Hawk of May

In the original Welsh, King Arthur's champion Gawain is called "Gwalchmai." This is most commonly translated as the "Hawk of May," which links Gwalchmai to his various stories about resurrection and new life, such as the Green Knight and the Loathly Lady.

A very interesting name indeed. Why "Hawk of May"? 

I looked around to see if I could find anything about the origin of Gawain's name and I found this paper by  Peter Kitson: "Gawain/Gwalchmai and his Peers: Romance Heroes (and a Heroine) in England, the Celtic Lands, and the Continent"...

In it he says that Gwalchmai, which he translates as "Falcon of May", even thought the meaning of gwalch is hawk,  "is a rather late re-shaping of some earlier name"...

But here is something interesting...Eurasian sparrowhawk, the most common hawk in Europe, starts mating in late Apr and nests in early May...So in Apr/May we see a lot of hawk couples doing...

It is interesting that the coat of arms of the dude whose name was "Hawk of May", had depiction of two headed hawk...A hawk couple caught in act in Apr/May, seen from below, looks like...

I first talked about the meaning of the double headed eagle in my post "Double headed eagle" about this ceremonial axe from Bactria, 2500-1500BC.

This is where I first proposed that two heads just means two birds, seen one on top of each other from below, like during griffin vulture mating synchronised flying...

Have you seen the article, "Golden eagles from Costa Rica", which is discussing the meaning of the two headed bird symbols as depictions of "bird couples in courtship"?

When the vultures start dancing, it is time to plant your corn (maize)...Article about the meaning of the gold "Double Headed Eagles", made in Costa Rica between 700 and 1530 AD by people of Diquis culture...

BTW, did you notice that the two headed hawk on Gawain's coat of arms is kind of greenish? Guess what "gwalch glas" (green hawk) means? A sparrow hawk 🙂

PS: I am not saying that whoever made Gawain's coat of arms knew anything about animal calendar markers or the original meaning of the double headed eagle symbol...But I find it interesting how it all fits again...By pure coincidence?

PPS: The coat of arms pictures an eagle, not a hawk, and the French caption below identifies it as such. So maybe the crest is accurate, but the image was co-opted?

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, which were the key to deciphering all this, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...