Welcoming The May, Chanctonbury Ring, 2018

Sometime towards the end of March Justin Hopper, author of The Old Weird Albion, asked me if I’d like to participate in some way with him and renowned folk musician Sharron Kraus in a ritualistic thing we’re going to do at Chanctonbury just after the Morris Men dance at sunrise.

Unfortunately I didn’t have any appropriate artwork at the time, but I promised to come along to document the morning as best I could. So at 5:30am this morning, laden down with a video camera I’d never used before, I was on my way to Chanctonbury Ring for the annual Welcoming the May…

The video above is rather hastily edited together with minimal expertise (because I’ve never really done video editing before!), but hopefully it will serve as a record of what it was like to be up on Chanctonbury Ring early on May Day morning in 2018.

The performers/celebrants are, in order of appearance:

• Chanctonbury Ring Morris Men
• Adam Ranger (Druid)
• Justin Hopper (Author)
• Angus Carlyle (Author/Artist)
• Sharron Kraus (Musician)

The video should be high-enough resolution to watch full-screen, and the sound quality isn’t too bad even if I say so myself.