HERE AND THERE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1294, 16 September 1876, Page 17

HERE AND THERE.

(Written for the Ola/jo Daily Times.) MAY.

In these iconoclastic days when people who cannot make images are prone to break them, will it be altogether uninteresting to gossip about Old England's May ? I assume that you give me license, and so to my rambling observations. It is the first of May ! The young corn is bonnie in its greenness, the white blossom of the hawthorn perfumes the hedge ; the ring doves coo ; "To right and left the cuckoo tells his name to all the hilis ;" bees, issuing from the flower's deepest heart, haste home, laden with their luacious plunder; and nature seems to sing for very joy . Old Isaac Walton's disciples — from the sporting squire garbed by iseli'asfc M'Geo to Hodge in a smockfrock — seek their favourite river pools. They have not been overanxious about their flies, for the vory fish, on a day like this, are unsuspicious, and clamour to be caught. Overhead sings tee nightingale, as in the days of Piscator, when Isaac— draper, fisher, philosopher, and author — gratafully exclaimfed, " Lord, what music hast thou provided for the Saints in Heaven when thou affordest bad men such music on earth ?"

Hsrrick sings to Corinna — Get up, get up, for shame ! the blooming morn, Upon her wings presents the god unshorn ; See, how Aurora throws her fair Fresh-quilted colours through the air. Get up, sweet stay-a-bed, and see The dew-bespangled herb and tree.

In merrie England May Day has for centuries been the loving theme of our sweetest poets j although, strange to say, there are but about a dozen references to the month in the whole of Shakespeare's pluys.

Spencer sings, Then come fair May, the fairest mayd on ground, Deck't all with dainties of her season's pride, And throwing flowers out of her lap around.

In Chaucer's " Court of Love," we read that early on May morning, " Forth goeth all the Court, both most and least, to fetch the flowers fresh ;" and in the reign of Henry the VIII. it was the custom of the Corporation of London to go into Kent to gather the May : " The King and his Queen (Catherine of Arragon) coming from the Palace of Greenwich to meetye Corporationat Shooter's Hill."

The Romans .ire reputed to have venerated May. They marked it by a significant festival — that of the Lemuria — the dead, or the shadows of the dead. The Pagan did not believe with I-jaiah, " The dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward, for the memory of them is for gotten." Three days were devoted to the dismal observances, and then came the Floral games. Philologists have been at hammers and tongs for centuries about the derivation of the word May. Ovid, in his Fasti, proposed that it might come from majestas; if not thence, from Maiae, the mother of Mercury ; while moderns give it a Teutonic origin. Our Saxon ancestors, in their native language, called it Tri Milchi, i.e., three milk month, when cows are milked thrice a day. But notwithstanding discussionists, May always introduces th« cuckoo and the nightingale ; and I have no reason to believe that the philological discussion has in any way affected their song. In olden time every English village had a May-pole, to be decked on May Day with flowers, garlands, bows, and ribbons ; and danced round about by children, to the tune of " Trit, trit, trot, see what a May pole we have got." The mature lads and lasses footed it by moonlight to Sellinger's round, or "Come and cut the corn."

There were two famous May-poles in London — one ia Leadenhall street, and another in the Strand. That in Leadenhali street was opposite the church of St. Andrew, and stood higher than the Church itself. One Sir Stephen, curate of St. Catharines, preached a sermon at St. Paul's Cross denouncing the Maypole as idolatrous, and his audience pulled it down. The poor cavalier who wit nessed its demolishment no doubt sighed, and ground his teeth, and possibly as he turned away muttered — Happy the age, and harmless were th a days, For then true love and amity were found, When every village did a maypole raise, And Whitsun ale and May -games did abound. On the site of tho present Church of St. Clement stood the renowned Strand maypole, 134 feet high, traditionally traced to the generosity of the Drury Lane blacksmith, John Olarges, whose daughter became the wife of the gi eat Duke of Albemarle. In the time of Cromwell the Maypole, with many other means of harmless recreation then believed to be Satanic, met its fate ; and it was not until the Restoration that the people were allowed to re-erect it. This was doie amidst deafening acclamation, and even the Duke of York sent a dozen sailors to lend a hand. There was tho usual all round dance, accompanied by pipe and tabor, which, as Defoe (who affected to decry May-polbs) says, was no doubt the "precursor of flagons." On this spot, a year before, the Strand butchers had rung a peal with their knives as they burnt an emblematical rump. Oliver had died, and the people had got back their inherent May-pole right ; but I am afraid they must have abused it, for in 1717, Queen Anne, in a fit of piety or indigestion, or both, ordered it to be removed. And so it was, and given to Sir Isaac Newton, who strutted it up in Wanstead Park, to support Rector Pound's French telescope, the largest theD known. Pope, in the Dunciad, growls at its removal : — Amidst the area wide, they took their stand, Where the tall May-pole overlooked the S f ,rand; But now as Anne and piety ordain, A church collects the saints of Drury Lane.

Notwithstanding the change of times, there are yet some few old nestling villages in quiet English counties, so far not dissected by railways, where you will find the May-pole to this day. There was a very tall one only a few years ago in the village of Cheriton, near Alresford. Washington Irving tells us, in one of his agreeable books, that the most refreshing thing he saw during his English visit was a May -pole that stood near the Old Chester Bridge on the Dee. In Huntingdonshire, Oxfordshire, and adjoining counties, the day is peculiarly one of youthful festival. Troops of little ones carry from house to house a pyramid of flowers — tulips, cowslips, anemones, king cups, primroses, wallflowers, and green leaves, from which peeps out a gaily dressed doll representing Flora — and this is the Mayers' song — Good morning, Lords and Ladies, It is the First of May, I hopeyou'll view the garland, For it looks so very gay. The cuckoo sings in April, The cuckoo sings in May, The cuckoo sings in June, But in July flies away. Now take a Bible in your hands And read a chapter through, And when the Day of Judgment comes, The Lord will think of you.

Hypercritics may be inclined to snarl at the sudden descent in the song from ornithology to theology. For myself, I prefer to hear it — even to the Italian Opera. Old May Fair in London was originally held by a grant from the Archbishop of Westminster — "'with revelry for fourteen days." The locality was called Brook Field, and it is now covered by Curzon street, Hertford street, and Chesterfield House, and one of the lordliest tenements i* on the site of the Tyburn gallows. Shades of Jack Sheppard, and Jonathan Wild, and Blueskin !

I like the Folk Lore of the old places at Home. Do you ? Here are a few scraps about the bonnie mouth. There is a widespread belief in the efficacy of May dew. Villagers will asseverate that if a child who is weak in the back be drawn over the grass, wet with morning dew, it will be cured ; and in the diary of gossij ing loveable Pepys you will find it written thus, or thus about : " 13th May, 1663. My wife to lie at Woolwich to-night, and so to gather May dew tomorrow morning, which Mrs Turner hath taught her is the only thing in the world to wash her face with ; and lam contented with it."

The Romans held May to be an unlucky month for mating. Plutarch assigned two reasons— first, that it was the month of Lemuria ; and secondly, that as it came between April, consecrated to Venus, and June, consecrated to Juno, it was neither one thing nor the other. An old Scotch rhymer says "The girls are all stark naught that wed in May," and the supsrstitiou with English maidens is by no means uncommon. And yet Shakespeare, in Love's Labour Lost, says, "Love, whose month v ever May." ' In Wilts and Devon it is believed that cats born in May won't catch mice ; on the contrary, they are prone to introduce into cot« . tages snakes and slowworms and other obnoxious things ; and in Hampshire the goodwife always kills the May kittens. How beautifully Tennyson has described the village custom of choosing the May Queen. In village schools on May Day, it is the invariable custom of the school girls to elect their Queen for the day. Beyond beauty and innocent good temper, the little Queen will have no great endowments, but poor old mother will deck her as gaily as she can. There is the antique shawl that father bought in the honeymoon d<*ys ; and a bit . of ribbon here, and a flower or two there. Isn't it surprising how Bmart she looks 1 For four and twenty hours the child is monarch of all she surveys. Polly and Molly and Bessie and Kate and. Ida and Sue, bring her tribute ' —love-knots to garters. Then, loutish Hodge and impudent Robin put copper offerings iDto the money-box, which in the afternoon will be duly spent in favour of all whom the sports concern. Then come the games. Thread- the-needle— Whathave I apprenticed my son to ? — 1 apy -Here we go round the mulberry bush !—! — Blind man's buff ; and " they dance about the may pole, and in the hazel copse, till Charles's Warn comes out above the tall white chimney tops." The Celtic people called May Day ' La na Beil Una, that is (?) Baal's fire. In Irish counties they make the' cows leap through lighted straw, to save, as they Bay, the milk from the " good people." Fires are lighted on the tops of hills, and the,, members of a family will jump through the flames for good luck. I think they call the,; time Beltine from the common practice of going round the fences with fire on May eve. In the Isle of Man again fires are built in the loftiest natural elevations. There is a good custom, too, of placing May flowers at the entrance of the cottages, as the peasants say, ' to protect them from witchcraft. But lam exceeding my space, and will close by asking ' What's not destroyed by Time's unsparing ' hand ? • : ' Where's Troy? and where's the May-pole .in the Strand? , ■