* of elm, and at others again of birch,† painted yellow and black in spiral lines,‡ and ornamented at the top with a flag. In some parts of the country it was suffered to stand untouched the whole year round.|| At Oxford, and the custom does not seem to have been confined to that place, Aubrey tells us, "the boys doe blow cowshorns and hollow canes all night; and on Mayday the young maids of every parish carry about their parish garlands of flowers, which afterwards they hang up in their churches." Hearne derives this blowing of horns ** from a custom they had amongst the Greeks and Romans, as well as amongst the Jews, of using the horn for a drinking cup, and in proof thereof gives sundry quotations from Homer, Nonnus, and the scholiasts on Nicander. All this learning is wasted to very little purpose; the mere fact of its being a cheap instrument of noise, to be procured with very little trouble, would sufficiently account for the use of it without going to the Greeks and Romans. Some classes, such as the milkmaids and the chimney "From towns they made excursions on May-eve into the country, cut down a tall elm, bring it into town with rejoicings, and having fitted a straight taper pole to the end of it, and painted it, erect it in the most public part, and upon holidays and festivals dress it with garlands of flowers, or ensigns and streamers."--Borlase's Natural History of Cornwall, p. 294. Folio. Oxford, 1758. + In his Welsh Dictionary, Owen explains Bedwen by "a birch tree; also a May-pole, because it was always made of birch." See Tollett's account of his window, fig. 8, in Jonson and Steeven's Shakspeare, at the end of Henry IV. part 1. § Lodge, in his Wit's Miserie, (p. 27, 4to. London, 1596,) when describing Usury says, "like the flag in the top of a Maypole." Bourne's Antiquitates Vulgares, p. 201, 8vo. Newcastle, 1725. Aubrey's Gentilisme and Judaisme, folio 108, MS. Brit. Mus. ** See Preface to Hearne's Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle, vol. i. p. 18. 8vo. London, 1724. sweepers, have in particular assumed this day for a distinctive festival; or, what is more likely, they continued to celebrate it long after it fell into disuse with their neighbours. The first of these have in most parts discontinued their peculiar mayings, though Strutt, who wrote little more than seventy years ago, says,' * 'the mayings are in some sorte yet kept up by the milk-maids at London, who go about the streets with their garlands and music dancing." Misson too, but he is of yet earlier date, has described the same thing, and more minutely— "On the first of May," he observes, " and the five and six days following, all the pretty young country girls that serve the town with milk, dress themselves up very neatly, and borrow abundance of silver plate, whereof they make a pyramid, which they adorn with ribbands and flowers, and carry upon their heads instead of common milk-pails. In this equipage, accompany'd by some of their fellow milk-maids and a bagpipe or fiddle, they go from door to door, dancing before the houses of their customers, in the midst of boys and girls, that follow them in troops, and everybody gives them something."t The plate here alluded to, was in many,-I believe, in most-instances borrowed from some pawnbroker at so much per hour, and always under bond from responsible housekeepers for its safe return. In this way the same plate and garland would be let out to different parties in the course of the day; one set hiring them from ten till one, and another from one o'clock to six. Those who could not afford this display, had recourse to a custom much more simple and beautiful. A cow, selected no doubt for the superiority of her personal attractions, was tricked out for the occasion as fine as flowers and ribbons of all * Strutt's View of the Manners, &c., vol. ii. p. 99. + Misson's Travels, translated by Ozell, p. 307, 8vo. London, 1719. colours could make her; they were twined about her horns, her neck, her tail, and even garlanded the rope by which she was led, while a net, with similar ornaments interwoven, was flung across her back, as though she had been a lady's palfrey. In this state Bessy was paraded along in triumph by a pretty country girl, quite as gay as herself with flowers and ribbons, the mistress marching at her side in like fashion. Nor is it many years since this primitive and pleasing show might have been witnessed within the sound of the old abbey-bells. Many superstitions belong to May-day in practice that do not appear to have any necessary, or natural connection with it. Thus the month itself is held to be unlucky for the solemnization of marriage, an idea probably derived to us through Popish times from the ancient Romans.* To bathe the face in dew that lies upon the morning grass will on this particular day be as beneficial as the bath of beauty in the fairy tales.† Divinations also of various kinds are practised. In Northumberland they fish with a ladle for a wedding-ring, that has been dropt into a bowl of syllabub, the object being to prognosticate who shall first be married. It would seem too that a species of divination was practised with snails. This was done by strewing the hearth with white embers, placing a snail upon them, and from the lines traced by the creature in * So Ovid, a master in such matters, affirms: "Nec viduæ tædis eadem, nec virginis apta Fastorum, lib. v. ver. 486-490. + Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. i. p. 126. 12mo. edit. London, 1841. Hutchinson's Northumberland, vol. ii. p. 14, of Ancient Customsat the end of the volume. its progress imagining some letter which was to correspond with the initials of the "secret love."* Haythorn, or white thorn, gathered now is an infallible safe-guard against witches, as we are told by that indefatigable discoverer of witchcraft, Reginald Scot. "And now to be delivered from witches themselves, they hang in their entries an hearbe called pentaphyllon, cinque-fole, also an olive branch, also frankincense, myrrh, valerian, verven, palm, antirchmon, &c., also hay-thorne, otherwise called white-thorne,§ gathered on Maie-daie." Finally, in regard to this branch of our subject, a superstition remains to be noticed, peculiar, as I believe, to the Isle of Lewis, one of the Western Islands of Scotland. "The natives in the village of Barvas retain an ancient custom of sending a man very early to cross Barvas river, every first day of May, to prevent any females crossing it first; for that, they say, would hinder the salmon from coming into the river all the year round. They pretend to have learned this from a foreign sailor, who was shipwrecked * Gay's Shepherd's Week, 4th Pastoral. ✦ Discoverie of Witchcraft. By Reginald Scot, cap. xviii. p. 268. 4to. London, 1584. Although the word is so printed in both editions, I have no doubt whatever of its being a typographical blunder, for antirrhinon, sometimes called anarrhinon,or lychnis agria, Anglicè the herb calves' snout, or snap-dragon; in French mufle de veau; and in Greek cynocephalion. Pliny describes it as having no root- he could have been no very correct observer-of a hyacinthine flower, and the seed like a calf's snout. Magicians, he adds, have a high opinion of this herb, deeming that whoever wears it about the arm is safe from all poison, and evil charms, while to be anointed with it renders the person beautiful. In the first of the two qualities attributed to it, we see the cause of the superstition recorded by Scot. § This by a typographical blunder is printed white-horne in the quarto of 1584, but it is corrected in the folio. on that coast a long time ago. This observation they maintain o be true from experience.' Had the fanatics endeavoured to cure the people of these and the like superstitious follies they might have done some good, and would certainly have deserved some credit. But in this respect they were to the full as blind as their neighbours, and all the overflowing of their gall, which was not a little, was directed solely to put down an amusement, which they considered, and with reason, as opposed to their own religious traffic; it is not till the mind becomes completely soured and weaned from every thing like pleasure that it is fitted to receive their gloomy tenets. Hence, the jealous hatred borne by the fanatics of all ages towards the popular sports and pastimes, from the time of Lactantius† to those of Stubbes, or of Thomas Hall, the pastor, as he calls himself, of King's Norton—it should have been Hog's Norton, for a verier swine never wallowed in the mire of bigotry. In his Funebria Flora, or the Downfall of May-games, he brings twenty argu *Martin's Description of Western Islands of Scotland, p. 7. 8vo. London, 1716. 66 + Lactantius, who flourished at the end of the third, and the beginning of the fourth century, and therefore might have known better, adopted the idle legend of Flora having been a prostitute, and dogmatizes upon this subject with his usual bitterness, Celebrantur," he says, "illi ludi cum omni lasciviâ, convenienter memoriæ meretricis, nam præter verborum licentiam, quibus obscænitas omnis effunditur, exuuntur etiam vestibus, populo flagitante, meretrices, quæ tunc mimarum funguntur officio, et in conspectu populi usque ad satietatem impudicorum luminum cum pudendis motibus detinentur." Lactantii Institutionum, lib. i.-De Falsa Religione. As a father of the Church, Lactantius must have been both pious and modest; it follows as a matter of course; but without making any particular pretensions to either of these qualities, I should be ashamed to translate his modesty into English. Quarto. London, 1660. |