CHAPTER II.POPULAR FESTIVALS AND FESTIVITIES.

[25]Slip quietly away. A word often found in the old Border Ballads, as “Then hooly, hooly up she rose,” etc.

Ah! cottage life! There is much more hidden under that name than ever inspired the wish to buildcottages ornées, or to inhabit them. There is a vast mass of human interests within its circle, of which the world takes little note. The loves and hopes; the trials and struggles; the sufferings, deaths, and burials; the festivities and religious confraternities; the indignities that fret, and the necessities that compel, to action and union our simple brethren and sisters. How little is truly known; how much is consequently misjudged; how great is the indifference concerning them in those who have the power to work miracles of love and happiness amongst them, and must one day stand with them at thefootstool of our common Father, who will demand of his children how each has loved his brethren.

Let us turn our eyes, however, a moment from the dark side to the light one. There is not a more beautiful sight in the world than that of our English cottages, in those parts of the country where the violent changes of the times have not been so sensibly felt. Where manufactures have not introduced their red, staring, bald brick-houses, and what is worse, their beershops and demoralization: where, in fact, a more primitive simplicity remains. There, on the edges of the forests, in quiet hamlets and sweet woody valleys, the little grey-thatched cottages, with their gardens and old orchards, their rows of beehives, and their porches clustered with jasmines and roses,stand:—

Hundreds of hutsAll hidden in a sylvan gloom,—some perchedOn verdant slopes from the low coppice cleared;Some in deep dingles, secret as the nestOf Robin Redbreast, built amongst the rootsOf pine, on whose tall top the throstle sings.Hundreds of huts, yet all apart, and feltFar from each other; ’mid the multitudeOf intervening stems; each glen or gladeBy its own self a perfect solitude,Hushed, but not mute.John Wilson.

John Wilson.

There they stand, and give one a poetical idea of peace and happiness which is inexpressible. Well may they be the admiration of foreigners. In many of the southern counties, but I think nowhere more than in Hampshire, do the cottages realize, in my view, every conception that our poets have given us of them. One does, no doubt, when looking on their quiet beauty, endow them with a repose and exemption from mortal sufferings that can belong to no human dwelling; and Professor Wilson, in his poem called “An Evening in Furness Abbey,” which appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine, September, 1829,—a poem flushed all over with the violet hues of poetry, and overflowing with tenderness and grace, gives one this very delightful expression of a thought which has occurred to many ofus—

The day goes byOn which our soul’s beloved dies! The dayOn which the body of the dead is stretchedBy hands that decked it when alive; the dayOn which the dead is shrouded; and the dayOf burial—one and all go by! The graveGrows green ere long; the churchyard seems a placeOf pleasant rest, and all the cottages,That keep for ever sending funeralsWithin its gates, look cheerful every one,As if the dwellers therein never died,And this earth slumbered in perpetual peace.

But sobering down by such sad, yet sweet thoughts as these, our poetical fancies of cottage life, and bringing them within the range of human trouble and suffering, still these rustic abodes must inspire us with ideas of a peace and purity of life, in most soothing contrast with the hurry and immorality of cities. Blessings be on them wherever they stand, in woodland valleys, or on open heaths, throughout fair England; and may growing knowledge bring growth of happiness, widening the capacity of enjoyment without touching the simplicity of feeling and the strength of principle. Well may the wearywayfarer—

Lean on such humble gate and think the while,O! that for me some home like this would smile;Some cottage home to yield my aged form,Health in the breeze, and shelter in the storm.

There are thousands of them inhabited by woodmen, labourers, or keepers, that are fit dwellings for the truest poet that ever lived; and it is theidealof these picturesque and peace-breathing English cottages that has given origin to some of the sweetest paradises in the world—the cottages of the wealthy and the tasteful. What most lovely creations of this description now abound in the finest parts of England, with their delicious shrubberies, velvet lawns, hidden walks, and rustic garden-huts; their little paddocks lying amid woods, and skirted with waters; spots breathing the odour of dewy flowers, and containing in small space all the elegance and the country enjoyments of life.

Happiness, it is true, is not to be dragged into such places; but what places they are for the genuine lover of the country to invite her into! The very feeling of the cumbrous pomp and circumstance of aristocratic establishments in this country, makesone think of such sweet hermitages with a sense of relief and congratulation. What more charming abode has the wide earth for a spirit soothing itself with the pleasures of literature and the consolation of genuine religion, far from the wranglings pf political life, than such a one as the cottage, formerly that of Mrs. Southey, at Buckland, on the border of the New Forest; of Miss Mitford, at Three-Mile-Cross; or that of Wordsworth at Rydal? But we must quit these earthly paradises to speak of other things.

What a revolution of taste has taken place in the English people as it regards popular festivals and festivities! Our ancestors were passionately fond of shows, pageants, processions, and maskings. They were fond of garlands and ribbons, dancing and festive merriment. May-day, Easter, Whitsuntide, St. John’s Day, Yule, and many other times, were times of general sport and gaiety. Music and flowers abounded; mumming, morris-dancing, and many a quaint display of humour and frolic spread over the country. The times, and the spirit of the times, are changed:—we are become a sober people. England is no longer merry England, but busy England; England full of wealth and poverty—extravagance and care. There has been no small lamentation over this change; and many of our writers have laboured hard to bring us once more to adopt this state of things. They might as well attempt to bring back jousts and tourneys[26], popery, and government without representation. The times, and the spirit of the times are changed. Strutt, Hone, Leigh Hunt, Miss Laurence, and many others, may expatiate on the poetic beauty of these things: they may deplore the extinction of this graceful rite, that jocund festivity, and pray us earnestly to resume them once more; but can they give us our light hearts again? Can they make the nation young again? Can they make us the simple, ignorant, confiding people, living in the present, careless of the future, as our ancestors were? Till they can do this, they must lament and exhort us in vain. As soon might they bid the sun to retrace his path; the seasonsreverse their course; earth and heaven turn back in the path of their years. What our ancestors were, they were from circumstances that are gone for ever; and what we are, we are from another mighty succession of circumstances, of which the memory and effect may no more be blotted out, than the stars can be blotted out of the clear heavens of midnight. The country has passed through deep baptisms, and processes of fermentation which have worked out the lighter external characters, and totally reorganised the moral as well as the political constitution of the kingdom. The better qualities of the old English character I trust we fully retain, but the more juvenile and fantastic ones are irrevocably destroyed in the shock of most momentous convulsions.

[26]Since the former edition of this work was written,thatevenhasbeen attempted.

Amongst the many attempts to account for the sedater cast of the modern popular mind, Sir E. Bulwer, in “England and the English,” has attributed it to the spread of Methodism. Had he attributed it to Puritanism he would have been nearer the mark. Methodism may possibly have done something towards it, but it neither began early enough, nor spread universally enough, to have the credit of this change. The decay of popular festivities has been noticed and lamented by writers for the last century. It has been going on both before and since the rise of Methodism, with much the same pace of progression, and is equally felt where Methodism is not allowed to shew its face, as where it exercises its fullest power. Over what a great extent of this country does the influence of high-church landlords prevail, where Methodism cannot get footing; where the people are all expected to go soberly to church as in the good old times; and yet there the people are just as grave, have grown out of the sports and pastimes of their ancestors, just as much as in the most Methodistic districts. In the manufacturing districts, where the Methodists have gained most influence, it is true enough that they have helped to expel an immense quantity of dog-fighting, cock-fighting, bull-baiting, badger-baiting, boxing, and such blackguard amusements; but Maying, guising, plough-bullocking, morris-dancing, were gone before, or would have gone had not Methodism appeared.

Mighty and many are the causes which have wrought this great national change; causes which have been operating upon usfor the last three hundred years; and are so intimately connected with our whole national progress, political and intellectual—with all our growing greatness, with all our glory and our sorrows, that had not Methodism existed, that character would have been exactly what it is.

The Reformation laid the foundation of this change. While we had an absolute pope, and an absolute king; while the people were neither educated, nor allowed to read the Bible, nor to be represented in Parliament; while the monarch and a few noble families held all the lands of the kingdom, the lower classes had nothing to do but to follow their masters to the wars, or live easily and dance gaily in times of peace. The retainers of great houses, the labourers in the fields, foresters and shepherds, following their solitary occupations, constituted the bulk of the nation. Merchants and merchandise were few; our great trading towns and interests did not exist; the days of newspapers, of religious disputes, of literature and periodicals, were not come. The people were either at work or at play. When their work was over, play was their sole resource. They danced, they acted rude plays and pantomimes, with all the zest and gaiety of children, for their heads were as unoccupied with knowledge and grave concerns as those of children. They lived in poverty it may be, but still they lived in that state of simplicity and dependence which left them little care; and they were cut off, by the impossibility of rising out of their original rank, from all troublesome excitement. It was equally the concern of the civil government and the hierarchy to encourage sports and festivities, to keep them out of dangerous inquiries into their own condition, or rights. In the great feudal halls, the minstrel, the jongleur, the jester, and other ministers of gaiety; hawks and hounds abroad, jollity and drinking at home, kept the minds of all idlers occupied with matters to their taste. The clergy and monks promoted with an equal zeal of policy, the festivals of saints, keeping of high days and holidays, processions, games, and even acting the mysteries and miracle-plays. While the system continued, this spirit and national character must have continued likewise; but the Reformation burst like a volcano from beneath, and scattered the whole smiling surface into disjointed fragments, or buried it beneath the lava of ruin.

Henry VIII. at once destroyed Monkery and the Catholic church. He at once seized on the ecclesiastical lands, and snapped asunder the ecclesiastical policy. The translation of the Bible let in a flood of light that revealed all the phantasmagoria of the past, and prepared a train of everlasting inquiries, disquietudes, and intellectual and political triumphs for the future. The people saw they had been treated as children, but they now awoke to the passions and the conscious power of men. They had tasted of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and their eyes were opened to their actual condition, never more to be closed. The lands that were rudely seized and arbitrarily distributed, created a new class in the community—the gentry—a link between the aristocracy and the people;—possessing the knowledge of the one, and sharing the interests of the other. Henry’s predecessors had hastened this new era by curtailing the wealth and power of the nobility; and the long wars of the houses of York and Lancaster had already done much of this work for him; exterminating some, humbling others, and embarrassing with debts the remainder. So were the elements of a more popular career thrown into the midst of the nation; and the religious persecutions on the Continent, by sending us swarms of jewellers, weavers, and other artificers, laid the foundation of those trading propensities which have now carried us to such a marvellous length. We came to be a trading and colonizing people, and to possess a fleet in order to protect our new interests. How rapidly this navy grew, indicating by its own growth that of the general wealth and commercial enterprise of England, of which it was the consequence, is seen by this circumstance. In that fine old ballad of Sir Andrew Barton, Lord Howard is made to say to Henry VIII. in1511—

Sir Andrew’s shipp I bring with mee;A braver shipp was never none;Now hath your grace two shipps of warr,Before in England was but one!

This one was theGreat Harry, built in 1504. In about 80 years only afterwards, the English had thirty vessels of war at sea, and with these dared to attack the Invincible Armada of Spain, consisting of one hundred and thirty vessels, and by the assistance of a providential tempest, totally dispersed and destroyed it. ThenHoward of Effingham, Drake, Frobisher, Hawkins, were the names of our commanders,—names which thenceforward filled all the known world with terror, and gave to England the empire of the seas. With this extension of national interests, a more active and earnest spirit was diffused through the people. The struggle with enemies abroad, and with the rapidly maturing spirit of religious freedom at home, kept Elizabeth engaged, and induced in her a rigour of persecution, and in the people a rigour of resistance and the soul of martyrdom. Before the development of these antagonist powers, all lightness fled; singing gave way to preaching and listening; dancing, to running anxiously to know the fate of sufferers, and the doctrines of fresh-springing teachers. So completely had the old relish for merriment and pastimes died out, that her successor, James, endeavoured to compel the people, by the publication of his “Book of Sports” to be jocose and gamesome. But it would not do. The soul of the people was now up in arms for their rights; and the despotic nature of himself and his son, resisting their claims, kept up such a fever of political strife in the kingdom as would have put out all jesting and capering if they had not gone before. The hierarchy fell,—fell in one wide chaos of civil contention; and, as if torrents of blood and volumes of fire, and the trampling hoofs of thousands of careering cavalry had not been enough to overwhelm and dash to pieces every remaining fragment of jollity and popular fête,—in came Puritanism from Geneva, and the Solemn League and Covenant from Scotland. There was a final close to all the pageantry of processions and the merry saintliness of festivals: they were denounced and abhorred as the carnality of Anti-Christ and the rags of the scarlet woman. Charles II. indeed, could revive licentiousness, but he could not bring back the holiday guise of “the old profession.” And what has been the course of England since? One ever-widening and ascending course of mighty wars, expanding commerce, vast colonization, and the growth of science, literature, and general knowledge. We are no longer a nation of feudal combatants, of piping shepherds, and thoughtless peasantry,—but of busy, scheming, money-collecting, family-creating men. Our last tremendous war put the climax to this amazing career. In it all Europe seemed torn to pieces and organized anew. We, as a people, were led bycircumstances to put forth the most stupendous energies that perhaps any nation ever did. To defend our colonies; to support the interests of our allies with arms and subsidies; to supply the whole of Europe with all species of manufactures, and almost all species of merchandise, and through this demand stimulating into existence the powers of steam and machinery, a population of amazing numbers to maintain. And then, the shock and the revulsion when this great war-system suddenly ceased! An immense debt, vast taxes, the necessity of maintaining high prices, the necessity of boundless competition and low wages that we might so compete with the continent, returning to its old habits.

Who does not know with what a fiery force this has fallen on the working classes? What distress, what pauperization, what desperation, brought to the very pitch of rebellion, they have gone through; and recollecting this, can any one think otherwise than that it has been enough to sober any people that is not destitute of every element of high character. If we could, after a baptism like this, be still like the French, a dancing, dissipation-loving people, we should, like them, have but a fitful care to secure our liberties, and the comforts of good government; like them, at this moment, we should be the victims of successive revolutions, yielding no fruit but tyranny. But we are a sober and a thoughtful people, and are therefore working out of the mass of our difficulties the form of a renewed constitution, adapted to our present enlarged views and experience. But besides this, our energies have not been called forth for this good end alone; they have brought with their exercise a high relish for intellectual pleasures. Our minds have been stirred mightily, and, like animals that during their wintry torpor feel no hunger, yet feel it keenly the moment they are awake, they have become hungry for congenial aliment. We have fed on much knowledge, and are no longer children, but full-grown men, with manly appetites and experienced tastes. Could we now sit, as our ancestors did, for nine hours together at a mystery? Could we endure to read through the chronicles and romances of the middle ages,—books which spun out their recitals to the most extraordinary length, and were never too long; for books then were few? If we could not, so neither could the simple pleasures and rural festivities satisfy the peasantry of this.We are the creatures of new circumstances, and of a higher reach of knowledge. A combination of causes, too puissant to be resisted, has made hopeless all return to the juvenilities of the past. And after all, happiness—of which the people, however unwisely, are always in quest, does not consist in booths and garlands, drums and horns, or in capering round a May-pole. Happiness is a fireside thing. It is a thing of grave and earnest tone; and the deeper and truer it is, the more is it removed from the riot of mere merriment:

The highest mood allowedTo sinful creatures, for all happinessWorthy that holy name, seems steeped in tears,Like flowers in dew, or tinged with misty hues,Like stars in halo.John Wilson.

The highest mood allowedTo sinful creatures, for all happinessWorthy that holy name, seems steeped in tears,Like flowers in dew, or tinged with misty hues,Like stars in halo.

John Wilson.

And the more our humble classes come to taste of the pleasures of books and intellect, and the deep fireside affections which grow out of the growth of heart and mind, the less charms will the outward forms of rejoicing have for them. Beautiful and poetical, I grant, are many of the old rites and customs of which we have been speaking; but they are beautiful and poetical as belonging to their own times,—and many of them, I am inclined to believe, as seen in the distance; for, seen at hand, there is a vulgarity in most popular customs that offends invariably our present tastes. Nor do I mean to say that our present population cannot be cheerful. A more truly cheerful people never existed; and they can dance and be merry too when they will; as Christmas, and Whitsuntide, and their annual village feasts and their harvest-homes can testify. Since the Reformation, the saints of the calendar having become mere names in this country, their festivals have accordingly died away. Whitsuntide, Easter, and Christmas seem almost all that have maintained their stand; and of these we will speak a little; but in the first place let us have a few words on May-Day.

May-day was celebrated with a gaiety and poetical grace far beyond all other festivals. It had come down from the pagan times with all its Arcadian beauty, and seemed to belong to those seasons more than to any Christian occasions. It is one that the poets have all combined to lavish their most delicious strains upon. The time of the year was itself so inspiring,—with all its newness of feeling, its buds and blossoms and smiling skies. It seemed just the chosen period for heaven and earth and youth to mingle their gladness together. There is no festivity that is so totally gone! Washington Irving in his very interesting account of his visit to Newstead Abbey, takes the opportunity to say, that he had been accused by the critics of describing in his Sketch Book popular manners and customs that had gone by, but that he had found those very customs existing in that neighbourhood. That those who doubted the accuracy of his statements must go north of the Trent. That he found May-poles standing in the old-fashioned villages, and that a band of plough-bullocks even came to the abbey while he was there.

Washington Irving certainly seemed most agreeably impressed with the primitive air of that part of Nottinghamshire, and it is interesting to see the effect which places most familiar to you produce on the minds of strangers of taste and poetical feeling. His delight at finding himself in old Sherwood, the haunt of RobinHood; in hearing the bells of Mansfield at a distance; and his remarking the names of Wagstaff, Hardstaff, Beardall, as names abounding about the forest, naturally suggesting the character of those who first bore them—names so common to our eyes as never to have awakened any such idea;—all this is very agreeable; but let no lover of ancient customs go thither on the strength of Washington Irving’s report, unless he means to travel much farther north of the Trent than Newstead. There is certainly a May-pole standing in the village of Linby near Newstead, and there is one in the village of Farnsfield near Southwell; but I have been endeavouring to recollect any others for twenty miles round and cannot do it, and though garlands are generally hung on these poles on May-day, wreathed by the hands of some fair damsel who has a lingering affection for the olden times, and carried up by some adventurous lad; alas! the dance beneath it, where is it? In the dales of Derbyshire, May-poles are more frequent, but the dancing I never saw. In my own recollection, the appearance of morris-dancers, guisers, plough-bullocks, and Christmas carollers, has become more and more rare, and to find them we must go into the retired hamlets of Staffordshire, and the dales of Yorkshire and Lancashire.

One would have thought that the May-day fête would have outlasted all others, except it were Christmas, on the strength of the poetical wealth of heart and fancy woven with it through our literature. Every writer of any taste and fancy has referred with enthusiasm to May-day. Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Fletcher, Milton, Browne, Herrick, and all our later poets, have sung of it with all their hearts. Chaucer, in Palamon and Arcite, describes Arcite going to the woods for garlands on May morning, according to the old custom. He

Is risen, and looketh on the merry day;And for to do his observance to May,Remembering on the point of his desire,He on the courser, starting as the fire,Is risen to the fieldés him to playe;Out of the court were it a mile or tway:And to the grove of which that I you told,By Aventine his way began to hold,To maken him a garland of the greves,Were it of woodbine, or of hawthorn leaves,And loud he sung, against the sunny sheen:“O May, with all thy flowers and thy green,Right welcome be thou, fairé, freshé May;I hope that I some green here getten may.”And from his courser with a lusty heart,Into the grove full hastily he start,And in a path he roamed up and down.

Milton has many beautiful glances at it, and Shakspeare touches on it in a hundred places, as in “The Midsummer Night’s Dream:”

If thou lovest me then,Steal forth thy father’s house to-morrow night;And in a wood, a league without the town,Where I did meet thee once with Helena,To do observance to a morn of May,There will I stay for thee.

The European observance of this custom is principally derived from the Romans, who have left traces of it in all the countries they subdued. It was their festival of Flora. It was the time in which they sacrificed to Maia; and in Spain, where this custom seems to remain much as they left it, the village-queen still is called Maia. But we have traces of it as it existed amongst the Saxons, whose barons at this time going to their Wittenagemote, or Assembly of Wise Men, left their peasantry to a sort of saturnalia, in which they chose a king, who chose his queen. He wore an oaken, and she a hawthorn wreath; and together they gave laws to the rustic sports, during those sweet days of freedom. The May-pole too, or the column of May, was the grand standard of justice amongst these people, in theEY-COMMONS, or fields of May: and the garland hung on its top, was the signal for convening the people. Here it was that the people, if they saw cause, deposed or punished their governors, their barons and kings. It was one of the most ancient customs, which, says Brande, has by repetition been from year to year perpetuated.

But we have traces also of its mode of celebration among our Druid ancestors, for it is certainly one of the old customs of the world, having come down from the earliest ages of Paganismthrough various channels. Dr. Clarke in his Travels, vol. ii. p. 229, has shewn that the custom of blowing horns on this day, still continued at Oxford, Cambridge, London, and other places, is derived from a festival of Diana. These ancient customs of the country did not escape the notice of Erasmus when in England, nor the ceremony of placing a deer’s head upon the altar of St. Paul’s church, which was built upon the site of a temple of Diana, by Ethelbert, king of Kent. Mr. Johnson, in his “Indian Field Sports,” also states the curious circumstance, that the Hindoos hold a vernal feast calledBhuvizah, on the 9th of Baisach, exclusively for such as keep horned cattle for use or profit, whenthey erect a pole and adorn it with garlands; and perform much the same rites as used to be adopted by the English on the first of May. Thus it appears how ancient and how widely spread was this custom; and its celebration by the Druids and Celts points it out as belonging to the worship of the sun. In Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland, the people still kindle fires on the tops of their mountains on this day, called Beal Fires, and the festival then celebrated Beltane, or Bealtane. The practice is to be traced in the mountainous and uncultivated parts of Cumberland, amongst the Cheviots, and in many parts of Scotland. Mr. Pennant says—“On the first of May, in the Highlands of Scotland, the herdsmen of every district hold their Beltein. They cut a square trench in the ground, leaving the turf in the middle. On that they make a fire of wood, on which they dress a large caudle of eggs, butter, oatmeal, and milk, and bring, besides the ingredients of the caudle, plenty of beer and whisky; for each of the company must contribute something. The rite begins with spilling some of the caudle on the ground, by way of libation. On that every one takes a cake of oatmeal, on which are raised nine square knobs, each dedicated to some particular being, the supposed preserver of their flocks and herds; or to some particular animal, the real destroyer of them. Each person then turns his face to the fire, breaks off a knob, and flinging it over his shoulder, says—“This I give to thee; preserve thou my sheep: this I give to thee; preserve thou my horses:” and so on. After that they use the same ceremony to the noxious animals—“This I give to thee O Fox! spare thou my lambs; this to thee O hooded Crow! this tothee Eagle! When the ceremony is over they dine on the caudle, etc. etc.”

Something of this kind is retained in Northumberland, in the syllabub prepared for the May-feast, which is made of warm milk from the cow, sweet cake, and wine; and a kind of divination is practised by fishing with a ladle for a wedding-ring, which is dropped into it for the purpose of prognosticating who shall be first married. This divination of the wedding-ring is practised in the midland counties on Christmas-eve; and they have a peculiar kind of tall pots made expressly for this purpose, called posset-pots. I have myself fished for the ring on many a merry Christmas-eve.

One cannot avoid seeing in these ceremonies their most ancient origin and consequently wide-spread adoption. The throwing over the shoulder offerings to good and evil powers is exactly that of all savage nations, the effect of one uniform tradition. The American Indians, indeed, seldom propitiate the good, but are very careful to appease, or prevent the evil Manitou. These notions have, no doubt, everywhere contributed to connect ideas of the presence and power of spiritual and fairy creatures, and the extraordinary license of witchcraft on this night and day. We cannot avoid thinking of the wizard rites of the Blocksburg in Germany, made so familiar by Goëthe; and we see the reason why all houses were defended by forest boughs, gathered with peculiar ceremonies, and worn by the young on May-eve, in almost every European country.

What then were the exact ceremonies of May-day? The Romans celebrated the feast of Flora in this manner. The young people went to the woods, and brought back a quantity of boughs, with which they adorned their houses. Women ran through the streets, and had the privilege of insulting every one who came in their way. And here may we not see the custom, still continued in France, though fallen into desuetude here, of theepousées(brides) of the month of May? Theepouséesare the little daughters of the common people, dressed in their best, and placed on a chair, or bank, in the streets and public walks, on the first Sunday in May. Other little girls, the brides’ companions, stand near with plates, and tease the passengers for some money for theirepousées.

Like the Romans, then, our ancestors celebrated May-day as a festival of the young. The youth of both sexes rose shortly after midnight, and went to some neighbouring wood, attended by songs and music, and breaking green branches from the trees, adorned themselves with wreaths and crowns of flowers. They returned home at the rising of the sun, and made their windows and doors gay with garlands. In the villages they danced during the day round the May-pole, which was hung to the very top with wreaths and garlands, and afterwards remained the whole year untouched, except by the seasons,—a fading emblem and consecrated offering to the Goddess of Flowers. At night the villagers lighted up fires, and indulged in revellings, after the Roman fashion. In this country they added the pageant of Robin Hood and Maid Marian, with Friar Tuck, Will Stutely, and others of their merry company; the dragon and the hobby-horse,—all of which may be found fully described in Strutt’s Queenhoo-Hall.

Spenser and Herrick give very graphic pictures of these popular festivities, which I shall here transcribe; and first, Spenser from the Shepherds’ Calendar.

Young folke now flocken in everywhereTo gather May buskets,[27]and smelling brere;And home they hasten the posts to dight,And all the kirk pillars, ere daylight:With hawthorne buds, and sweet eglantine,And garlands of roses, and sops-in-wine.Sicker this morrow, no longer agoe,I sawe a shole of shepherds outgoeWith singing and shouting, and jolly chere;Before them rode a lustie tabrere,That to the many a hornpipe played,Wherto they dauncen, eche one with his mayd.To see these folks make such jovisaunceMade my heart after the pipe to daunce.Tho to the greene-wood they speeden hem all,To fetchen home May with their musicall,And home they bringen, in a royall throne,Crowned as king, and his queen attoneWas Lady Flora, on whome did attendA fayre flock of faeries, and a fresh bandOf lovely nymphs. O that I were thereTo helpen the ladies their May-bush beer!

[27]Bushes.

Herrick’s poem is in the form of a lover inviting his sweetheart to go out a May-gathering.

CORINNA’S GOING A-MAYING.

Get up, get up for shame: the blooming mornUpon her wings presents the God unshorn:See how Aurora throws her fairFresh-quilted colours through the air:Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and seeThe dew bespangling herb and tree.Each flower has wept and bowed towards the eastAbove an hour ago, yet you not dressed:Nay, not so much as out of bedWhen all the birds have matins said,And sung their thankful hymns; ’tis sin,Nay, profanation to keep in;When as a thousand virgins on this daySpring sooner than the lark to fetch in May!Rise and put on your foliage, and be seenTo come forth like the spring time, fresh and green,And sweet as Flora. Take no careFor jewels for your crown, or hair;Fear not, the leaves will strewGems in abundance upon you:Besides, the childhood of the day has kept,Against you come, some orient pearls unwept.Come and receive them, while the lightHangs on the dew-locks of the night,And Titan, on the eastern hillRetires himself, or else stands stillTill you come forth. Wash, dress, be brief in praying;Few beads are best when once we go a-Maying!Come, my Corinna, come, and coming markHow each field turns a street, each street a park,Made green and trimmed with trees; see howDevotion gives each house a bough,A branch; each porch, and door, ere this,An ark, a tabernacle is,Made up of whitethorn, neatly interwove,As if here were those cooler shades of love.Can such delights be in the street,And open fields, and we not see ’t?Come, we’ll abroad, and let’s obeyThe proclamation made for May;And sin no more, as we have done, by staying;But my Corinna, come, let’s go a-Maying!There’s not a budding boy or girl, this day,But is got up and gone to bring in May:A deal of youth, ere this, is comeBack, and with whitethorn laden home:Some have despatched their cakes and cream,Before that we have left to dream;And some have wept, and wooed, and plighted troth,And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth.Many a green gown has been given;Many a kiss both odd and even;Many a glance too has been sentFrom out the eye, love’s firmament;Many a jest told, of the key’s betrayingThis night, and locks picked; yet we’re not a-Maying!Come, let us go while we are in our prime,And take the harmless folly of the time;We shall grow old apace, and dieBefore we know our liberty:Our life is short, and our days runAs fast away as does the sun:And as a vapour or a drop of rain,Once lost can ne’er be formed again:So when, or you or I are madeA fable, song, or fleeting shade;All love, all liking, all delight,Lie down with us in endless night,Then, while time serves, and we are but decaying,Come, my Corinna, come, let’s go a-Maying!

Each flower has wept and bowed towards the eastAbove an hour ago, yet you not dressed:Nay, not so much as out of bedWhen all the birds have matins said,And sung their thankful hymns; ’tis sin,Nay, profanation to keep in;When as a thousand virgins on this daySpring sooner than the lark to fetch in May!

Rise and put on your foliage, and be seenTo come forth like the spring time, fresh and green,And sweet as Flora. Take no careFor jewels for your crown, or hair;Fear not, the leaves will strewGems in abundance upon you:Besides, the childhood of the day has kept,Against you come, some orient pearls unwept.Come and receive them, while the lightHangs on the dew-locks of the night,And Titan, on the eastern hillRetires himself, or else stands stillTill you come forth. Wash, dress, be brief in praying;Few beads are best when once we go a-Maying!

Come, my Corinna, come, and coming markHow each field turns a street, each street a park,Made green and trimmed with trees; see howDevotion gives each house a bough,A branch; each porch, and door, ere this,An ark, a tabernacle is,Made up of whitethorn, neatly interwove,As if here were those cooler shades of love.Can such delights be in the street,And open fields, and we not see ’t?Come, we’ll abroad, and let’s obeyThe proclamation made for May;And sin no more, as we have done, by staying;But my Corinna, come, let’s go a-Maying!

There’s not a budding boy or girl, this day,But is got up and gone to bring in May:A deal of youth, ere this, is comeBack, and with whitethorn laden home:Some have despatched their cakes and cream,Before that we have left to dream;And some have wept, and wooed, and plighted troth,And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth.Many a green gown has been given;Many a kiss both odd and even;Many a glance too has been sentFrom out the eye, love’s firmament;Many a jest told, of the key’s betrayingThis night, and locks picked; yet we’re not a-Maying!

Come, let us go while we are in our prime,And take the harmless folly of the time;We shall grow old apace, and dieBefore we know our liberty:Our life is short, and our days runAs fast away as does the sun:And as a vapour or a drop of rain,Once lost can ne’er be formed again:So when, or you or I are madeA fable, song, or fleeting shade;All love, all liking, all delight,Lie down with us in endless night,Then, while time serves, and we are but decaying,Come, my Corinna, come, let’s go a-Maying!

Such were the festivities of youth and nature to which our monarchs, especially Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and James, used to go forth and participate. In the reign of the Maiden Queen, pageant seemed to arrive at its greatest height, and the May-day festivities were celebrated in their fullest manner; and so they continued, attracting the attention of the royal and noble, as well as the vulgar, till the close of the reign of James I. In “The Progresses of Queen Elizabeth,” vol. iv. part i., is this entry: “May 8th, 1602. On May-day, the queen went a-Maying to Sir Rich. Buckley’s, at Lewisham, some three or four miles off Greenwich.” This may be supposed to be one of those scenes represented inMr. Leslie’s magnificent picture of May-day, in which Elizabeth is a conspicuous object. It is recorded by Chambers that Henry VIII. made a grand procession, with his queen Katherine and many lords and ladies, from Greenwich to Shooter’s Hill, where they were met by a Robin Hood pageant. In Henry VI.’s time, the aldermen and sheriffs of London went to the Bishop of London’s wood, in the parish of Stebenheath, and there had a worshipful dinner for themselves and other comers; and Lydgate the poet, a monk of Bury, sent them by a pursuivant “a joyful commendation of that season, containing sixteen stanzas in metre royall.”

In April, 1644, there was an ordinance of the two houses of Parliament for taking down all and singular May-poles; and in 1654, the Moderate Intelligencer says—“this day was more observed by people’sgoing a-Maying, than for divers years past, and indeed muchsincommitted by wicked meetings, with fighting, drunkenness, ribaldry and the like. Great resort came to Hyde Park; many hundred of rich coaches, and gallants in rich attire, butmost shameful powdered-hair men, and painted and spotted women.” And this before my Lord Protector! so that the old spirit was rising up again from beneath the influence of Puritanism; and the Restoration was again the signal for hoisting the May-poles. In Hone’s Everyday Book, and in that valuable miscellany, Time’s Telescope, many particulars of the rearing again the great May-pole in the Strand, and of the latest May-pole standing in London, may be found.

Old Aubrey says, that in Holland they had theirMay-boomsbefore their doors, but that he did not recollect seeing a May-pole in France. Yet nothing is more certain than the custom of the French of planting tall trees in their villages at this time, and of adorning their houses with boughs, and of planting a shrub of some pleasant kind under the window, or by the door of their sweethearts, before day-break, on a May-morning. Aubrey complains himself bitterly of the people taking up great trees in the forest of Woodstock to plant before their doors; and John Evelyn as bitterly laments the havoc made in the woods in his time. They are safe from such depredations now. Yet in different parts of England still, till within these few years, lingered vestiges of this once greatday. AtHorncastlein Lincolnshire, the young people used to come marching up to the May-pole with wands wreathed with cowslips, which they there struck together in a wild enthusiasm, and scattered in a shower around them. AtPadstowin Cornwall, they have, or had lately, the procession of the hobby-horse. At Oxford on May-day, at four o’clock in the morning, they ascend to the top of the tower of Magdalen College, and used to sing a requiem for the soul of Henry VII., the founder, which was afterwards changed to a concert of vocal and instrumental music, consisting of several merry catches, and a concluding peal of the bells. The clerks and choristers, with the rest of the performers, afterwards breakfasted on a side of lamb. At Arthur’s Seat, at Edinburgh, they make a grand assembly of young people about sunrise, to gather May-dew, and dance. In Huntingdonshire, a correspondent of Time’s Telescope says, that the children still exhibit garlands. They suspend a sort of crown of hoops, wreathed and ornamented with flowers, ribbons, handkerchiefs, necklaces, silver spoons, and whatever finery can be procured, at a considerable height above the road, by a rope extending from chimney to chimney of the cottages, while they attempt to throw their balls over it from side to side, singing, and begging halfpence from the passengers. A May-lady, or doll, or larger figure, sometimes makes an appendage in some side nook. The money collected is afterwards spent in a tea-drinking, with cakes, etc. May-garlands with dolls are carried at Northampton by the neighbouring villagers, and at other places. At Great Gransden in Cambridgeshire, at Hitchin, and elsewhere, they make a lord and lady of May. At night, the farmers’ young servants go and cut hawthorn, singing what they call theNight-song. They leave a bough at each house, according to the number of young persons in it. On the evening of May-day, and the following evening, they go round to every house where they left a bush, singingThe May-Song. One has a handkerchief on a long wand for a flag, with which he keeps off the crowd. The rest have ribbons in their hats. The May-Song consists of sixteen verses, of a very religious cast. At Penzance, and in Wales, they keep up May dances and other peculiar ceremonies.

I have been more particular in detailing the rites and customs of this festivity, because, once more popular than any, they arenow become more disused. There have been more attempts to revive the celebration of May-day, from its supposed congeniality to the spirit of youth, than that of any other festivity, but all in vain. The times, and the spirit of the times, are changed.

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