In today's world we have largely forgotten that we are part of Nature. We take our timing from clocks and calendars, fixed by man-made timetables, and through the wonders of modern technology ignore the rising and setting of the sun, the passing of the seasons, when the flowering or fruiting of trees gave a regular, but shifting pattern to the tasks of the people. To overlook this link with Nature is foolish, for it dislocates us from the very roots of our being.

Today we seem to have no need for Maypole Dancing nor Well Dressing except as a sort of spiritual tourist attraction - or do we? Those who participate in the old, traditional calendar customs nearly all report feelings of life, of joy and of unleashed tension and renewal. These links between us as earthly beings and the Earth as Mother Nature have a deep-seated influence over our feelings of security and cyclic change. Once that connection is broken we drift, anchorless in the sea of confusion, somehow sensing a loss we cannot understand or define. Those who have taken up the Old Faith, or sought comfort and stability in the reawakening of ancient customs, have somehow healed that rift within.

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"In the Austrian Alps Winter is chased away by a folkore character dressed in red (the ancient colour of life) known as the whiffler. It is his task to whiffle, while clearing the way for spring by sweeping with a broom. The Whiffler led a group of masked guizers, wearing pointed fools caps with bells, from farm to farm. At each stop they performed a special dance spiralling in and out of the house to bring good luck and fertility for the coming summer. Sometimes the dancers wore animal masks and were accompanied by an old woman (Winter) carrying a baby doll (Spring)."

"Sylvan liberty is idealized in the ballads of Robin Hood, in Shakespeare's Forest of Arden and in the wise 'wild men' who appear in Elizabethan and Jacobean pageants. This may relate to contemporary migration to forests in search of security and independence. Freedom of tenure was traditionally enjoyed in forest clearances, from at least the fourteenth century there had been numbers of free craftsmen in woodland areas, as well as outlaws.

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