingdom. Buildings, jade articles, stone figures, gold foil, bronze articles and ivories were all unearthed, and the Jinsha Ruins Museum has been built on the site to display over 1000 precious relics.
