May-Day, Old Style And New Style

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Title:     May-Day, Old Style And New Style
Author: Juliana Horatia Ewing [More Titles by Ewing]

"Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flow'ry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose."--Milton.

On the whole, perhaps, May is the most beautiful of the English months, especially the latter half of it; and yet I suppose very few May-days come round on which we are not disposed to wonder why our ancestors did not choose a warmer, and indeed a more flowery season for Maypoles and garlands and out-door festivities.

Children who live in the north of England especially must have a painfully large proportion of disappointments out of the few May-days of childhood.

Books and pictures, old stories told by Papa or Mamma of clattering chimney-sweeps and dancing May Queens, such as they saw in their young days, or heard of from their elders, have perhaps roused in us two of the strongest passions of childhood--the love of imitation and the love of flowers. We are determined to have a May-bush round the nursery-window, duly gathered before sunrise. "Pretty Bessy," our nursemaid, can do anything with flowers, from a cowslip ball to a growing forget-me-not garland. The girls are apt pupils, and pride themselves on their birthday wreaths. The boys are admirably adapted for May sweeps. Clatter is melodious in their ears. They would rather be black than white. Burnt cork will disguise them effectually; but they would prefer soot. A pole is forthcoming; ribbons are not wanting; the poodle will dance with the best of us. We have a whole holiday on Saints' Days, and the 1st of May is SS. Philip and James'.

What then hinders our enjoyment, and makes it impossible to keep May-day according to our hopes?

Too often this. It is "too cold to dawdle about." Flowers are by no means plentiful; they are pinched by the east wind. The May Queen would have to dance in her winter clothes, and would probably catch cold even then. It is not improbable that it will rain, and it is possible that it may snow. Worse than all, the hawthorn-trees are behind time, and are as obstinate as the head-nurse in not thinking the weather fit for coming out. The May is not in blossom on May-day.

And yet May-day used to be kept in the north of England as well as in warmer nooks and corners. The truth is that one reason why we find the weather less pleasant, and the flowers fewer than our forefathers did, is that we keep May-day eleven days earlier in the year than they used to do.

To explain how this is, I must try and explain what Old Style and New Style--in reckoning the days of the year--mean.

First let me ask you how you can count the days. Supposing you wish to remain just one day and night in a certain place, how will you know when you have stayed the proper time? In one of two ways. Either you will count twenty-four hours on the clock, or you will stay through all the light of one day, and all the darkness of one night. That is, you will count time either by the Clock or by the Sun.

Now we say that there are 365 days in the year. But there are really a few odd hours and minutes and seconds into the bargain. The reason of this is that the Sun does not go by the Clock in making the days and nights. Sometimes he spends rather more than twenty-four hours by the Clock over a day and night; sometimes he takes less. On the whole, during the year, he uses up more time than the Clock does.

The Clock makes exactly 365 days of 24 hours each. The Sun makes 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 49 seconds, and a tiny bit besides.

Now in time these odd hours added together would come to days, and the days to years. About fifteen hundred years of this little difference between the Sun and the Clock would bring it up to a year. So that if you went by the Clock you would say, "It is fifteen hundred years since such a thing happened." And if you went by the Sun you would say, "It is fifteen hundred and one years since it happened."

Men who could think and calculate saw how inconvenient this would be, and what mistakes it would lead to. If the difference did not come to much in their lifetime, they could see that it would come to a serious error for other people some day. So Julius Caesar thought he would pull the Clock and the Sun together by adding one day every four years to the Clock's year to make up for the odd hours the Sun had been spinning out during the three years before. The odd day was added to the month of February, and that year (in which there are three hundred and sixty-six days) is called Leap Year.

You remember the old saw--

"Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
February hath twenty-eight alone,
All the rest have thirty-one;
_Except in Leap Year, at which time
February's days are twenty-nine_."

This is called the Old Style of reckoning.

Now I dare say you think the matter was quite settled; but it was not, unfortunately--the odd day every four years was just a tiny little bit too much, and now the Clock was spending more time over her years than the Sun. After more than sixteen hundred years the small mistake was becoming serious, and Pope Gregory XIII decided that we must not have so many leap years. For the future, in every four hundred years, three of the Clock's extra days must be given up, and ten days were to be left out of count at once to make up for the mistakes of years past.

This change is what is called the New Style of Reckoning. Pope Gregory began it in the year 1582, but we did not adopt it in England till 1752, and as we had then nearly two hundred years more of the little mistake to correct, _we_ had to leave _eleven_ days out of count. In Russia, where our new Princess comes from, they have not got it yet. The New Style was begun in England on September the 2nd. The next day, instead of being called September the 3rd, was called September the 14th. Since then we have gone on quite steadily, and played no more tricks with either the Sun's year or the Clock's year.

I wonder what happened in the year 1752 to all the children whose birthdays came between September the 2nd and September the 14th! I hope their birthday presents did not drop through because his Majesty George the Second had let eleven birthdays slip out of that year's calendar, to get the Clock and the Sun to work comfortably together.

Now I think you will be able to see that in the next year after this change, May-day was kept eleven days earlier in the Sun's year than the year before; and it has been at an earlier season ever since, and therefore in colder weather. May-day in the Old Style would have come this year about the middle of the month; and as years rolled on it would have been kept later and later in the summer, and thus in warmer and warmer weather, because of that little mistake of Julius Caesar. At last, instead of complaining that the May is not out by May-day, people would have had to complain that it was over.

Now in the New Style we keep May-day almost in Spring, and, thanks to Pope Gregory's clever arrangement, we shall always keep it at the same season.

It is not always cold on a May-day even in the north of England. I have a vivid remembrance of at least one which was most balmy; and, when they are warm enough for out-door enjoyment, the early days of the year seem, like the early hours of the day, to have an exquisite freshness peculiarly their own. Then the month of May, as a whole, is certainly the month of flowers in the woods and fields. Autumn is the gayest season of the garden, but Spring and early Summer give us the prettiest of the wild-flowers.

"Among the changing months May stands confest
The sweetest, and in fairest colours drest."

That fine weather is not quite to be relied upon for May-day, even in the Old Style, some of the old May-day customs seem to suggest. In the Isle of Man it was the custom not only to have a "Queen of May," but also a "Queen of Winter." The May Queen was, as elsewhere, some pretty and popular damsel, gaily dressed, and with a retinue of maids of honour. The Winter Queen was a man or boy dressed in woman's clothes of the warmest kind--"woollen hood, fur tippet," &c. Fiddles and flutes were played before the May Queen and her followers, whilst the Queen of Winter and her troop marched to the sound of the tongs and cleaver. The rival companies met on a common and had a mock battle, symbolizing the struggle of Winter and Summer for supremacy. If the Queen of Winter's forces contrived to capture the Queen of May, her floral majesty had to be ransomed by payment of the expenses of the day's festivity.

Whether the Queen of Winter conquered in bad weather, and her fairer rival when the season was warm and the flowers abundant, we are not told.

This ceremony was probably learnt from the Danes and Norwegians, who were long masters of the Isle of Man. _Olaus Magnus_, speaking of the May-day customs of the Goths and Southern Swedes, says, "The captain of one band hath the name and appearance of Winter, is clothed in skins of beasts, and he and his band armed with fire-forks. They fling about ashes, by way of prolonging the reign of Winter; while another band, whose captain is called Florro, represents Spring, with green boughs such as the season affords. These parties skirmish in sport, and the mimic contest concludes with a general feast."

A few years ago in the Isle of Man the hillsides blazed with bonfires and resounded to horns on the 11th of May (May-eve, Old Style). "May flowers" were put at the doors of houses and cattle-sheds, and these were not hawthorn blossoms, but the flowers of the kingcup, or marsh marigold. Crosses made of sprays of mountain ash were worn the same night, and they, the bonfires and May flowers, were reckoned charms against "wizards, witches, enchanters, and mountain hags."

At Helston, in Cornwall, May-day seems to have been known by the name of Furry Day. Perhaps a corruption of "Flora's Day." People wore hawthorn in their hats, and danced hand-in-hand through the town to the sound of a fiddle. This particular performance was known as a "faddy."

It is probable that some of our May-day customs came from the Romans, who kept the festival of Flora, the goddess of flowers, at this season. Others, perhaps, have a different, if not an older source. One custom was certainly common to both nations. When the feast of Flora was celebrated, the young Romans went into the woods and brought back green boughs with which they decked the houses.

To "go a-Maying" is in fact the principal ceremony of the day wherever kept, and for whatever reason. In the north of England children and young folk "were wont to rise a little after midnight on the morning of May-day, and walk to some neighbouring wood accompanied with music and the blowing of horns, where they broke down branches from the trees, and adorned them with nosegays and crowns of flowers. This done, they returned homewards with their booty about the time of sunrise, and made their doors and windows triumph in the flowery spoil." Stubbs, in the _Anatomie of Abuses_ (A.D. 1585), speaks of this custom as common to "every parish, town, and village." The churches, as well as the houses, seem in some places to have been dressed with flowers and greenery.

In an old MS. of the sixteenth century it is said that on the feast of SS. Philip and James, the Eton boys were allowed to go out at four o'clock in the morning to gather May to dress their rooms, and sweet herbs to perfume them, "if they can do it without wetting their feet!"

Thirty or forty years ago May-day decorations, in some country places, consisted of strewing the cottage doorsteps with daisies, or other flowers.

In Hertfordshire a curious custom obtained of decking the neighbours' doors with May if they were popular, and with nettles if they were the reverse.

In Lancashire rustic wags put boughs of various trees at the doors of the girls of the neighbourhood. Each tree had a meaning (well known in the district), sometimes complimentary, and sometimes the reverse.

In France it was customary for lovers to deck over-night the houses of the ladies they wished to please, and school-boys paid a like compliment to their masters. They do not seem, however, to have been satisfied with nosegays or even with green branches; they transplanted young trees from the woods to the side of the door they wished to honour, and then decked them with ribbons, &c. There is a curious record that "Henry II., wishing to recompense the clerks of Bazoche for their good services in quelling an insurrection in Guienne, offered them money; but they would only accept the permission granted them by the king, of cutting in the royal woods such trees as they might choose for the planting of the May--a privilege which existed at the commencement of the French Revolution." In Cornwall, too, it seems to have been the custom to plant "stumps of trees" before the houses, as well as to decorate them with boughs and blossoms. And Mr. Aubrey (1686) says, "At Woodstock in Oxon they every May-eve goe into the parke, and fetch away a number of haw-thorne-trees, which they set before their dores; 'tis a pity that they make such a destruction of so fine a tree."

One certainly agrees with Mr. Aubrey. Thorns are slow to grow, hard to transplant, and very lovely when they are old. It is not to be regretted that such ruthless destruction of them has gone out of fashion.

In Ireland "tall slender trees" seem to have been set up before the doors, as well as "a green bush, strewed over with yellow flowers, which the meadows yield plentifully." A writer, speaking of this in 1682, adds, "A stranger would go nigh to imagine that they were all signs of ale-sellers, and that all houses were ale-houses," referring to the old custom of a bunch of green as the sign of an inn, which is illustrated by the proverb, "Good wine needs no bush." I have an old etching of a river-side inn, in which the sign is a garland hanging on a pole.

I fancy the yellow flowers must have been cowslips, which the green fields of Erin do indeed "yield plentifully."

Besides these private May-trees, every village had its common Maypole, gaily adorned with wreaths and flags and ribbons, and sometimes painted in spiral lines of colour. The Welsh Maypoles seem to have been made from birch-trees, elms were used in Cornwall, and young oaks in other parts of England. Round these Maypoles the young villagers danced, and green booths were often set up on the grass near them.

In many villages the Maypole was as much a fixture as the parish stocks, but when a new one was required, it was brought home on May-eve in grand procession with songs and instrumental music. I am afraid there is a good deal of evidence to show that the Maypoles were not always honestly come by! However, the Puritan writers (from whose bitter and detailed complaints we learn most of what we know about the early English May-day customs) are certainly prejudiced, and perhaps not quite trustworthy witnesses. One good man groans lamentably: "What adoe make our young men at the time of May? Do they not use night watchings to rob and steale young trees out of other men's grounde, and bring them into their parishe, with minstrels playing before?"

But as the theft must have been committed with all the publicity that a fixed day, a large crowd, and a full band could ensure, and as we seem to have no record of interference at the time, or prosecutions afterwards, I hope we may infer that the owners of the woods did not grudge one tree for the village Maypole. A quainter vengeance seems to have sometimes followed the trespass. Honesty was at a discount. What had been once stolen was liable to be re-stolen. There seems to have been great rivalry among the villages as to which had the best Maypole. The happy parish which could boast the finest was not left at ease in its supremacy, for the lads of the other villages were always on the watch to steal it. A record of this custom amongst the Welsh reminds one that Wales was at once the land of bards and the home of Taffy the Thief. "If successful," says Owen, speaking of these Maypole robbers, they "had their feats recorded in songs."

In old times oxen were commonly used for farmwork, and it seems that they had their share in the May fun. Another Puritan writer says, "They have twentie or fortie yoke of oxen, every oxe having a sweete nosegaie of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and these oxen draw home this Maie poole."

How well one can imagine their slow swinging pace, unmoved by the shouts and music which would stir a horse's more delicate nerves! Their broad moist noses; their large, liquid eyes, and, doubtless, a certain sense of pride in their "sweet nosegaies," like the pride of the Beast of a Regiment in his badge.

Horses, too, came in for their share of May decorations. It was an old custom to give the waggoner a ribbon for his team at every inn he passed on May-day.

In the last century there was a fixed Maypole near Horncastle, in Lincolnshire, to which the boys made a pilgrimage in procession every May-day with May-gads in their hands. May-gads are white willow wands, peeled, and dressed with cowslips.

There was a fixed Maypole in the Strand for many years--or rather a succession of Maypoles. One, when only four years old, was given to Sir Isaac Newton to make a stand for his telescope, and another seems to have had a narrow escape from being handed over to a less celebrated astronomer, some years later.

The wandering Maypole, with its Queen of the May and her chimney-sweeps, is a modern compound of the village Maypole and May Queen with the May games in which (as in the Christmas festivities) morris-dancers played a part. The May-day morris-dancers, like the Christmas mummers, performed sword-dances and sang appropriate doggerels in costume. The characters represented at one time or another were Maid Marian or the May Queen, Robin Hood or Lord of the May, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet, Little John Stokesley, Tom the Piper, Mad Moll and her Husband, Mutch, the Fool and the Hobby Horse. Archery was amongst the May-day sports, especially in the company of Robin Hood. The Summer King and Queen were perhaps the oldest characters. They seem to be identical with the Lord and Lady, and sometimes to have been merged in Robin Hood and Maid Marian.

"Maid Marian fair as ivory bone,
Scarlet, and Mutch, and Little John."

The King and Queen of May are spoken of in the thirteenth century, but morris-dancing at May-time does not seem to date earlier than Henry VII., and is not so old a custom as the immemorial one of going a-Maying

"To bring the summer home
The summer and the May-O!"

This was not confined to young people or to country-folk. Chaucer says that on May-day early "fourth goth al the court, both most and lest, to fetche the flowres fresh, and braunch, and blome," and Henry VIII. kept May-day very orthodoxly in the early years of his reign.

Milkmaids have been connected with May-day customs from an early period. Perhaps because syllabub and cream were the recognized dainties of the festival. In Northumberland a ring used to be dropped into the syllabub and fished for with a ladle. Whoever got it was to be the first married of the party. An odd old custom in Suffolk suggests that the hawthorn was not always ready even for the Old Style May-day. Any farm-servant who could find a branch in full blossom might claim a dish of cream for breakfast. The milkmaids who supplied London and other places used to dress themselves gaily on May-day and go round from house to house performing a dance, and receiving gratuities from their customers. On their heads--instead of a milk-pail--they carried a curious trophy, called the "Milkmaids' Garland," made of silver or pewter jugs, cups, and other pieces of plate, which they borrowed for the occasion, and which shone out of a mass of greenery and flowers. Possibly these were at first the pewter measures with which they served out the milk. The music to which the milkmaids' dance was performed, was the jangling of bells of different tones depending from a round plate of brass mounted upon a Maydecked pole; but a bag-pipe or fiddle was sometimes substituted.

Cream, syllabub, and dainties compounded with milk, belong in England to the May festival. In Germany there is a "May drink" (said to be very nice) made by putting woodruff into white Rhine wine, in the proportion of a handful to a quart. Black currant, balm, or peppermint leaves are sometimes added, and water and sugar.

The milkmaids' place has been completely usurped by the sweeps, who clatter a shovel and broom instead of the old plate and bells, and who seem to have added the popular Jack-in-the-green to the entertainment. Jack-in-the-green's costume is very simple. A wicker-work frame of an extinguisher shape, thickly covered with green, is supported by the man who carries it, and who peeps through a hole left for the purpose. May-day has become the Sweeps' Carnival. Mrs. Montague (whose son is said to have been stolen for a sweep in his childhood, and afterwards found) used to give the sweeps of London a good dinner every May-day, on the lawn before her house in Portman Square.

Another May-day custom is that of the choristers assembling at five o'clock in the morning on the top of the beautiful tower of Magdalen College, Oxford, and ushering in the day with singing. At the same time boys of the city armed with tin trumpets, called "May-horns," assemble beneath the tower, and contribute more sound than harmony to the celebration. Let us hope that it is not strictly a part of the old ceremony, but rather a minor manifestation of "Town and Gown" feeling, that the town boys jeer the choristers, and in return are pelted with rotten eggs. The origin of this special Oxford custom is said to be a requiem which was sung on the tower for the soul of Henry VII., founder of the College. In the villages girls used to carry round May-garlands. The party consisted of four children. Two girls in white dresses and gay ribbons carried the garland, and were followed by a boy and girl called "Lord and Lady," linked together by a white handkerchief, of which each held an end. The Lady carried the purse, and when she received a donation the Lord doffed his cap and kissed her. They sang a doggerel rhyme, and the form in which money was asked was, "Please to handsel the Lord and Lady's purse."

One cannot help thinking that some of our flowers, such as Milkmaids, Lords and Ladies, and Jack-in-the-green Primrose, bear traces of having got their common names at the great flower festival of the year.

In Cornwall boys carried the May-garland, which was adorned with painted birds' eggs. Old custom gave these young rogues the privilege of drenching with water from a bucket any one whom they caught abroad on May-morning without a sprig of May.

Mr. Aubrey says (1686): "At Oxford, the boyes do blow cows' horns all night; and on May-day the young maids of every parish carry about their parish garlands of flowers, which afterwards they hang up in their churches."

A generation or more ago the little boys of Oxford used to blow horns early on May-day--as they said--"to call up the old maids." There was once a custom in Lynn for the workhouse children to be allowed to go out with horns and garlands every May-day, after which a certain worthy gentleman gave them a good dinner.

In Cambridgeshire, within the present century, the children had a doll dressed as the "May Lady," before which they set a table with wine and food on it; they also begged money and garlands for "the poor May Lady."

There are some quaint superstitions connected with May-day and May-blossom. To bathe the face in the dew of a May morning was reckoned an infallible recipe for a good complexion. A bath of May dew was also supposed to strengthen weakly children. Girls divined for dreams of their future husbands with a sprig of hawthorn gathered before dusk on May-eve, and carried home in the mouth without speaking. Hawthorn rods were used at all seasons of the year to divine for water and minerals. Bunches of May fastened against houses were supposed to keep away witches and venomous reptiles, and to bring prosperity in various shapes.

The Irish of the neighbourhood of Killarney have a pretty superstition that on May-day the O'Donoghue, a popular prince of by-gone days, returns from the land of Immortal Youth beneath the water to bless the country over which he once ruled.

Some curious customs among the Scotch Highlanders (who call May 1st _Beltan_ Day) have nothing in common with our Green Festival except as celebrating the Spring. They seem to be the remains of very ancient heathen sacrifices to Baal. They were performed by the herdsmen of the district, and included an open-air feast of cakes and custard, to which every one contributed, and which was cooked upon a fire on a turf left in the centre of a square trench which had been dug for the purpose. Some custard was poured out by way of libation. Every one then took a cake of oatmeal, on which nine knobs had been pinched up before baking, and turning his face to the fire threw the knobs over his shoulder, some as offerings to the supposed guardians of the flock, and the rest in propitiation of beasts and birds of prey, with the form "This to thee, O Fox! spare my lambs! This to thee, O hooded Crow!" &c. In some places the boys of the hamlet met on the moors for a similar feast, but the turf table was round, and the oatcake divided into bits, one of which was blackened with charcoal. These being drawn from a bonnet, the holder of the black bit was held _devoted_ to Baal, and had to leap three times over the bonfire.

I do not know of any children's games that were peculiar to May-day. In France they had a May-day game called _Sans-vert_. Those who played had to wear leaves of the hornbeam-tree, and these were to be kept fresh, under penalty of a fine. The chief object of the players was to surprise each other without the proper leaves, or with faded specimens.

A stupid old English custom of making fools of your friends on the 1st of May as well as on the 1st of April hardly deserves the title of a game. The victims were called "May goslings."

One certainly would not expect to meet with anything like "Aunt Sally" among May-day games, especially with the "May Lady" for butt! But not the least curious part of a very curious account of May-day in Huntingdonshire, which was sent to _Notes and Queries_ some years ago, is the pelting of the May Lady as a final ceremony of the festival. The May-garlands carried round in Huntingdonshire villages appear to have been more like the "milkmaids' garland" than genuine wreaths. They were four to five feet high, extinguisher-shaped, with every kind of spring flower in the apex, and with ribbons and gay kerchiefs hanging down from the base, by the round rim of which the garland was carried; the flower-peak towering above, and the gay streamers depending below. Against this erection (not unlike the "mistletoe boughs" of the North of England) was fastened a gaily-dressed doll. The bearers were two little girls, who acted as maids of honour to the May Queen. Mr. Cuthbert Bede describes her Majesty as he saw her twenty years ago. She wore a white frock, and a bonnet with a white veil. A wreath of real flowers lay on the bonnet. She carried a pocket-handkerchief bag and a parasol (the latter being regarded as a special mark of dignity). An "Odd Fellows'" ribbon and badge completed her costume. The maids of honour bore the garland after her, whose peak was crowned with "tulips, anemones, cowslips, kingcups, meadow-orchis, wall-flower, primrose, crown-imperial, lilac, laburnum," and "other bright flowers." Votive offerings were dropped into the pocket-handkerchief bag, and with these a feast was provided for the children. If the gifts had been liberal, "goodies" were proportionately plentiful. Finally, the May-garland was suspended from a rope hung across the village street, and the children pelted the May-doll with balls provided for the occasion. Their chief aim was to hit her nose.

Another correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ speaks of ropes with dolls suspended from them as being stretched across every village street in Huntingdonshire on May-day, and adds, that not only ribbons and flowers were attached to these swinging May Ladies, but articles of every description, including "candlesticks, snuffers, spoons, and forks."

There are no May carols rivalling those of Christmas, and the verses which children sing with their garlands are very bald as a rule.

A Maypole song of the Gloucestershire children would do very well to dance to--

"Round the Maypole, trit-trit-trot!
See what a Maypole we have got;
Fine and gay,
Trip away,
Happy is our New May-day."

I have read of a pretty old Italian custom for the friends of prisoners to assemble outside the prison walls on May-day and join with them in songs. They are also said to have permission to have a May-day feast with them.

Under all its various shapes, and however adapted to the service of particular heathen deities, or to very rude social festivity, the root of the May-day festival lies in the expression of feelings both natural and right. Thankfulness for the return of Spring, anxiety for the coming harvests of the fruits of the earth, and that sense of exhilaration and hopefulness which the most exquisite of seasons naturally brings--brings more strongly perhaps in the youth of a nation, in those earlier stages of civilization when men are very dependent upon the weather, and upon the produce of their own particular neighbourhood--brings most strongly of all to one's own youth, to the light heart, the industrious fancy, the uncorrupted taste of childhood.

May-day seems to me so essentially a children's festival, that I think it is a great pity that English children should allow it to fall into disuse. One certainly does not love flowers less as one grows up, but they are more like persons, and their ways are more mysterious to one in childhood. The cares of grown-up life, too, are not of the kind from which we can easily get a whole holiday. We should do well to try oftener than we do. Wreaths do not become us, and we have allowed our joints to grow too stiff for Maypole dancing. But we who used to sigh for whole holidays can give them! We can prepare the cakes and cream, and provide ribbons for the Maypole, and show how garlands were made in our young days. We are very grateful for wild-flowers for the drawing-room. To say the truth, they last longer with us than with the children, and perhaps we combine the delicate hues of spring, and lighten our nosegays by grass and sword-flags and rushes with more cunning fingers than those of the little ones who gathered them.

For these is reserved the real bloom of May-day! And the orthodox customs are so various, that families of any size or age may pick and choose. One brother and sister can be Lord and Lady of the May. One sister among many brothers must be May Queen without opposition. Those of the party most apt to catch cold in the treacherous sunshine and damp winds of spring should certainly represent the Winter Queen and her attendants, in the warmest possible clothing and the thickest of boots. The morning air will then probably only do them a great deal of good. It is not desirable to dig up the hawthorn-trees, or to try to do so, even with wooden spades. The votive offering of flowers for her drawing-room should undoubtedly await Mamma when she comes down to breakfast, and I heartily wish her as abundant a variety as Mr. Cuthbert Bede saw on the Huntingdonshire garland. That Nurse should have a bunch of May is only her due; and of course the nursery must be decorated. Long strips of coloured calico form good ribbons for the Maypole. Bows and arrows are easily made. It is also easy to cut one's fingers in notching the arrows. When you are tired of dancing, you can be Robin Hood's merry men, and shoot. When all the arrows are lost, and you have begun to quarrel about the target, it will be well to hang up an old doll and throw balls at her nose. Dressing-up is, at any time, a delightful amusement, and there is a large choice among May-day characters. No wardrobe can fail to provide the perfectly optional costumes of Mad Moll and her husband. There are generally some children who never will learn their parts, and who go astray from every pre-arranged plan. By any two such the last-named characters should be represented. In these, as in all children's games, "the more the merrier"; and as there is no limit to the number of sweeps, the largest of families may revel in burnt cork, even if dust-pans in proportion fail. If a bonfire is more appropriate to the weather than a Maypole, we have the comfort of feeling that it is equally correct.

It is hardly needful to impress upon the boys what vigour the blowing of horns and penny trumpets will impart to the ceremonies; but they may require to be reminded that Eton men in old days were only allowed to go a-Maying on condition that they did not wet their feet!

Above all, out-door May Fun is no fun unless the weather is fine; and I hope this little paper will show that if the 1st of May is chilly, and the flowers are backward, nothing can be more proper than to keep our feast on the 12th of May--_May-day, Old Style_. If the Clerk of the Weather Office is unkind on both these days, give up out-door fun at once, and prepare for a fancy-ball in the nursery; all the guests to be dressed as May-day characters. Garland-making and country expeditions can then be deferred till Midsummer-day. It is not _very_ long to wait, and penny trumpets do not spoil with keeping.

But do not be defrauded of at least one early ramble in the woods and fields. It is well, in the impressionable season of life, to realize, if only occasionally, how much of the sweetest air, the brightest and best hours of the day, people spend in bed. Any one who goes out every day before breakfast knows how very seldom he is kept in by bad weather. For one day when it rains very early there are three or four when it rains later. But we wait till the world has got dirty, and the air full of the smoke of thousands of breakfasts, and clouds are beginning to gather, and then we say England has a horrible climate. I do not believe in many quack medical prescriptions, but I have the firmest faith in May dew as a wash for the complexion. Any morning dew is nearly as efficacious if it is gathered in warm clothes, thick boots, and at a sufficient distance from home.

There are some households in which there are no children, and there are some in which the good things of this life are very abundant. To these it may not be very impertinent to suggest a remembrance of the old alderman of Lynn's kindly benefaction. To beg leave for the children of the workhouse to gather May-day nosegays for you, and to give them a May feast afterwards, would be to give pleasure of a kind in which such unhomely lives are most deficient. A country ramble "with an object," and the grace-in-memory of a traditionary holiday and feast, shared in common with many homes and with other children.

To go a-Maying "to fetche the flowres fresh" is indeed the best part of the whole affair.

But, when the sunny bank under the hedge is pale with primroses, when dog-violets spread a mauve carpet over clearings in the little wood, if cowslips be plentiful though oxslips are few, and rare orchids bless the bogs of our locality, pushing strange insect heads, through beds of _Drosera_ bathed in perpetual dew--then, dear children, restrain the natural impulse to grub everything up and take the whole flora of the neighbourhood home in your pinafores. In the first place, you can't. In the second place, it would be very hard on other people if you could. Cull skilfully, tenderly, unselfishly, and remember what my mother used to say to me and my brothers and sisters when we were "collecting" anything, from fresh-water algae to violet roots for our very own gardens, "_Leave some for the Naiads and Dryads_."

[The end]
Juliana Horatia G Ewing's short story: May-Day, Old Style And New Style

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