世界节日趣谈（5-6）.doc

May1
May Day
五朔节
While the Romans, the Celts, and others all ed the first of May with festivities, it was probably the Anglo-saxons who popularized themaybole, that most potent and evocative of emblems. Like other May Day customs, this freshly cut and stripped tree trunk, plante in the village square, is unsubtly erotic. The Elizabethan Puritan, Philip Stubbes, was moved in his Anatomie of Abuses to rall against “this May-pole (this stinking Idol, rather ) which is covered all over with floures and herbs… and sometimes painted with variable colours… And thus being reared up, with handkerchiefs and flags hovering about the top… then fall they to dance about it like as the heathen people.” He lamented the practice of sleeping outdorrs on May Eve: “ Of fortie, three score or a hundred maides going to the wood overnight, “ he wrote in 1583, “ there have scarcely the third part of them returned home again undefiled.”
Banned in England during the Reformation, maypoles rose again and are popular all over Europe to this day. The season’s potency persists. In his poem “ Corinna’s
Going A-Maying,” the seventeenth-century poet Robert Herrick urged his love:
Come, we’ll abroad; and let’s obey
The proclamation made for May.
5 maypoie 五朔节花柱 5 potent 强有力的 6 evocative of 使有想起…的 9 unsubtly 明显的
10 Elizabethan (英国女王)的伊丽莎白朝代的 10 Puritan 清教徒(基督教(新教)教徒(包括教士)中的一派) 11 rail against 责驾 14 rear up 直立 15fall they to =they fall to 他们开始中 17 of fortie, three score or a hundred maides 在40\60或100个少女中 19 undefiled 纯洁的 20the Reformation 宗教改革运动(16世纪改革天主教会的运动) 23 Robert herrick 罗伯特. 赫里克(1591-1674), 英国牧师,诗人,著有诗集<西方乐土>.
May 2
Big Kite flying
Odakaoge
风筝节
The master of Hamamatsu Castle, living in the mid-sixteenth century and thus in the dark days before the invention of his first son. According to legend, the master’s faithful retainer hit upon the idea of inscribing the baby’s name on a huge kite, which would fly from the castle’s battlements and could be seen from far and near.
Hama