THE MERRY MONTH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19938, 5 May 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE MERRY MONTH.

MAY IN OLD ENGLAND.

BY ALICE CABR TIDBITS.

Here, >vith the first melancholy of autumn upon us, the shortening days, the misty skies and dead leaves scurrying before the wind, there is little to remind us that May—time out of mind the poet's holiday, and season of love and flowers and kindliest feelings to our forefathers —is upon us; but a little brushing aside of Time's cobwebs, a little backward glance down memory's lane, and we have May morning as Spencer, Shakespeare, Middleton and a host of lesser lights knew it; before we had become a nation of stock-jobbers, political economists and shop-keepers.

We have lost poetry and gained mastery of the air. We have lost simplicity, and even our babes crave mechanical perfection in their toys. We are so grown the slaves of circumstance as not to be qualfied to enjoy the delights of those old, fragrant May mornings, still, green and lovely as in those olden days, but now 'uit the shadow of a name, for our hearts arc changed.

Let n" fnalcli a few moments with our forefathers in their seeming ignorance and certain happiness in that, old, 1 old land of Robin Hood, Maid Marian and the foresters green. Let as picture their joy as they rose before the sun gave light to hie them to the lanes and nearest woods to plunder the whitest hawthorn with which to decorate their queen. Listen to the sound of revelry as they wend their way homeward, laden with spring flowers for the garlands of their maidens and the Maypole to which old and young alike flocked while dance, song and glee lent wing to the hours. Sports, trials of skill in pitching the bar, or the mr»-e ambitious displav of archerv fotind willing exponents, and the soft hour of twilight found them under the Maypole, the young ones dancing to the sound of pipe and tabor, while the old passed to each other the cheerful bowl, its passage thawing the frost about their hearts so that they forgot their age, and with the pleasure of youth cried: " O thou delicious, O yo new {lowers, 0 airs, 0 younglings bowers, fresh thickening grass. The May Queens. The wrjter well remembers her own past May mornings. Dawn breaking upon woods carpeted with primrose and myosotis, bluebells and cuckoo's stockings, o'er gorse-eovered common, moor and meadowland where golden cowslips bent to listen as the wind passed through the green, green grass. Children's voices singing in a high, sweet treble as they bore their precious queens in chairs from door to door, real live maidens with shining eves and noses a little nipped with the freshness of the early morning air, or favourite dolls, as big and lifelike as the property of the particular group would allow; all in keenest competition as to the decorative merits or other claim upon the human heart, and claim they certainly had. for purse-strings were invariably loosened, if only in remembrance of the donor's own childhood's days, which the sight of the hawthorn never failed to awaken. A homely blossom: yet Burns, in his " Cotter's Saturday Night," says—

If he it ven u draught of heavenly pleasure spare. One cordial in this melancholy vale, 'Tis when a youthful, lovinfr. modest pair In other's arms hreothe o"t the tender tale Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening pale And when in his hawthorn bush wo hear at the still of midnight the nightingale's delicious song, its loud, vivid flashes, its smooth volubility, its rapid and violent articulations, its soft breathings of love and joy beneath the moon and stars, we know that for ever and ever " God's in his heaven," and that nothing else really matters. Derivation of a Dance. From this charmed spot, where the writer first saw light, comes the old May pastime—the Morrice dance, which held sway up to the year 1826. This celebrated English diversion was indulged in with great regularity, other countries also adopting it as a Mav-day amusement. It is traced by etymologists and antiquarian writers to Moorish origin.,, Blount explains the derivation of the term as follows:—" Morisco, Span., a Moor, also a dance, so called when there were usually five men, and a boy dressed in a girl's habit, whom they called the Maid Marian, or perhaps, Morian, from the Italian Morione, a head-piece, because her head was wont to be gaily trimmed up. Common people call it a Morrice Dance."

Dr. Johnson defines it a dance "in which bells are gingled, or staves or swords clashed," which "was learned by the Moors, and was perhaps a kind of Pyrrhick or military dance." While one Mr. Strutt doubts any Moorish origin and associates it with the pageant of the "Festival of Fools" a vestige of which dance was preserved in the Bodleian Library, written and illuminated in the reign of Edward HI., and completed in 1344. The dancers were five men wearing grotesque fools'-caps, while two musicians played the regals and the bag-pipes. Mr. Strutt observes:—" I make no doubt the Monica dance, which afterwards became exceedingly popular in this country, originated from the fool's dance; and thence we trace the bells which characterised the Morrice dance." Mr. Strutt conceives the supposed Moorish origin of the dance to be an error, as "the Morisco or Moor Dance is exceedingly different fcrom ihe Morrice dance practised in this country; it being performed by the castenets, or rattles at the end of the fingers and not with bells attached to various parts of the dress." Joys Less Spiritual,

However that may be, the Morrice danco appears to been introduced in England during the middle ages in the reign of Edward 111., by John of Gaunt on his return from Spain. Shakespeare, in Henry V., refers to it in a way which denotes it to have been a common amusement in his time. In earlier ages it formed part of the games of Robin Hood. Dancers were dressed in gilt and leather, and silver paper, and sometimes in coats of white and spangled fustian, while bells, to the number of thirty or forty, hung from their garters. These bells were of unequal sizes, and known as the fore-bell, the second bell, the treble, the tenor or great bell, and mention is made of double bells. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, two dozen Morrice bells wer* juiced at one shilling.

The principal dancer was always more superbly habited than his eompanons, as appears in a passage from an old play, " The Blind Beggar of BethnaJ Green," by John Day, 1659, wherein it is stated of ono of the characters: "he wants no clothes, for he hath a cloak laid on with gold lace, and an embroidered jerkin; arid thus he is marching hither like the foreman of a Morrice." The last recorded performance of the Morrice dance is dated June, 1826, and it is stated that the company consisted of eight young men from Hertfordshire, six dancers, the seventh playing the tabor and pipe, and tho eighth bearing on his breast a flat tin box, with a slit to receive the pence of the spectators. They wore many-coloured ribbons on their hats, arms and knees .with small latten bells, in shape like those attached to a child's coral. Their dance consisted of a vis-a-vis; they turned, returned, clapped hands before and behind, jerked the knee and foot alternately, and so tripped it on an area of London mud.