MAY-DAY, the name given to the first of the month in this country, when, according to ancient custom, all ranks of the people rose at early dawn and went out a-Maying to welcome the first return of the spring. The rites and festivities peculiar to this occasion can be traced back, according to some, to the heathen observances with which the Latin goddess Flora was wont to be honoured. At all events, some of the English ceremonies of May-day are as old as the Druids, who were accustomed to light large fires on the heights on May-eve, to herald with devout joy the coming spring. In the time of Bourne (Vulg. Antiq.) the juvenile part of both sexes in the villages of the north of England were wont to rise shortly after midnight on May morning, for according to Chaucer, "May wole have no sloggardy a night," and proceed, accompanied by music and horn-blowing, to some neighbouring wood, where, after breaking down branches from the trees, and adorning themselves with nosegays and garlands, they returned home at sunrise and decorated their doors and windows with the flowery spoil. Nor was this custom limited to the vulgar: even royalty itself occasionally condescended to share in this diversion. Chaucer, in addition to his beautiful allusion to the May-day customs in the Knights Tale, says in his Court of Love, that early on May morning—
"Fourth goeth at the court, both moste and leste,
To feche the fowres freshe, and braunch and blome."
And Hall, in his Chronicle, gives an account of Henry VIII.'s riding a-Maying with Queen Katherine from Greenwich to the high ground of Shooter's Hill, accompanied by many lords and ladies, who "went with their bows and arrows shooting to the wood." Shakespeare alludes also to the custom when he says, in his Henry VIII. (act v., scene 3), that it was impossible to make the people sleep on May morning; and when, in his Midsummer Night's Dream (act iv., scene 1), he talks of doing "observance for a morn of May." May-dew was also believed to possess a singular virtue. Samuel Pepys, in his Diary, informs us that his wife had gone down to Woolwich "to take a little ayre and gather May dew," in consequence of being told by a certain lady that "May-dew was the only thing in the world to wash her face with." Other minor observances on May-day were those of dancing round the May-pole decked with garlands, still known in England; the Jack-in-the-Green of the chimney-sweepers, who still perambulate and dance in the streets of London (see the Times of May 2, 1844; also Literary Gazette, May 1847); and the custom, now half a century old, of the London milkmaids, adorned with a garland of plate (hired for the occasion), and a profusion of flowers, dancing before the doors of their customers to the music of a fiddle. Old Stow, in his Survey of London (1603) sums up a number of the festive details of May-day in the following sentence:—"I find also that, in the moneth
of May, the citizens of London, of al estates, lightly in every parish, or sometimes two or three parishes joining together, had their severall Mayings, and did fetch in May-poles, with diverse warlike shewes, with good archers, morice-dancers, and other devices, for pastime al the day long, and towards the evening they had stage-players, and bone-fiers in the streets." These May customs were not, however, wholly limited to England. (But for further information, see Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. i., p. 212; also Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie, p. 448, &c.)