Nothing announces the arrival of midsummer like a story about an amorous peacock and his unrequited love affair with a petrol pump, writes Frank McNally
In case you missed the reports, this tragicomic tale centres on a filling station in the Forest of Dean, England, where for three breeding seasons now, a peacock called Mr P has been wooing a row of mechanical petrol dispensers. His courtship - perhaps forecourtship is the more correct term - includes regularly spreading his tail-feathers before the objects of his affections. And the pumps' cruel indifference over three long years has done nothing to diminish his ardour. On the contrary.
Every song is a cry for love, as Brian Kennedy sings. Mr P would agree. His owner, Shirley Horsman, believes the bird is inflamed by the clicking noise the pumps make when in use. This is "the same noise as a peahen saying: come on, I'm ready", she explains; "every time he hears someone filling up, he thinks he's onto a good thing." Quentin Spratt of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds suggests the pumps' red and white livery may be a factor too.
"Peacocks will display to anything given half the chance, but they're especially keen on colourful objects," he told the Daily Telegraph. Whatever the attraction, says Mrs Horsman, Mr P's romancing starts at the same time every year: "In spring, he gets his tail feathers. Then he goes looking for love." Throughout the May to August breeding season, he makes his way to the filling station every morning in time for its 6.30 opening, and sometimes spends 18-hour days engaged in his heroic but vain pursuit.
Mrs Horsman has received an offer to rehouse the love-sick bird, who may have become unhinged when a fox killed her peahens a few years ago. But anthropomorphic romantics among us will hope that, whether he stays or goes, Mr P meets something more suitable soon. Perhaps a nice pedestrian traffic-light, for example. If one thing led to another, they could click together.
Friskiness affects most species at this time of year. As a Swedish proverb says: "Midsummer Night is not long, but it sets many cradles rocking." Inevitably, customs associated with the solstice tend to concentrate on romantic predictions. According to Dorothy Spicer's The Book of Festivals, young Irish women in search of suitors used to drop melted lead in water and then interpret the shapes it made (a poignant contrast with Mr P, whose ambitions are strictly unleaded).
In Spain, they used eggs for the same purpose while in Estonia, single women picked seven different flowers and hoped to dream about future husbands. Many midsummer celebrations place strong emphasis on drinking: an activity that, while it has no properties of divination, helps to make the predictions happen. Incidentally, the moon in June was traditionally called the "mead moon", because beehives were full and the honey was fermented for alcohol. The word "honeymoon" may have similar origins.
Plants were once believed to have magical properties at this time of year. In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, juice from a flower called "love-in-idleness" is sprinkled on the eyes of lovers to make them fall for the first thing they see when they wake up. Maybe it works on peacocks too. Christianity tried to reclaim midsummer by imposing St John's Day (June 24th) on the solstice (which fluctuates between June 20th and 22nd). But paganism still vies with religion in the customs, and in the powers - not all medicinal - attributed to St John's Wort.
The themes of sex and plant-life combined in Fortuna, the Roman goddess whose feast was celebrated on June 24th. She was the goddess of fertilisation, and equally worshipped by would-be mothers and gardeners. In the form of Fortuna Virilis, she made women irresistible to men. According to Patricia Monaghan's The Book of Goddesses and Heroines, it may have been on her feast-day that Roman women invaded men's public baths.
Weather allowing, as a website called schooloftheseasons.com - to which I owe most of this information - says, midsummer is a time to mark in the open air. "Go out into the woods or up into the mountains or down to the beach," it advises.
If you're pursuing the middle option anywhere near Wicklow tonight, you might like to attend a concert in the small but pretty Calary Church, which lies in the hills above Kilmacanogue, near the Sugar Loaf. The Calary summer concerts are run by John Medlycott, former principal of Bono's old school, Mount Temple, who is still encouraging young musicians, albeit of a more formal kind and with tidier hair.
Tonight's programme features the Cashell Quartet. But you'd better hurry if you want to see them because there are only 17 tickets left (tel. 01-2818146) and the next show in Calary is not until August 1st. Those who do get in tonight will be treated to Janacek's Kreutzer Sonata and Schubert's tragic Death and the Maiden, which should inject some much-needed sobriety into the wildest week of the year.