Hi it’s Saturday and time for LindaGHill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday. #SoCs. This week Linda said :“ Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “may.” Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!“
The May Day Possession.
May Day, I am carrying Dad’s Lilley of the Valley, a huge bunch. They smell absolutely beautiful. The sky is so blue and there are puffy little clouds floating around.
I am wearing my summer school uniform, so I am still in the junior part of the school. A powder blue pleated dress, a wide yolk at the front topped with a white collar. At the waste a belt that joins buttons at front. My blonde hair is in neat plaits, but as usual the unruly whisps are escaping around my face….that will get me scolded by the nuns. On top of my head is my straw Panama hat with the school badge. I have fresh white knee length socks and my sensible brown sandals.
I walk the two miles to school so proud of Dad’s flowers. Sister Margarite is waiting at the gate, she tells me off because my socks are not quite up to my knees and my unruly hair. I was never in her good books…she always had something to scold me for.
Today though I did not let her upset me, it was the first school Monday in May and time for the May day possession. The statue of Our Lady, Queen of the May was to be carried from the gate at the junior’s part of the school around the roads to the front of the senior school and through to the front lawn outside the main convent house.
I was always so proud because Dad’s flowers were used to decorate the statue’s head with a crown of Lilly of the Valley. The statue was carried on a plinth by four girls, and we all processed, some infront of the Virgin Queen of the May and the rest behind scattering petals on to the road and singing hymns to the Virgin Mary. How ever hard I tried to be good, try as I may, I was never picked to be a barer of the statue.
And here is the hymn we sang.
willowdot21 