May Day

May Day:

The May Day carol is a part of the memento mori genre, which has existed in the West since antiquity. Not only in the West: the samurai Daido Yuzan wrote:

One who is a samurai must before all things keep constantly in mind, by day and by night, from the morning when he takes up his chopsticks to eat his New Year's breakfast to Old Year's night when he pays his yearly bills, the fact that he has to die. That is his chief business. If he is mindful of this, he will live in accordance with the paths of Loyalty and Filial Duty, will avoid the myriads of evils and adversities, keep himself free from disease and calamity and moreover enjoy a long life. He will also be a fine personality with many admirable qualities. For existence is impermanent as the dew of evening and the hoarfrost of morning, and particularly uncertain is the life of the warrior, and if he thinks he can console himself with the idea of lifelong service to his lord or unending devotion to his relations, something may well happen to make him neglect his duty to his lord and forget what he owes to his family. But if he determines simply to live for today and take no thought for the morrow, so that when he stands before his lord to receive his commands he thinks of it as his last appearance and when he looks upon the face of his relatives he feels that he will never see them again, then will his duty and regard for both of them be completely sincere, while his mind will be in accord with the path of loyalty and filial duty.

I have always thought it was wise advice.

The skeletons in the May Day carol's paintings appear to take the living by the hand and lead them away to the hidden land of the dead. The woodcut of the skeleton leading the child away from his family is particularly moving. Those who travel that road do not reappear, but vanish from the world of men -- just as a branch of May, full of flowers, will soon be gone as if it never had been at all.

Yet today we have a counterpoint in Rome. This tradition of the display of the incorrupt body has a significant history in the West. It has always seemed odd to me to disinter and display the body of the dead; if it were being done by someone other than the Pope, one might say it was sacrilegious. If in this case it is instead religious, it is still the sort of thing that strikes me as strange.

Surely it is intended to seem strange. The branch of May is provided to draw your attention to the order of the world, and remind you of something mysterious and true about it: the order of death, and our powerlessness to reclaim things lost in time. The display in Rome is meant to make an assertion to the contrary, and so of course it must seem strange: it is a claim made in defiance of the ordinary truths of the world.