Teine Samhradh Deas
Southern Beltaine is greeted this year with an abundance of sunshine and lifegiving rain. The oaks at Tranby House on the banks of the Swan River in Perth are thriving this year, and their green mantle of leaves mark the start of summer and the beginning of the seasonal cycles in the Southern Hemisphere. November is the southern equivalent to May in the Celtic homelands, concerning the seasons; and to this time at start of the year’s seasons Dafydd ap Gwilym wrote in the mid fourteenth century, "When Spring ended I cared not; May’s golden wealth is purest gold. The beginning of full Summer scattered him, whom tears had nourished; May is faultless: the coming of May is a blessing to me; God and Mary decided wisely and steadfastly to uphold May" The poem has been published in full in the Grove on the Caer Australis website: The poem, ‘May’, was written in the mid fourteenth century by Dafydd ap Gwilym and added to the Grove as part of the southern beltaine summer festival.