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Iron your white nighty. It’s time to celebrate sunrise at dawn on Midsummer Morning at the ancient Aizkraukle hillfort outside Riga

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I was cycling home from the health centre yesterday morning and when i passed the local nursery school, i saw that all the tots wee gathered in a circle around a diminutive, home-made phallic symbol doing the Small Frogs Dance.

It’s pure Wicker Man…

In the woods there grew a tree
And a fine fine tree was he

And on that tree there was a limb
And on that limb there was a branch

Midsummer Eve and the Midsummer Solstice is such a very big deal here in Sweden, that it’s easy to forget other places where Iit is celebrated. For example, the druids at Stonehenge.
A Latvian pal, who grew up London has pointed out that it’s also an important occasion in her old home country. She remembers going to summer camp as a child and learning all the traditional songs. This weekend her family are going to a Midsummer pot luck at the Latvian Society in London.

Do you remember Tautumeitas, the all-girl, ethno pop sextet who were rather wonderful in Eurovision 2025? This year they are arranging, for the second year running, a solstice concert at the crack of dawn at the ancient Aizkraukle hillfort.

White nighties, bizarre headgear, candles, fireworks and lots of wonderful singing .. it’s the Full Midsummer Monty. Summerisle and their wickery-wackery celebrations look rather low rent by comparison. Visit their Instagram page and see for yourself

Has anyone here been to Latvia, Estonia or Lithuania? Despite the fact they are one night’s journey by ferry from Stockholm, to my shame I never have. I lived in Helsinki back in the 80s and was very aware of the Russian bear breathing down our necks. Finland was apart of the free world after WW2. The Baltic Republics were not so lucky.

They must be getting very anxious about Putin’s expansionistic tendencies.

Now I’m interested to hear about your travel experiences…Both the stuff on your Bucket List and the things you’ve already done.

Here are a few ideas…

Cheese Rolling at Cooper’s Hill
The Beltane Fire Festival in Edinburgh
President Trump’s 79th birthday party
Transhumance in Provence – Herding the sheep to their summer pastures
A wedding or funeral with slightly different rituals than you are used to
Xmas on Easter Island
The Underwater Music Festival at Big Pine Key, Florida
SXSW in Austin

All comments and contributions gratefully received.
Bonfire Night in Lewes

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Comments

  1. Who wouldn’t fancy an Underwater music festival?

    Some years you get that at Glastonbury or Roskilde with no extra change.

    There’s something I find very charming about the transhumance. A lot of smally sheep causing a traffic jam.

    How did I forget the Fallas in Valencia ?

      • That was Bellamy himself singing on the version I posted. That Unthanks version is on a collection released round about the time I started singing and was genuinely a huge influence on me. Yes, indeed, while waiting for my Portuguese train today, I totted up that I sing no fewer than 11 Kipling/Bellamys.

        • Waiting for a Portuguese train thinking about Rudyard Kipling and Peter Bellamy.

          What an international feline you are @thecheshirecat.

          As often happens, you’ve set me off down some very interesting rabbit holes.

          Bellamy has been mentioned here on the AW before, but it was fascinating to read about his dedication to Kipling,

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Bellamy

          Here are a couple of quotes from the Wiki page. i recommend reading the whole thing …

          Kipling’s Barrack Room Ballads were published in 1892, and Bellamy started setting them to music in 1973. He was struck by people’s misconceptions about Kipling, who many perceived as (in Bellamy’s words) “one of the reactionary old guard, and therefore obviously a writer of no merit whatsoever”

          When composing the musical settings for Kipling’s poetry, Bellamy had a theory, shared with many others, that highly metrical poets like Kipling used song tunes to keep their poems flowing properly. Some of Kipling’s contemporaries confirm that he was in the habit of humming and whistling as he composed. It has, for example, been claimed that in The Loot, there is a “hidden” tune being worked to, and that nothing else can explain the strange refrains. Bellamy became excited when the line in “Dutch in the Medway” “our ships in every harbour….” reminded him of the line in the song “Cupid’s Garden” “Twas down in Portsmouth Harbour…”. This observation suggested the tune for the Kipling poem and made him wonder whether Kipling had actually composed to that tune, it being a common folk song in the 19th century and certainly part of the repertoire of the remarkable Copper family of Sussex who had lived in Rottingdean when Kipling was also living there.[9] (A local man called Copper appears briefly in Rewards and Fairies.) It has also been suggested that Kipling’s “My name is O’Kelly, I’ve heard the reveille…” was written to the common Irish song and Army marching tune “Lillibullero”. Bellamy found a different tune but agreed that “Lillibullero” was more likely to have been on Kipling’s mind at the time of composition.

          That led me to this excellent clip of the late John Roberts.

          There some great comments, not least this one …

          @ДаниилСитнев
          4 months ago
          This poem by Mr. Kipling has truly struck me with awe and joy, it has that meaning of something ancient and sacred, embodied in the trees… Every time i listen to it I feel truly happy. Funnily enough, in Russia there is a translation of that song, which is also magnificent and manages to catch that spirit of the original. Thank you for your posting this video and having one more chance to listen to it. Greetings from Russia.

          Kipling in Russian. This we have to hear.

          That Portuguese train was heading north. Far north.

    • @Kaisfatdad I was explaining the game of conkers to my 10 year old great nephew some time ago while he was busy on his smart phone. He looked at me as if I’d lost my marbles. The last time I played conkers I was about 12 years old and my friend whacked me over the knuckles with his ‘six-er’. It brought tears to my eyes. The game of conkers is not for sissies.

  5. The Wicker Man “low rent”? How dare you, sir! I’ll wager that Tautumeitas won’t be sacrificing an Edward Woodward lookalike as the dawn breaks!

    But seriously, you hit the nail on the head for me: visiting the Scandinavian countries and the Baltic states is on my bucket list. To date, I’ve only been to Iceland – BDA (before Damon Albarn)…

    • Fair dos @fitterstoke, The girls will not find it easy to top Woodward.

      But sacrificing a Putin look alike would doubtless be a hit would go down well with the local audience.

      I look forward to welcoming you to Sweden. You’ll love it.

  6. We visited Switzerland for a birthday party in late January many years ago. We were greeted at Zurich Airport by a costumed ‘band’ dressed up in fish scales playing shawms, actually a many horned kazoo.

    It turned out to be Fastnacht (carnival). Driving to our destination there were effigies hanging from balconies which later on would be burned. At the party another group of ‘musicians’ came in and serenaded us with horns wearing horns and shaggy masks and costumes. It was of particular interest as many years before I’d performed as a mummer with our morris team.

    Not my team but I’ve seen these a few times.
    https://folkopedia.info/wiki/Long_Company

    Others I’ve been to:
    The choir singing on May Day morning on Magdalene Tower in Oxford and coming out of the pub at7:30 in the morning slightly inebriated.
    Morris dancing on May Day morning.
    Penny hedge in Whitby.
    The Imbolc festival in Marsden (it felt a bit like being in an episode of the League of Gentlemen)
    Tolling the Devil’s Knell in Dewsbury.
    And this
    https://discover.hubpages.com/holidays/Divining-with-Lead-A-German-New-Years-Custom

    There must be others and don’t forget to turn your jacket inside out on Midsummer’s Day so the Little People don’t snatch you away.

  7. The Maypole Song from the Wicker Man is wonderful. By turns the most jaunty catchy thing you’ve heard, and then the most unsettling. TBF the whole soundtrack is gorgeous but yeah, that’s the one that stuck with me most from when I last watched it.

    Oh and some years ago (early 00s) I actually went to the Cheese Rolling at Coooper’s Hill (a mate of mine lived in Gloucester at the time). Absolutely bonkers and very entertaining. They do a race up the hill as well (not following a cheese; you would need a cannon) which presumably requires mighty thighs.

    There’s a viral video from this year with someone wiping out spectacularly. They weren’t badly injured (I wouldn’t mention it had they been) and it’s well worth seeking out if you didn’t believe a man could fly.

  12. May I go back to Latvian history for a moment….

    Those Latvians take their folk music and folk dances very seriously and this German documentary provides some valuable background.

    That festiv?al is seriously impressive. Can you imagine what it is like for a child to attend

  13. Back to The Wicker Man. from 1973, which as @fitterstoke pointed out, i dissed very unfairly.

    This moring i woke up curious about the name of the actor who sung the Maypole Song very well.

    His name was Walter Carr.

    https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0139892/?ref_=tt_cst_t_10

    That led me to the discovery that the film is a diegetic folk musical….

    https://blogs.iu.edu/establishingshot/2023/09/25/the-diegetic-folk-horrors-of-the-wicker-man-1973/#:~:text=Poster%20for%20The%20Wicker%20Man%20(1973)&text=But%20what%20gives%20it%20a,but%20a%20diegetic%20folk%20musical.

    It might be useful to take a moment to note that you don’t find a lot of horror musicals in cinema. Most of the ones that do exist are adaptations of stage musicals, like Little Shop of Horrors (1986) or Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007). Those films often show their theatrical roots by having characters break into song with music that plays “non-diegetically,” which means that the music is not being played onscreen. “Diegetic” musicals are ones in which the characters perform their own music, which more often than not means that most of them are about professional musicians, like Inside Llewyn Davis (2012) or Nashville (1975). So a horror musical that is diegetic, and one with characters who are amateur musicians, is especially rare indeed.

    Well, that was a new word for me.

    AN THMUSIC BY paul GIVANNI.

    Here is the full Wicker songbook with all the lyrics.

    https://www.art-et-essai.org/sites/default/files/attachments/soutenu/wicker_man_songbook_web.pdf

    The script of the film was by Anthony Schaffer and the music by Paul Giovanni.

  15. I thought I’d stage a Waterson breakout on another thread.
    A friend used to dance with this side.
    https://www.goathlandploughstots.com/

    One of their musicians is Eliza Carthy, and one time their roadie was Martin Carthy, I was sat in the Beck Hall Inn when Norma came in and sat with us musing where her husband was.

    At the Watersons’ Mighty River of Song at the RAH with a full contingent of Watersons (not Lal) we were interviewed and filmed in the interval and asked our views on seeing the Plough Stots on stage. They’d asked the wrong people as we had to say we’d seen them a few times in Goathland.

  16. As you can imagine, the Tube keep suggesting some Latvian songs for me to listen to. I’m not complaining. Some fine tunes…

    And then there’s Latvian punk.

    Very fine brass section.

  19. I also would love to those remarkable Tyrolean titfers

    Those Austrians do love their cowbells

    And their yodelling is remarkable.

    Hell’s bells. it’s Krampus

    Let’s have some more yodelling.

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