05/21/2018
Today, May 21st, is Whit Monday. This entire week is Whitsuntide, "one of three vacation weeks for the medieval villein; on most manors he was free from service on the lord’s demesne this week, which marked a pause in the agricultural year" [Wikipedia].
Whitsun was still a major public holiday in England when I was a child, Whitsuntide a popular week for honeymoons, the weddings taking place the Saturday preceding. Then Whitsun got swept away in the bureaucratic managerialism of the late 1960s and early 1970s, along with pounds, shillings, and pence and other unacceptably distinctive national idiosyncracies.
If I could free VDARE.com readers from service on the lord’s demesne this week, I would; but I can’t. I can, though, direct your attention to Philip Larkin’s lovely poem "The Whitsun Weddings", read below by the poet himself:
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.