On the land, where everyone’s hopes for a plentiful year lay, the cows were put back to pasture.  For the Saxons this was Tri-Milchi month when cows might be milked three times a day.  Shepherds still wished to keep the lambs nursing, but milkmaids were eager to have them weaned so the ewes’ milk could be used with that of the cows for cheese-making.  The third plowing of the fields should be done by now, and the winter-planted grain was ready for weeding.  The spring plantings  would not need that for another month, but the task would go on until haying at high summer.

This was also the time for making drainage ditches and for measuring stiff soils with marl and lime.  Thatched roofs needed to be repaired after winter damages, and for rainy days there was still threshing from last year’s harvest to be done under cover.  Early peas needed planting, and hopefully there was still fodder left in the barns in case the spring was cold and the grass late.  Horses, wintered in lower country, would be brought now to summer on the moors (until October).

For hunting, the roebuck (from Easter) and the hare (from Michaelmas in September) were still in season, but nothing else was.

For the church, this was usually the month of Rogationtide (five weeks after Easter) and Ascension Day.  Rogation Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are for fasting or abstinence, with prayers in the church for the crops’ fertility.  Led by the village priest with cross, banners, bells, and lights, the village men went a-ganging, walking the parish boundaries with great ceremony.  At customary points such as the “Holy Oak” or “Gospel Stone” prayers were said and blessings asked.  Because literacy was low and records perishable and the correct line of the boundaries important, small boys accompanied their fathers and were (with probably less ceremony than more) bumped on boundary stones and trees and thrown into ponds and streams to help them remember where the boundary ran.

Rogation ends with Holy Thursday, Ascension Day, celebrating Christ’s ascension into heaven the fortieth day after Easter.

Seven weeks after Easter comes Pentecost (Whitsunday) and Whitsun week, a great church festival ending on the following Trinity Sunday.  Although Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of Whitsun week are meant for fasting or abstinence, the over-all atmosphere for medieval England seems to have been one of holiday.  As little work as possible was done, and in the great towns there were elaborate presentations of mystery plays, and everywhere there were morris dancers, fairs, feasting, much drinking, and high spirits.  This was the time of year when King Arthur was supposed to have held his most splendid courts, and through the Middle Ages this was the special season of chivalrous festivities and tournaments.

It was also traditional that, one way or another, you had to have gooseberries for Whitsunday dinner, to prevent you being a fool (a goose) in the coming year.  It was also generally known this was an unlucky month for weddings.  On the other hand, May 2 was the ideal day for gathering wood from the rowan tree to make charms against witches and fairies.  And by May’s end the warm, rich days of full summer were surely come.

May 1434