London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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Greetings from London. And a very good morning to you, London Walkers, wherever you are. It’s Tuesday, May 27th, 2025.
Going slim-line this morning. Something short and sweet.
And it’s got to be done now, before May gets away from us.
Just for fun – and for edification – I thought we’d take a look at name May. Where it comes from. What it signifies. Its various and sundry associations. Words, names that we take for granted – never give a second thought to – are often beautiful and mysterious. They’re like the planet Saturn, they have rings around them.
So, yes, we’re going to focus on May. The word ‘focus’ remember comes from the Latin word for hearth. So May – the name – is the hearth we’re going to gather round.
The name is originally Latin, Maius. And Maius comes from Maia, an earth goddess of growth. It’s cognate with the Latin word maior, meaning bigger. And what can you hear in the Latin word maior, you can hear the word major. The American connection that springs to mind is the Major Leagues in baseball. Also known as the Big Leagues. It all hangs together. Things that grow by definition get bigger.
The name May has made the running. But it’s got some old contenders in these British Isles. The Irish-Gaelic name for the month is Bealtaine. Which comes from a proto-Celtic word meaning bright fire. Well, that’s understandable isn’t it, the waxing sun and all of that. The Scottish Gaelic word for the month of May means beginning. It’s the first month of summer in the Celtic calendar. The Anglo-Saxons called it Tri-Milchi. Tri (tree, tri) for three and milchi for milk. Tri-Milchi because cattle feeding on the lush green pastures you get in the month of May could be milked three times a day.
The mighty Charlemagne – listen to his name, Charle…Charles and magne, magnus, the great…magnus is cognate as well, isn’t it, with our Ur name for May, Maia, the goddess of growth, anyway, the mighty Charlemagne, Charles the Great, the 8th-century emperor who’s known as the Father of Europe, Charlemagne called May “joy-month.” So, fertility, warmth, growth, joy, merrymaking. The merry month of May.
Pause and feast on this rather splendid 1864 description of the month. It appears in Chambers Book of Days. Goes as follows:
“May brings with her the beauty and fragrance of hawthorn blossoms and the song of the nightingale. Our old poets delighted in describing her as a beautiful maiden, clothed in sunshine, and scattering flowers on the earth, while she danced to the music of birds and brooks. She has given a rich greenness to the young corn, and the grass is now tall enough for the flowers to play at hide-and-seek among, as they are chased by the wind. The grass also gives a softness to the dazzling white of the daisies and glittering gold of the buttercups.”
Just wonderful, isn’t it. Let’s hear it for the merry month of May, the beginning of summer. Chambers mentions the hawthorn, as it happens May’s flower is the hawthorn. Or the Lily of the Valley. Take your pick. And all that lush green grass, well, sure enough the month’s gemstone is Emerald. But a word to the wise, be careful about hawthorn. Don’t bring it across your threshold. In the house its blossoms are said to bring bad luck.
But here’s the thing about that wonderful Chambers passage. In 1864 Chambers was singing a song that had been around a long time. Here four centuries earlier – 1470, some 20 years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue – here is Sir Thomas Malory, author of Morte d’Arthur, trilling away about “joy month”: “The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit. For, like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in like wise every lusty heart that is any manner a lover, springeth, burgeoneth, buddeth, and flourisheth in lusty deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May.”
Well, May Day, the May Pole – the phallic symbol par excellence.
Now I hate to rain on the parade, but there’s another side to May. Not all of its associations are joy-filled. The Romans thought May was an unlucky month to marry in. And that wasn’t just a Roman superstition. There was an old saying here in England, Marry in May and you’ll rue the day. Who weds in May throws all away. And not just in England. May is also considered an unlucky month in Greece. Especially if the month begins on a Saturday. What’s that get you should you get married in May the first day of which was a Saturday, it gets you an early death, that’s what it gets you. That’s some wedding present. And then there’s the old saying, A hot May makes a fat churchyard. Also, according to superstition or folklore, May’s not a good month to give birth. As the old saying goes, “May chickens come cheeping”, meaning that children born in May are sickly. It’s a mixed bag, though, there’s another old piece of folklore that contends, “Whoever is ill in the month of May, for the rest of the year is healthy and gay.”
But do be careful about your apparel. Another old saying warns, If you would the doctor pay leave your flannels off in May.
But you can ward some of that off with sage. As the old saying puts it, He that would live for aye must eat sage in May.
And another word to the wise, whatever you do, don’t buy a broom in May. Especially not in Cornwall. You’ll be suspected of being a witch.
But let’s end on a high, on an up note. Let’s hear it for May dew. It was believed to work wonders for the complexion.
And sure enough, the most potent May dew was that which beaded the grass and leaves on May Day morning.
Women who washed their faces in that elixir would have their beauty renewed and restored.
And there you go, there’s May for you. See what I mean, the more you know about something the more interesting it becomes.
You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from www.walks.com –
home of London Walks,
London’s signature walking tour company.
London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it, London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £20 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science: you get what you pay for.
And just as surely, you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question: Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world you do whatever you have to do
to attract and keep the best guides in London –
you want them guiding for you, not for somebody else.
Bears repeating:
the way we’re structured – a guides’ cooperative –
is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following, a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases distinguished professionals:
By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor
(and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated – Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)
Stewart and Lisa – both of them CBEs – are just a couple of our headline acts.
Or take our Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z, “internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.
The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star Team of Guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.
It includes barristers, doctors, geologists, museum curators, a former London Museum archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actors, a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)…
well, you get the idea.
As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament, every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar
and the familiar new.
And on that agreeable note…
come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning one and all. See ya next time.