MAY, the fifth month in the year, reckoning from our first, or January; and the third, counting the year to begin with March, as the Romans anciently did. It was called Maius by Romulus, in respect to the senators and nobles of his city, who were named maiores; as the following month was called Junius, in honour of the youth of Rome, in honorem juniorum, who served him in the war; though some will have it to have been thus called from Maia, the mother of Mercury, to whom they offered sacrifice on the first day of it; and Papins derives it from Madius, eo quod tunc terra maceat. In this month the sun enters Gemini, and the plants of the earth in general begin to flower. The month of May has ever been esteemed favourable to love; and yet the ancients, as well as many of the moderns, look on it as an unhappy month for marriage. The original reason may perhaps be referred to the feast of the Lemures, which was held in it. Ovid alludes to this in the fifth of his Fasti, when he says,
Nec vidue tedium eadem, nec virginis apta
Tempora; quæ nupsit, non diuturna fuit;
Hac quoque de causa, si te proverbium tangunt,
Mense malum Maio nubere vulgus ait.
MAY-dew. See DEW.