The spring equinox falls between 19 and 21 March, depending on the year. In the Northern Hemisphere it marks the end of winter’s harshest days and the joyful return of sunlight, glorious and resurrected, awakening the seeds once more. The celebrations of Holy Week and Easter remind us of this passage from death into new life. In some parts of the world, including southern Europe throughout much of its ancient history, this was the beginning of a new agricultural cycle filled with renewed possibilities, leaving the exhausted earth behind. Within this context we find traditions such as the burning of the Carnival King or the Old Woman of Lent, found throughout the Mediterranean from Greece to Catalonia, as well as the awakening of the fierce bear and its transformation into a domesticated man in the traditional dances of the Pyrenees.

Within religious belief —and therefore in its expression through oral narrative and popular tradition— this pattern appears in countless variations reaching back at least to the beginnings of agricultural civilisation. One example is the chaoskampf in which the great serpent Tiamat is slain by the god Marduk with the return of spring. Closer to us in both time and geography are dozens of folktales, legends and fairy tales that speak of a sun no longer the frail infant born at the winter solstice. With the Fool King and the terrible Old Woman defeated, the beasts driven away and the furious dead returned to their graves, the Young King is strong enough to reign with burning blood, taking the Queen of May as his bride beneath the tree of a thousand colours. Let the young dance; let them feast on food, wine, roses and joy: the bright half of the year has begun. How little they imagine what they themselves will become when the wheel turns once more!