What Exactly is the Maypole Dance?

Today I want to discuss the maypole dance, a traditional pagan ritual.  After seeing it in movies, particularly the 1973 version of The Wicker Man (watch it here), I have always found it to be rather eerie and interesting. I searched it on YouTube and found that the ritual is still practiced today in some European May Day festivals, but its original pagan roots have been somewhat forgotten (similar to Halloween). Traditional pagans, however, have been recently trying to reconstruct May Day celebrations as a religious tradition. 

I decided to do some research on the maypole dance. I found that it originates back to the 12^th century and it was a pagan celebration of fertility.[1] The pagan belief is that the Maypole represents the sacred tree, (Yggdrasil, the tree upon which the god Odin sacrificed himself) which separates the human and divine worlds.[2] This ritual is linked to ancient cultures of northern Europe, specifically Germanic, Nordic and Gaelic. The maypole dance ritual is one of many rituals that takes place during the celebration of May Day/Beltane (May 1^st), where people gather to welcome the new spring. The rituals performed during the festival, including the maypole dance are meant to celebrate nature’s fertility and aide it in securing the town with good harvests and crops for the season.

Each participant holds a string that is attached to the top of the maypole, when the music begins, half of them walk clockwise around the pole, while the other half walk anti-clockwise and each person alternates between weaving over or under the person who is coming towards them. As the tempo picks up, they begin to skip and jog in time to the music. This continues as their strings become more tightly woven around the maypole. Eventually, the pole is completely covered by the strings and the participants have nothing left to hold on to. At this point they tie up the ends of the strings and everyone, including the observers, gather around the pole in celebration.

The two main objects in the ritual appear to be the strings and the maypole. As I previously mentioned, the maypole is said to represent the sacred tree, but it was more difficult to understand the intended purpose of the strings. When I visited a website run by the Dracona Witchery Network, their explanation of the maypole dance was quite different and it turns out that the maypole dance also has another meaning. According to this source, the maypole represents the male principle and the ribbons symbolize the female principle wrapping around the male phallus. They claim that the dance around the maypole is meant to symbolize the Divine Marriage, the sexual union between God and Goddess.[3] In this perspective, the maypole does not only represent the awakening of nature’s fertility, but also the fertility between a man and woman. It appears that the maypole has two symbolic meanings rather than one, but the overarching concept behind this ritual is fertility.

Maypoles were commonly placed in the centre square of villages across Britain because they were seen as a binding force of the village where everyone would gather and take part in the ritual together. In later years, maypoles were viewed more negatively because of their pagan roots. When Queen Elizabeth I took the throne in Britain, she demanded that all maypoles be removed from villages because they undermined the Protestant faith. 

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[1] "Dancing Around The Meaning of The May Day Maypole." BlogHer. N.p., 30 Apr. 2008. Web. 04 Mar. 2014

[2] "Dancing the Maypole – A History of Beltane/May Day." Deaf Pagan Crossroads. Wordpress.com, 1 May 2012. Web. 4 Mar. 2014.

[3] Genetti, Alexandra. "The Maypole." Earth Witchery. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2014.