way! !" And she did move, muttering something about upstarts, which I did not heed. As my first order and last to that individual was obeyed, I cared not with how little grace she did it. I heard her stop to speak to the children in the pantry. The sound of my footsteps approaching was enough, and she was off. "Come, children," I said, "what's to be had? Your father will be home to dinner presently, and we must have it up in a hurry." Each did his or her part, highly amused at what they considered a good frolic. One did one thing, and another something else. The boys brought fuel and water; the girls discovered the edibles and comestibles. A fine dish of ham and eggs, a cold joint, a pie-a decidedly picnic affair-were served up to the moment. Perkins came in, and we twelve were seated in the best possible humour of pleased excitement. I had found my way straight to the hearts of the children, and had no fears for the rest. Mother-in-law walked in as we were enjoying ourselves. A strange expression of disappointment came over her face at seeing everything so comfortable. "I ought to make you an apology for being late," she said; "but I made allowances for a young housekeeper, and did not think you could be so punctual."- "No thanks to you," thought I; but I said nothing. No sooner was mother-in-law down to the table than she was up again, and calling "Charlotte," at the head of the kitchen stairs. "What is the matter?" I asked. "That stupid girl of ours! She has put on a dirty table-cloth, and the old knives and the steel forks; and there's no spoon for the gravy -and this is stale bread-and-and-I'm sure my son can't abide such a table!" Then it must be me that he finds fault with. I dismissed Charlotte three-quarters of an hour ago, at which time she had not taken a step towards dinner. Since then, the children and I have got up this, such as it is, impromptu." "And a very good dinner, too," said Perkins. "I don't desire a better." Mother-in-law gave him an angry glance, and then, turning to me, said, with forced composure "You don't mean that you have turned a girl out of doors, without warning, who has lived here five years!" "I did not use physical force, certainly; but I did employ very powerful moral suasion. We are too strong in young girls to tolerate kitchen impertinence." all the nuisances that their affectionate grandparent represented them. Indeed, they have become, in a couple of years, quite models, so Perkins says, and he knows them best, of course. I stick to my text. I had rather have twenty children all "mothering" me at once, than one brother Tom. But the mother-in-law-oh, dear! She is the thorn in my side. I can't discharge her as I did the girl, or manage her as I can the children. Perkins talks of buying her an annuity, that she may set up housekeeping on her own account. I almost wish he would-and yet I don't want her to get up a grand claim for sympathy on the plea that I have separated mother and child, turned her out of doors, and twenty other horrid things, as she would be sure to do. It is three months since I saw the preceding till now. I opened my portfolio this fine May morning. Do you know the world looks very cheerful to me now? I have a new stake in it. As I said, I opened my papers, and have been quite amused at my own nonsense about the old lady, which I had really entirely forgotten. Family cares put the pen aside; and authorship, letters to friends even, are quite unheeded. But I may just remark, by way of conclusion, that mother-in-law has become useful as well as ornamental. She thinks herself indispensable. Well, I've no objection. Employment keeps her out of mischief, and I give her the baby to hold. A SPRING-TIDE SONG. BY R. A. COX. Sportively, sportively frolics the breeze, Playfully, cunningly, steals on the shower, How a thousand bright wings in that sunlight are Twere a sin to be sad in this blissful spring-tide. Such was the coup d'état, or rather coup de cuisine, with which I inaugurated myself. It was effectual. Mother-in-law was completely checkmated, and my authority was established. O, ringing bright laughter is sounding to-day, Perkins is a sensible man: widowers generally For troops of fresh children are crowning the May: Haste, haste, then, to join them; no heart is denied are experienced and wise. As a matter of pru-To be young, if it will, in this blithesome springtide. dent investment, let me recommend the young lady who has love to lay out, to expend it upon a widower, if one is to be had. Such is my experience. My husband left the whole house to my management, and I must say that I have succeeded wonderfully. The children are not at Yet, should there still lurk in thy bosom a sigh, tide. MAY-DAY AND ITS OBSERVANCES. BY MRS. WHITE. So sang the father of English poetry-the "old man eloquent," laid dead amongst the tombs before the altar of St. Bennet's any day these four hundred and fifty years-and so has every child of song sung since. See where she comes -for we reject the idea of the ancients, who represented the month as a youth of lovely countenance, in robe of white and green, bordered with daffodils, hawthorns, and blue-bells; on his head a garland of white and damask roses a lute in one hand, and a nightingale on the forefinger of the other-a delicate image, a beautiful antique, if you will just depict it before your mind's eye in its proper colours-only we feel that "fairé, freshé May" must needs be feminine! And besides, was it not so called in honour of Maia? See where she comes, more glorious than David's image of a king's daughter, in raiment of gold, wrought about with divers colours, walking in the midst of a virgin company, preluded with joy and gladness! Why, it is May herself, scented, sunshine mantled, flower - robed May! Most poetical of all the months, fair bringer-in of summer! Was it to be wondered, that when the spirit of her beauty moved upon the face of the earth, the men of olden times, impenetrated with its loveliness, should have sought to give a literal expression, a visible embodiment to the joyous and beautiful associations connected with it. All nature wears an air of holiday, the clear and smiling skies, the leafy woods, where "Trembling palms their mutual vows repeat, And bending poplars bending poplars meet; The ever-moving insect life-the flower-eyes looking up their thankfulness for their sweet birth-the ceaseless revelry and song of birdsthe bees singing pæans in the orchard blossoms -the freshets rippling between bordering sedges, are all so many sounds and signs of love and joy, with which the human heart beats in quick sympathy. What wonder, therefore, that the old mythologists rendered it sacred to the wife of Zephyrus, "the frolic wind that breathes the spring," as Milton calls it; and decked their houses, strewed their streets, and garlanded their temples, during, the five days of the Floralia, with her attributes? The last day of this festival was the first of May, and Christianity, purifying the observance from the licence of Paganism, retained the spirit of its poetry and beauty, and set it down "amongst Eusden's translation of Claudian, the high tides in the calendar" of local customs. Mr. Tollet's hypothesis, that we derived the ceremony from ourGothic ancestors, appears more ingenious than probable. The rude dances and mutual feasting of the Goths for joy after the gloom of their long winter-that with the splendour of the sun a better season for fishing and hunting had returned-seems to have had little in common with the picturesque processions, the flowery garlands, and that prototype of Flora's self, the lady of the May. These classic vestiges of the Roman custom seem perfectly distinct from that relic of Scandinavian usages, which used to bring the boys of Frindsbury annually, on May-day, to meet those of the neighbouring town of Stroud, on Rochester Bridge, where a skirmish ensued between them. With the Goths and southern Swedes, and subsequently by the English, the day was considered as the boundary which divided the confines of summer and winter, and they celebrated it by a mock battle between them-a custom still observed in the Isle of Man, and one of the most ancient games of May-day in this country. Summer, or rather its partisans, of course obtained the victory, and celebrated it by carrying off the booty-green branches and May-flowers proclaiming, as they passed, in sportive triumph, "We have brought the summer home!" How like the burden of the Irish song, with which the May-Queen there hails the return of summer "Huga mair sein lu souré ving!" We lead summer-see, she follows in our train. At Moscow, where they celebrate the day by promenading (the bourgeoisie as well as the nobles) in a forest near the city, they exhibit their joy by singing also, but the refrain of their song has not reached us; neither does Polydore Virgil (whom Bourne quotes, to show that it was customary in Italy for the youth of both sexes to go to the woods, on the Calendes of Maie, and bring home branches and flowers, wherewith to garnish, not only houses and gates, but in some places the churches also) preserve for us the joyous chorus with which, no doubt, they brought their sweet spoils home. He (if we had any questions about the matter) the Romaynes, that used to honour their godinforms us that the fashion was derived "from dess Flora with such ceremonies." At Toulouse the day was devoted to song. "All the poets round about," says Dyche, " were invited to try their wits for a prize, and he who won it was the time appointed for the trial, at which all the rewarded with a golden violet. May-day was candidates were nobly treated, and the conqueror conveyed, with music and a guard of honour, to his home." What could be more appropriate than this floral trophy? and though it savoured a little of Paganism, and complimented Apollo as well as the goddess of flowers, more apt and elegant than the institution which afterwards gave birth to a college, and added two more flower-prizes to the violet? At the present day, in many villages of France, to be chosen Queen of the May is tantamount to the public expression of a young girl's amiability and virtue: it implies her possessed of them beyond her compeers, and for the day homage is paid, not so much to her as to the good qualities of which she is the exponent. With us the pageant was one of mirth rather than morality; and yet there is a passage in Stowe's quotation from Hall, that, separating us from the masques and Morris-dancers, shows us the sweet effect and true object of the holiday. On that day he says, "Every man, except impediment, would walk into the sweet meadows and green woods" (how tenderly he talks of them), "there to rejoice their spirits with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers, and with the harmony of birds, praising God in their kind." Coleridge's "Citizen -"Hallowing his Sabbath-day with quietness;" and the beautiful philosophy of Shakespeare's banished Duke-finding "tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything," are but different expressions of the same sentiment. Yet, if we believe the Reformist writers, the majority of those who went a-Maying had no such sentiments in their thoughts. It was the custom to rise soon after midnight, on the morning of Mayday, for the purpose of visiting some near wood, where they broke down trees, and adorning them with nosegays and crowns of flowers, returned home about the time of sunrise, to make their doors and windows a triumph of flowery spoil. Not only the Puritanical Mr. Stubbs, but merry, sportive Herrick, Nicholas Breton, and other writers in "England's Helicon," let us pretty largely into the fact, that on these occasions, "Love, whose month is always May," found more votaries than Bona Dea, whose midnight and secluded rights had probably some share in the custom "In the merry month of May, There I spied, all alone, Phillida and Corydon. Much ado there was, God wot, And some have wept, and woo'd, and plighted And chose their priest ere we can cast off sloth. From out the eye, love's firmament," &c., &c. But we must not, any more than they did, lose sight of the principal features of the day. The "white-thorn" lading was soon dispersed, and very shortly after sunrise the narrow streets of old London became converted into sylvan alleys; green branches decorated the doors, and grew out, as it were, from casements and bartizans-every porch was metamorphosed to a bower, and the faces of Dutch houses, with their painted and carved festoons, must lose by comparison with the picturesque effect of the living flower-wreaths and leafy chaplets that, for this day, made glorious the habitations of our city ancestors. The very corbels, with their fantastic semblances of satyrs, savage men, and monsters distorted, doubled up, accroupi figures projecting from the beams of cornerhouses, or seeming to support the overhanging stories, looked down their wooden drolleries upon the scene, with grotesque appropriateness: and as "every parish, or sometimes two or three parishes together, had their Mayings, and did fetch in Maypoles, with divers warlike shows," every now and then a long procession of oxen, "twentie or fourtie yoake, every one having a sweet nosegaie of flowers tied to the tips of his horns," might be seen drawing home the Maytrees in different parts of the city, "covered all over with flowers and herbes, bound round with strings from top to the bottom," while here a band of sylvan boys, a company of Robin Hood's men, or a troop of Morris-dancers, with Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, and the Hobby-horse, followed in their wake, or commenced their revelries in every vacant space. Imagine the hurly-burly of the throng, the twanging of bowstrings, the sounding of horns, the clash of music, shouts, laughter, song-maidens in holiday attire, with nosegays in their breasts, and faces bathed in May-dew, looking lovely as the dangerous Lamaie, when they put beauty on but to deceive-and youths dressed in their gayest, with "joy in their faces, and boughs in their hands," preceding the bringing-in of May: every hat had its hawthorn-wreath, every hand its posy; and not only the citizens of all estates, but rank and power, as well as poverty and in He would love, and she would not," &c., &c. significance, shared the pageant, and took part BRETON. Love-making and Maying, to be brief, went hand in hand. In Herrick's invitation to Corinna, he exclaims "There's not a budding boy or girl this day, in the revelry "Forth goeth al the court, both most, and lest, And in an old romance, called the "Death of Arthur," Queen Guenever, in the lusty month of May, summonses the knights of the round table, and gives them warning, that early in the morning she shall ride on Maying into the woods and fields beside Westminster! And Shakespeare, in "Midsummer Night's Dream," | as the heathens did at the dedication of their makes Lysander say to Hermia "If thou lov'st me, then, Steal forth thy father's house to-morrow night; Henry the Eighth rode a-Maying with his Queen Katherine, from Greenwich, over Blackheath, to Shooter's Hill, where a company of courtiers, masked as foresters, and headed by Robin Hood, came forth to meet them, and, leading the way into the green wood, feasted them with venison in flowery arbours and chambers, fashioned amongst the trees. In afteryears Elizabeth visited the vicinity for a similar purpose, and we find her Maying at Sir Richard Buckley's, at Lewisham. The court of James the First sought the spectacle as eagerly as the populace; and when, with the restoration of Charles the Second, May-poles were re-erected, some of the royal family were present at the inauguration of that last relic of them in London, which remained in the Strand, nearly opposite the site of Sir Walter Stirling and Co.'s present banking-house, till 1717. To show that sixty years ago the spirit of May-day observances had not wholly gone out, we find it mentioned in the Morning Post, of the 2nd of May, 1791, that yesterday being the first of the month, a number of superstitious persons had gone into the fields, and bathed their faces with the dew, under the idea that it would make them beautiful. And Mr. Pepys, in his amusing diary, tells us of his wife having gone down to Woolwich, "in order to a little ayre, and to lie there to-night, and so to gather May-dew to-morrow morning, which Mrs. Turner hath taught her is the only thing in the world to wash the face with." Sensible Mrs. Turner! Had the Morning Post commentator tried the recipe before he pronounced upon it, it is wonderful how different his verdict would have been; he would have found moral euphrasy in the sweet pilgrimage the act required, and with purified vision have discovered only a gentle faith in nature, where he looked for superstition. Did he forget that to gather dew it was necessary to seek it "before the sun advanced his burning eye?" that moreover, it involved that which city ladies rarely take-a walk before breakfast, and fresh, untainted air-conditions much more efficacious than "Bloom of Roses," or the far-famed Kalydor, for renovating a faded complexion. But we have wandered wide of the May-pole, which being dressed, as we have seen, with flowers and leaves, and reared (according to one of the Reformist writers, who, amidst his vituperations, has managed to give us a rather lively account of the ceremony) with handkerchiefs, and flags streaming on the top, they strew the ground round about it; he continues, "they bind green boughs about it, they set up bowers and arbours hard by, and then fall to banqueting and feasting, to leaping and dancing, idols." So much for the Reformer, in whose imagination, be it remembered, the May-tree was itself an idol. "The May-pole is up, Now give me a cup, I'll drink to the garlands around it, Whose hands did compose The glory of flowers that crown it." So sings Herrick, in a verse that at once lets us into the ceremony that followed its exaltation, and which was doubtless borrowed from the libations of the ancients. It does not, however, appear that drinking was indulged in, for Morris-dancing, shooting with the bow, and other devices and pastimes, continued all day long; and towards evening there were stageplays acted, and bonfires in the streets. At length the Puritans (who, from the time of Elizabeth, had made great havoc with the May games) grew into power; and on the 6th of April, 1644, May-poles were abolished by Act of Parliament, and Maid Marian, whom they looked upon as the Scarlet Lady of Babylon, with that remnant of Popery, Friar Tuck, and the impious, Pagan superstition of the Hobbyhorse-hard names for the "harmless follies. of the times"-were clean swept from the land. Charles the Second, as we have said, restored the observance of the May, but it was only as the passing of living breath over dry bones: it shook, but could not resuscitate them-the spirit of the ancient usage was extinct, and it fell back into desuetude from its own inanity. For many years the milkmaids of the metropolis took the fete under their protection, and, dressing up the milk-pail into the form of a pyramid, with abundance of silver plate, which they borrowed for the occasion, intermixed with green leaves, flowers, and knots of ribbon, carried it about, accompanied by a group of their fellow milk-maids, all dressed very gaily, and attended by a bagpipe and fiddle, they went from door to door, dancing before the houses of their customers, in the midst of boys and girls, who followed them, and every one (says Misson) gave them something. Occasionally one, more poetical than her compeers, introduced a cow into their procession, with her horns gilded, and nearly covered, by means of a net (in which they were fastened), with various-coloured ribbons, formed into bows and roses, and interspersed with leaves and bunches of flowers. But of late years, alas! even the milk-maids have abjured the May, and the fair festival that kings and queens took part in, has, in the course of social mutations, fallen (such faint shadows of it as remain) into a moral abyss-an atmosphere so loathly and disgusting that not even the sunshine and genialness of a May morning can purify it. Chimney-sweepers' day is all that remains in cities of what was the most pastoral, poetical, and popular of English holidays. Even in country-places it has, for the most part, degenerated into a garland and group of laughing children, dressed in their very best, and crowned | racter to their observance of it. In Ireland with flowers, who, all unconscious that she May-day is called "La na Beal tina," from mimes a goddess, point to the decorated Belus, the God of Fire. With the Romans the doll they carry with them, and beg you, month was sacred to the sun; hence the bonto please to remember the May! In fires annually lighted on the evening of Maysome of the far-away villages of York- day, and the singular custom which Vallancey shire and Lancashire, the May-pole has still speaks of as being yet maintained in Munster a "local habitation and a name.' A friend, and Connaught, where (in imitation of the whose youthful days were passed "nigh-hand" Druids, who on this day drove all the cattle to Harrowgate, informs us that in her village through the fire, to preserve them from witchthe column was a fixture till it decayed, and that craft and disease) every cottager possessed of a it was annually dressed on May-day with gar- cow and a wisp of straw practises the same. lands, green boughs, ribbons, strings of birds'- Camden tells us that they fancied that a green eggs, and other ornaments, which were suffered bough fastened on May-day to the house would to remain, till "thunder, lightning, hail, or ensure plenty of milk and Sir Henry Piers, in rain," or perhaps the mischief-swollen muscle of his description of Ireland in 1682, says that on some passing school-boy, ignorant of Lemuria, | May-eve "every family set up before their doors impelled a stone in the direction, and swept a green bush strewed with yellow flowers, which down some of its dangling finery! There, not the meadows yield plentifully;" and there, as only did the young girls carry round their well as elsewhere, whitethorn gathered on Mayflower-wreath, but the ancient Morris-dance, day was considered a charm against demons. the antique Pyrrhic measure, with its accom- In the Highlands the herdsmen of every village paniment of jingling bells and clashing swords, hold their Bell-tein on this day, dressing a was (and probably is) still continued. caudle over the bonfire, a portion of which they Having made the circuit of the neighbouring sacrifice to some supposed preserver of their villages, and visited the houses of the gentry flocks; while the same ceremony is used to cerand farmers, they spent the proceeds of the day tain noxious birds and beasts really destructive in refreshment, and the evening in enjoying it, to them, after which they feast upon the caudle. and dancing round the May-pole. From another At Oxford, in Aubrey's time, the young maids individual we learn that in different parts of of every parish carried about garlands, which Lancashire the milk-men and maids have a cus- they afterwards hung up in the churches; and tom of dressing up their carts with gilt-work, to this day the choristers assemble on the tower green leaves, and flowers, till no part of the of Magdalen College at sunrise, and usher in original vehicle can be seen, and fastening a the spring with songs of joy.* At Tissington, a number of them together, proceed in procession, village in Derbyshire, are five springs of with bells jingling on the horses' housings, and purest water, in connexion with which a cusribands flying, the men in cocked hats adorned tom, which seems rather to appertain to the with nosegays, the women in their liveliest Fontinalia than the "Floralia,' exists. Annually, attire, with the Lady May, under a flower on Ascension-day (May-day, Old Style), these canopy, in the foremost of the carts; and in this fountains are decorated with the choicest flowers guise they visit the houses of their customers in -a ceremony which the villagers classically he adjacent towns. term the "Floralia," or "well-dressing." And, by way of pendant to this instance, Dr. Stukely, in his "Itinerarum Curiosum," 1724, remarks that there is a May-pole hill, near Horncastle, Lincolnshire, where probably stood an Hermes in Roman times, to which the boys make an annual procession on this floral anniversary, with May-gads, as they call them, in their handswhite willow wands, having the bark peeled off, and cowslips tied round them, like the Thyrsis of the Bacchanals. At night they have a bonfire and other merriment, "which is really," observes the Doctor, "a sacrifice, or religious ceremony." A host of other instances occur to us to show the nationality (we might almost say universality) and endurance of the custom, and its existence in the nooks and corners of pastoral places, long after the men of Aldgate, One of the most interesting branches of our subject is the various ways in which different countries and places observe the festival. We are told that even in the far east where there is no reason to presume that even a tradition of Rome's Floralia penetrated, it is the custom on May morning for persons to present each other with sprigs of palm, and branches of a species of willow! At Moscow, on this day, the city is deserted for the adjacent forest, the avenues and alleys of which are crowded with carriages and equestrians; while beneath the trees, on the green sward, gipsies are dancing, ladies and nobles lounging, and peasants singing, shouting, and clapping their hands. Every one is in gala attire, and the various national costumes add to the picturesqueness of the grouping: the shrill notes of the rustic pipes, the music of the Balalaika, and other sounds of merriment, welcome on every side fair May's return. In Scotland and Ireland there mingled with this festival shadows of Druidical superstition; and the Pagan rights of the Lemuria, or goblins, observed by the ancients in this month, gave a more mystical chanually £10. *The above custom is said to refer to a mass, or requiem, which before the Reformation used to be annually performed on the top of the Tower for the soul of Henry the Seventh. This was afterwards commuted to a few pieces of music, for which the rectory of Slimbridge, in Gloucestershire, pays an |
