The above illustrations for the Worker's May Day are from the nineteenth-century artist, book illustrator, cartoonist, and craftsman Walter Crane. (Some images are modified.) If, like the Gypsy Scholar, you had intuited that the two seemingly separate May Day festivals—the seasonal, pagan May Day and the socio-political, worker's May Day—are really not separate at all, that they are more like two roots of one great historical Flower—a "green root" and a "red root," respectively—, but needed some substantial evidence for such an intuition, then Walter Crane is your man!

Crane was both an artist with pagan sensibilities of nature and a committed socialist (the GS would argue an anarcho-socialist), which meant that he had a foot in both worlds. Thus, these illustrations for May Day are prime examples of a socialist art grounded in an idyllic natural world, expressive of the (Romantic) mythic imagination. More to the point, the Workers' May Day these illustrations portray is not that of the standard Marxist variety of a demythologized and mechanized worldview but rather one presided over by a nature goddess from ancient times—Flora, the Roman Goddess of Flowers, whose festival, the Floralia, took place in late April and early May of the Julian calendar. (Folklorists believe that the origin of May Day as a seasonal festival is the Floralia.) Flora now appears in the illustration "A Garland For May Day 1895," pressed into service for the socialist cause. "Dedicated To The Workers," she is depicted as holding up her traditional garland of flowers, but now wears the Phrygian (red) bonnet (the long-time symbol of revolution, particularly associated with the French Revolution). Likewise in Crane's 1890 illustration (which he drew in 1889, after May 1 had been chosen as International Workers' Solidarity Day), "Labour's May Day: Dedicated To The Workers Of The World," with its theme of the "Solidarity of Labour," she also sports the Phrygian bonnet, but this time she is a winged figure with the word "Freedom" inscribed over her head. (She previously appeared as an angelic figure in Crane's 1885 painting "Freedom.") Here, she is holding banners with the words "Fraternity" and "Equality" on them. The five inhabited Continents are listed, each adjacent to the worker representing that Continent. Workers around the world have all laid their tools down to take a break from their labors and enjoy a simple circle dance in solidarity with each other and with Flora herself, and in celebration of the simple joy of being alive—just like the commoners ecstatically dancing around their maypoles on May Day or (Celtic) Beltane. (This is hardly the type of message put out by the official "scientific socialism" of Marxist artistic propaganda of the time!)

Of all these illustrations, "The Worker's Maypole" (first published in 1894 in the socialist journal Justice) is the one that most revealingly fuses together the two May Days. Here, Crane emphasizes the striking vitality of the modern Workers' May Day by connecting it with the maypole (the preeminent symbol of pagan vitality celebrated in the seasonal May Day—the same maypole that became politicized in the premodern period, serving as a "lightening rod" signal to the oppressed workers to rise up in "carnivalesque" rebellion) and the female form; in this case the May Queen. "The Worker's Maypole" declares "the cause of labour is the hope of the world." The May Queen, wearing the Phrygian bonnet, holds a banner emblazoned with the slogan "Socialization, Solidarity, Humanity." Women are represented by the May Queen at the top of the illustration, with her crown showing the legend "Freedom" with banners from her wings/arms reading "Fraternity" and "Equality". In the centre of the scene Crane's beflowered May Queen welcomes the toilers of the world and carries their banners high. Dancing workers (like those ecstatic maypole dancers of old) interweave ribbons labeled with specific industrial complaints, such as “Eight Hours” (the duration of the work day), "Employers’ Liability," and "No Starving Children, into those that evoke utopian ideals such as “Leisure for All and A Life Worth Living.” Set within an ogee of undulating vegetation, the illustration addresses itself to the viewer in terms of visual profusion. Lines curve and shape upward and downward, a graphic evocation of the joyful expressions of the workers. (What progressive writer Barbara Ehrenreich identifies as the essential element of the medieval and premodern May Day celebrations—"collective joy," which Western culture lost with the Puritan and capitalist repression of this festival.) In this visual celebration of cooperation, the graphic line itself weaves and dances. This, it seems to say, is indeed a life worth living. Here, Crane foregoes the standard socialist tools of satire, parody, and caricature in favor of idealism, in particular the evocation of a pastoral idyll that condemns the industrial present (in a similar way that rural commoners of the premodern period in England demonstrated their rejection of capitalist industrialization by setting up their maypoles and celebrating—at least, that is, before the Puritan authorities banned maypoles in 1644). With "The Worker's Maypole," then, the socialist artist has transcended the strict ideological position of Marxist socialism with his post-revolutionary imagery. Therefore, the GS would argue that Crane's offering for May Day of 1894, "The Worker's Maypole," brings together the English folk tradition of the May Day maypole and the demands of the international labour movement; in other words, Crane was the first, as a modern artist and political radical, to recognize and demonstrate the interconnection of the age-old, seasonal May Day and the nineteenth-century, socio-political May Day. 

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There is further evidence of Crane's artistic seasonal/pagan sensibilities concerning May Day. They can be seen in his lithograph illustrations for three children's books (part of his oeuvre of "flower books"): (1) The First of May: A Fairy Masque (1881), a story of fairies and flowers, as told and rendered by illustrations to poems written by Crane. (2) Flora's Feast: A Masque of Flowers (1889). That Flora was an important goddess figure for Crane in relation to May Day is also evidenced in two of his works: the painting "Flora" and the set of tiles entitled "Flora's Train." (3) Queen Summer, or, The tourney of the Lily & the Rose (1891). Also worthy of note here are two seasonal paintings, "The Coming of May" (1873), "Summer 1895," an illustration that combines May Day flowers and the workers' May Day, "Flowers For The Labour's May Day" (1898), another that combines the May Day theme of love with socialism, "A Posy For Mayday and A Poser For Britannia" (1910), and yet another along the same lines, "Her Message to Labour for May Day;" a goddess of flowers giving a "May Day" message of hope to the workers" in terms of the coming of the sun and spring. Finally, we can see Crane's seasonal/pagan sensibilities expressed most revealingly in two poems for May Day. The first is part of a sequence of illustrations for the months of the year ("The Procession of the Months"). This "May" illustration features a traditional poem for the season (with verses by Beatrice Crane). The second is a May Day poem addressed to workers, whose first stanza evokes the traditional mid-spring theme of the season:

"World Workers, whatever may bind ye, / This day let your work be undone: / Cast the clouds of the winter behind ye, / And come forth and be glad in the sun."

As much as the traditional socialists want to keep Crane's "floral fantasies" resolutely separated from his serious political cartoons (which he dubbed "cartoons for the cause"), the GS would argue that they are just as "political" (in their evocation of a utopian ideal society) as any typical socialist cause.  Again (to reiterate the GS' take on Crane a little differently), the Socialist artist is also the Romantic artist. 

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The images below are taken from the Crane works listed as prime examples of his seasonal/pagan sensibilities concerning the May Day.