OPINION

The merry month

When 16th century English playwright Thomas Dekker wrote The Shoemaker's Holiday, which included the poem "The Merry Month of May," there's no record of whether he knew much about Roanoke Colony or Virginia Dare.

Roanoke was England's first settlement in the New World, and Virginia the first known British child born on its soil.

By 1599, when The Shoemaker's Holiday was first performed, the mystery of Roanoke Colony--it had been found deserted nine years earlier--was probably no longer news. Since Jamestown, which would become the first permanent English settlement, was still eight years away, the idea of New World colonies may have been lost altogether on theater-going Londoners.

Thus Dekker's tribute to May's merriment had nothing to do with America. It was rooted in the renewal rite of springtime as the backdrop for blossoming love.

Ironically, war features prominently in the play's plot, almost three centuries before the first Decoration Day flowers were laid at a fallen soldier's grave here in the U.S.

One of the characters attempts to have his nephew sent to war to remove him from a love triangle, and the nephew avoids going by taking on the identity of a Dutch shoemaker. After another character is drafted and wounded, a wealthy London citizen, in a deceitful attempt to woo and marry her, tells the injured soldier's wife her husband was killed.

In Act III, Sir Roger Otley, the Lord Mayor, commends master shoemaker Simon Eyre, saying he'd prefer a heart "but half so light as yours" over 1,000 pounds sterling.

"A pound of care pays not a dram of debt," Eyre replies to the Lord Mayor. "Hum, let's be merry, whiles we are young; old age, sack and sugar will steal upon us, ere we be aware."

Then the poem famously starts with "O the month of May, the merry month of May," and subsequent stanzas celebrate frolic and green, and a lover's "Summer Queen," and nightingales singing in the forest's choir.

May today still features nature's finest greenery (its birthstone is the emerald) and continues as a popular month for matrimonial ceremonies. Nearly 30 million Americans watched Prince Harry wed Meghan Markle last May 19.

But May is also the month of pomp and circumstance, of calling Mom, of remembering those who sacrificed all for our liberty, and of opening swimming pools or heading to the lake.

Graduations galore will launch mortarboard-wearing students from kindergarten through post-collegiate study on to the next adventure.

Next Sunday marks the 105th edition of the day set aside as a "public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country." While President Woodrow Wilson's administration had its failures, his Mother's Day proclamation launched an illustrious legacy.

The older I get, the more I cherish both the mothers in my life. Happy early to Karen Kelley and Mary Ann Washington. To paraphrase the Lord Mayor's compliment in Dekker's play, I'd rather have a heart half so virtuous as theirs than a million dollars.

Many Americans have forgotten the origin and meaning of Memorial Day, and primarily celebrate the day as the unofficial first day of summer.

Congress didn't help when it moved Memorial Day from its traditional May 30 observance to the last Monday in May to create a federal three-day holiday weekend.

The first "Decoration Day," as the commemorative occasion was officially christened, was held on May 30, 1868. More than 5,000 participants gathered to decorate the graves of 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington Cemetery, and Union general, Ohio congressman and future president James Garfield's oratory marked the moment.

The stirring speech is easily found on the Internet, and well worth the read, during which it can't help but be wondered: What other great rhetoric might have graced our national heritage had Garfield's assassin missed?

"I am oppressed with a sense of impropriety of uttering words on this occasion," he began, looking out over the rows and rows of tombstones. "If silence is ever golden, it must be here ...".

His powerful words are a unifying force for us today. "Peace, liberty and personal security," he said, "... all sprang from a single source: the old American principle that all owe due submission and obedience to the lawfully expressed will of the majority.

"This is not one of the doctrines of our political system--it is the system itself. It is our political firmament, in which all other truths are set, as stars in heaven. It is the encasing air, the breath of the nation's life."

The "silent assembly of the dead" at military cemeteries everywhere stand as sentinels to the true costliness of the blessings of freedom. We the living civilians must never confuse our luxurious inheritance with accomplishment, the price of which was dearly paid by those Memorial Day honors.

"I love to believe that no heroic sacrifice is ever lost," Garfield said. "Could these men be silent in 1861 ...? Read their answer in this green turf ... . Hither our children's children shall come to pay their tribute of grateful homage."

We are the children. And fair May beckons.

Breathe your free air with gratitude.

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Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.

Editorial on 05/03/2019

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