CHAPTER XI.

Holyday Notices concluded.

"Come, let us go while we are in our prime,
And take the harmless follie of the time;
We shall grow old apace, and die
Before we know our liberty.
Our life is short, and our days run
As fast away as does the sunne,
And, as a vapour or a drop of rain,
Once lost can ne'er be found again;
So when or you or I are made
A fable, song, or fleeting shade,
All love, all liking, all delight

Lies drown'd with us in endless night.

Then, while time serves, and we are but decaying,
Come, my Corinna, come, let's go a Maying."

Herrick

NOTHING less than a new chapter will satisfy us. It would have chilled our glowing hearts, it would have been felt as a profanation, had we, under the same section of our little work that detailed the miserable mistakes of God-dishonouring and man-degrading superstition, attempted to describe the inimitable and transcendent glories of MAYDAY, the great and beneficent festival of all-loving Nature. Disappear! vanish! begone from our pages for awhile, ye paltry pomps and idle mummeries of human institution! Avaunt! for a brief space, all rites, ceremonies, sects, distinctions, that have sown disunion and hatred among men! -be dumb and stand rebuked! ye pseudo-champions of Omnipotence, teachers of the omniscient Deity, who, making gods of yourselves, and climbing impiously into the judgment-seat, dare to pronounce upon your fellow-mortals, telling us who shall be saved and who shall be condemned. Learn humility and forbearance if ye can, for such is wisdom-learn charity and universal love, for such is Christianity, from this great festival of Nature, not narrowed by bigotry and intolerance to one sect, one religion, or even one nation, but diffused over the whole earth, as if our com

mon Father, by thus showing an equal regard for all mankind as his children, would teach them all to love one another as brethren of the same family. Thus considered, May is the most instructive and religious, as well as the most delightful of all our festival times. It seems to be the bridal season of heaven and earth, and the whole month is their honeymoon. Does not the festal earth look like a bride, all beautiful as she is, and wreathed with flowers? Is not the sky like a rejoicing bridegroom, radiant with sunny smiles and robed in gorgeous clouds of gold and ermine? What nuptials were ever celebrated with such magnificence as these? What festival was ever half so joyous? Every hill-top, garlanded like an altar, fumes with incense; every place is spread with the materials of a present or a future banquet for all created races of men and animals; the trees wave their palmy branches exultingly in the bright air; the winds issue forth from the orchestral sky, some to pipe merrily aloft, some to make music with the rustling leaves; the streams, as they blithely dance along through the flowers, send forth a cheerful melody; the feathered songsters and the lowing herds mingle in the hymeneal strain, and this choral epithalamium finds a fitting bass in the deep-mouthed and sonorous sea. Oh! what a festival is this! How grand and solemn, even to sublimity, and yet how full of beauty, and happiness, and all-embracing love! Alas! that we should quit such a noble, such a heart-expanding jubilee to recur to the wretched mistakes of men, who, instead of imitating the wide benevolence of Nature, too often desecrate their holyday celebrations by hatred, intolerance, and superstition. But our task compels us, and we resume.

Many of our old May-day observances were doubtless derived from the heathen celebrations in honour of the goddess Flora, which consisted of licentious dances in the fields and woods, to the noise of trumpets. Thus it was the custom both here and in Italy for the youth of both sexes to proceed before daybreak to some neighbouring wood, accompanied with music and horns, to gather branches of nosegays, to return home about sunrise to deck their doors and windows with garlands, and to spend the afternoon in dancing around the May-pole, which, being placed in some conspicuous part of the village, stood there during the remainder of the year, as if it were consecrated to tho

goddess of flowers. Well might our ancestors, and all the northern nations, after their long winter, welcome the returning splendour of the sun with the banquet and the dance, and rejoice that a better season had approached for the fishing and the hunting. Nor were the May-pole dances restricted to our villagers. Stow tells us, in his Survey of London, that on May-day morning, "Every man, except impediment, would walk into the sweet meddowes and green woods, there to rejoice their spirits with the beauty and sayour of sweet flowers, and with the harmony of birds prais ing God in their kinde." He subsequently adds, “I find also that in the month of May the citizens of London of all estates had their several Mayings, and did fetch in May. poles with divers warlike shows, with good archers, morricedancers, and other devices for pastime all the day long, and towards the evening they had stage-plays, and bonfires in the streets." That Londoner must be a stout pedestrian, who can now walk to the sweet meadows and green woods, and ought to reckon upon a long holyday, for he might chance to be benighted before he found a branch of May. Sometimes the May-pole was brought home from the woods with great pomp, being drawn by twenty or forty yoke of oxen, each having its horns garlanded with flowers, with which, as well as with branches, flags, and streamers, the pole itself was profusely wreathed and decked. When it was reared up, arbours and bowers were formed beneath it, the ground was strewed with flowers, "and then," says Stubbes, a puritanical writer of Queen Elizabeth's days, "they fall to banquet and feast, to leape and dance about it, as the heathen people did at the dedication of their idolles, whereof this is a perfect pattern, or rather the thing itself." By an ordinance of the Long Parliament in April, 1644, all May-poles were taken down, and the games suppressed ; but they were again permitted after the Restoration.

The author of a pamphlet entitled "The Way to Things by Words, and Words by Things," informs us that our ancestors held an anniversary assembly on May-day, and that the column of May (whence our May-pole) was the great standard of justice on the Ey-commons or fields of May. Here it was that the people if they saw cause deposed or punished their governors, their barons, and their kings. The judge's bough, or wand, now discontinued, and only

represented by a trifling nosegay, and the staff or rod of authority in the civil and in the military power (for it was the mace of civil power and the truncheon of the field-officers) are both derived from hence. A mayor, he says, received his name from this May, in the sense of lawful power; the crown, a symbol of dignity like the mace and sceptre, was taken from the garland or crown hung at the top of the May, the arches which sprung from the circlet and met together at the maund, or round bell, being necessarily so formed to suspend it from the top of the pole.

"The Mayings," says Strutt, in his Sports and Pastimes, published so lately as 1801, "are in some sort yet kept up by the milkmaids at London, who-go about the streets with their garlands and music, dancing;" but even this faint shadow of the original sports has subsequently faded away, so that the green glories and flowery festivities of May-day only survive, if the grim show may not rather be deemed a posthumous and spectral pageant, in the saturnalia of the chimney-sweeping imps, who, with daubed visages, and bedizened in tinsel trumpery, hop around a faded Jack-in-thegreen, to the dissonant clatter of their shovels and brushes. Sad and sooty spectacle! art thou indeed all that is left to us of the pristine May-day glories, and the merry pipe and tabor, and the blithe dances of the young men and damsels around the garlanded May-pole? It is even so; we can now only send our thoughts into the green woods, and go a Maying with our memories.

ROGATION SUNDAY, the fifth after Easter, obtained its name from the succeeding Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, called Rogation days, from the Latin word rogare, to beseech, which were first instituted by Mammertus, Archbishop of Vienne, in Dauphiné, about the year 469, in order to procure by these supplications deliverance from the earthquakes, fires, and wild beasts wherewith the city had been afflicted. Hence the whole week is called Rogation week. The singing of litanies along the streets during this week, accompanied with processions, continued till the Reformation. At this period, as is still practised in some places, were made the parochial perambulations, to fix the bounds and limits of the parish; a custom derived from the heathen feast dedicated to the god Terminus, the guardian of the fields and landmarks. One of our church homilies is com

posed particularly for this ceremony, which we read in the life of the pious Hooker-" He would by no means omit persuading all, both rich and poor, if they desired the preservation of love and their parish rites and liberties, to accompany him in his perambulation; when he would usually express more pleasant discourse than at other times, and would then always drop some loving and facetious observations to be remembered against the new year, especially by the boys and young people."

WHITSUNTIDE, or the feast of Pentecost, is compounded of the words white and Sunday, because the converts newly baptized appeared from Easter to Whitsuntide in white. The following lines in Googe's translation of Naogeorgus record one of the customs of the day:

On Whitsunday, white pigeons tame in strings from heaven fly,
And one that framed is of wood still hangeth in the skie;
Thou seest how they with idols play, and teach the people to;
None otherwise than little gyrles with puppets use to do."

Mr. Fosbrooke remarks that this feast was celebrated in Spain with representations of the gift of the Holy Ghost, and of thunder from engines which did much damage. Water, oak-leaves, burning torches, wafers, and cakes were thrown down from the church-roof; pigeons and small birds with cakes tied to their legs were let loose; and a long censer was swung up and down. Our Whitsun-ales were derived from the agapai, or love-feasts, of the early Christians. For this purpose voluntary contributions were made, with which the churchwardens purchased malt, bread, and a quantity of ale, which they sold out in the church or elsewhere. The profits, as well as those derived from the games of dancing, bowling, shooting at butts, and the fool or jester, there being then no poor-rates, were given to the poor, who were thus provided for according to the Christian rule, that all festivities should be rendered innocent by alms. Greenwich, its fair, and the gambols of its far-famed hill, keep the frolics of Whitsuntide still fresh and vivid in the hearts of the Londoners.

RESTORATION DAY, 29th of May, is only here noticed as affording another proof how long holydays and observances

* Walton's Lives