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Page 43
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."
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