meet, as a claim for halfpence, to be employed in purchasing sweetmeats. Our artist has given a very pretty picture of this infantine representation of the ancient festival.

In London there are, and have long been, a few forms of May-day festivity in a great measure peculiar. The day is still marked by a celebration, well known to every resident in the metropolis, in which the chimney-sweeps play the sole part. What we usually see is a small band, composed of two or three men in fantastic dresses, one smartly dressed female glittering with spangles, and a strange figure called Jackin-the-green, being a man concealed within a tall frame of herbs and flowers, decorated with a flag at top. All of these figures or persons stop here and there in the course of their rounds, and dance to the music of a drum and fife, expecting of course to be remunerated by halfpence from the onlookers. It is now generally a rather poor show, and does not attract much regard; but many persons who have a love for old sports and day-observances, can never see the little troop without a feeling of interest, or allow it to pass without a silver remembrance. How this black profession should have been the last sustainers of the old rites of May-day in the metropolis does not appear.

At no very remote time-certainly within the present century-there was a somewhat similar demonstration from the milk-maids. In the course of the morning the eyes of the householders would be greeted with the sight of a milch-cow, all garlanded with flowers, led along by a small group of dairy-women, who, in light and fantastic dresses, and with heads wreathed in flowers, would dance around the animal to the sound of a violin or clarinet. At an earlier

time, there was a curious addition to this choral troop, in the form of a man bearing a frame which covered the whole upper half of his person, on which were hung a cluster of silver flagons and dishes, each set in a bed of flowers. With this extraordinary burden, the legs, which alone were seen, would join in the dance,-rather clumsily, as might be expected, but much to the mirth of the spectators, while the strange pile above floated and flaunted about with an air of heavy decorum, that added not a little to the general amusement. We are introduced to the prose of this old custom, when we are informed that the silver articles were regularly lent out for the purpose at so much an hour by pawnbrokers, and that one set would serve for a succession of groups of milk-maids during the day. In Vauxhall, there used to be a picture

573

the church steeple.' During the rest of the year this pole was hung upon iron hooks above the doors of the neighbouring houses, and immediately beneath the projecting penthouses which kept the rain from their doors. It was destroyed in a fit of Puritanism in the third year of Edward VI., after a sermon preached at St Paul's Cross against May games, when the inhabitants of these houses sawed it in pieces, everie man taking for his share as much as had layne over his doore and stall, the length of his house, and they of the alley divided amongst them so much as had lain over their alley gate.'

The earliest representation of an English Maypole is that published in the variorum Shakspeare, and depicted on a window at Betley, in Staffordshire, then the property of Mr Tollett,

MAY-POLES.

probably the dancers performed their gyrations. Stubbes, in his Anatomie of Abuses, 1584, speaks of May-poles 'covered all over with flowers and hearbes, bounde rounde aboute with stringes, from the top to the bottom, and some tyme painted with variable colours.' The London citizen, Machyn, in his Diary, 1552, tells of one brought at that time into the parish of Fenchurch; 'a goodly May-pole as you have seene; it was painted whyte and green.'

In the illuminations which decorate the manuscript 'Hours' once used by Anne of Brittany and now preserved in the Bibliothèque Royale at Paris, and which are believed to have been painted about 1499, the month of May is illustrated by figures bearing flower-garlands, and behind them the curious May-pole here copied,

and which he was disposed to think as old as the time of Henry VIII. The pole is planted in a mound of earth, and has affixed to it St George's red-cross banner, and a white pennon or streamer with a forked end. The shaft of the pole is painted in a diagonal line of black colour, upon a yellow ground, a characteristic decoration of all these ancient May-poles, as alluded to by Shakspeare in his Midsummer Night's Dream, where it gives point to Hermia's allusion to her rival Helena as a 'painted May-pole.' The fifth volume of Halliwell's folio edition of Shakspeare has a curious coloured frontispiece of a May-pole, painted in continuous vertical stripes of white, red, and blue, which stands in the centre of the village of Welford, in Gloucestershire, about five miles from Stratford-on-Avon. It may be an exact copy and legitimate successor of one standing there in the days when the bard himself visited the village. It is of great height, and is planted in the centre of a raised mound, to which there is an ascent by three stone steps: on this mound

which is also decorated by colours on the shaft, and ornamented by garlands arranged on hoops, from which hang small gilded pendents. The pole is planted on a triple grass-covered mound, embanked and strengthened by timber-work.

That this custom of painting and decorating the May-pole was very general until a comparatively recent period, is easy of proof. A Dutch picture, bearing date 1625, furnishes our third specimen (see next page); here the pole is surmounted by a flower-pot containing a tree, stuck all round with gaily-coloured flags; three hoops with garlands are suspended below it, from which hang gilded balls, after the fashion of the pendent decorations of the older French example. The shaft of the pole is painted white and blue.

London boasted several May-poles before the days of Puritanism. Many parishes vied with each other in the height and adornment of their One famed pole stood in Basing-lane, near St Paul's Cathedral, and was in the time of Stow kept in the hostelry called Gerard's Hall. 'In

own.

The most renowned London May-pole, and the latest in existence, was that erected in the Strand, immediately after the Restoration. Its history is altogether curious. The Parliament of 1644 had ordained that all and singular Maypoles that are or shall be erected, shall be taken down,' and had enforced their decree by penalties that effectually carried out their gloomy desires. When the populace gave again vent to their May-day jollity in 1661, they determined on planting the tallest of these poles in the most conspicuous part of the Strand, bringing it in triumph, with drums beating, flags flying, and music playing, from Scotland Yard to the opening of Little Drury Lane, opposite Somerset House, where it was erected, and which lane was after termed May-pole Alley' in consequence. That stately cedar erected in the Strand, 134 feet high,' as it is glowingly termed by a contemporary author, was considered as a type of golden days' about to return with the Stuarts. It was raised by seamen, expressly sent for the purpose by the Duke of York, and decorated with three gilt crowns and other enrichments. It is frequently alluded to by authors. Pope wrote

6

'Where the tall May-pole once o'erlooked the Strand.' Our cut, exhibiting its features a short while before its demolition, is a portion of a long print by Vertue representing the procession of the members of both Houses of Parliament to St Paul's Cathedral to render thanks for the Peace of Utrecht, July 7th, 1713. On this occasion the London charity children were ranged on scaffolds, erected on the north side of

to Little Drury Lane, and including the pole, which is surmounted by a globe, and has a long streamer floating beneath it. Four years afterwards, this famed pole, having grown old and decayed, was taken down. Sir Isaac Newton arranged for its purchase with the parish, and it

was carried to Wanstead, in Essex, and used as a support to the great telescope (124 feet in length), which had been presented to the Royal Society by the French astronomer, M. Hugon. Its celebrity rendered its memory to be popularly preserved longer than falls to the lot of such

relics of old London, and an anonymous author, in the year 1800, humorously asks :'What's not destroy'd by Time's relentless hand? Where's Troy?-and where's the May-pole in the Strand?'

Scattered in some of the more remote English villages are a few of the old May-poles. One still does duty as the supporter of a weathercock in the churchyard at Pendleton, Manchester; others might be cited, serving more ignoble uses than they were originally intended for. The custom of dressing them with May garlands, and dancing around them, has departed from utilitarian England, and the jollity of old country customs given way to the ceaseless labouring monotony of commercial town life. The same thing occurs abroad as at home, except in lonely districts as yet unbroken by railways, and our concluding illustration is derived from such a locality. Between Munich and Salzburg are many quiet villages, each rejoicing in its May-pole; that we have selected for engraving is in the middle of the little village of St Egydien, near Salzburg. It is encircled by garlands, and crowned with a May-bush and flags. Beneath the garlands are figures dressed in the ordinary peasant costume, as if ascending the pole; they are large wooden dolls, dressed in linen and cloth clothing, and nailed by hands and knees to the pole. It is the custom here to place such figures, as well as birds, stags, &c., up the poles. In one instance a stag-hunt is so represented. The pole thus decorated remains to adorn the village green, until a renovation of these decorations takes place on the yearly May festival.

MAY, AS CELEBRATED IN OLD ENGLISH

POETRY.

Our mediæval forefathers seem to have cherished a deep admiration for nature in all her forms; they loved the beauty of her flowers, and the song of her birds, and, whenever they could, they made their dwellings among her most picturesque and pleasant scenery. May was their favourite month in the year, not only because it was the time at which all nature seemed to spring into new life, but because a host of superstitions, dating from remote antiquity, were attached to it, and had given rise to many popular festivals and observances. The poets especially loved to dwell on the charms of the month of May. In the season of April and May,' says the minstrel who sang the history of the Fitz-Warines, when fields and plants become green again, and everything living recovers virtue, beauty, and force, hills and vales resound with the sweet songs of birds, and the hearts of all people, for the beauty of the weather and the season, rise up and gladden themselves.' The month of May is celebrated in the earliest attempts at English lyric poetry (Wright's Specimens of Lyric Poetry of the Reign of Edward I., p. 45), as the season when it is pleasant at daybreak,'

and

'In May hit murgeth when hit dawes ;'

'Blosmes bredeth on the bowes.'

OLD ENGLISH POETRY.

The 'Romance of Kyng Alisaunder,' as old, apparently, as the beginning of the fourteenth century, similarly speaks of the pleasantness of May (for it must be kept in mind that the old meaning of the word merry was pleasant)— 'Mery time it is in May; The foules syngeth her lay;

The knighttes loveth the tornay;

Maydens so dauncen and thay play.'-(1. 5,210, in
Weber.)

And the same poet alludes in another place (1. 2,547) to the melody of the birds

'In tyme of May, the nyghtyngale

In wode makith miry gale (pleasant melody);
So doth the foules grete and smale,
Som on hulle, som on dale.'

Much in the same tone is the merry' month
celebrated in the celebrated Romance of the
Rose,' which we will quote in the translation
made by our own poet Chaucer. After alluding
to the pleasure and joy which seemed to pervade
all nature, after its recovery from the rigours of
winter, now that May had brought in the sum-
mer season, the poet goes on to say that-
'-than bycometh the ground so proude,
That it wole have a newe shroude,

And makith so quaynt his robe and faire,
That it had hewes an hundred payre

Of gras and flouris, ynde (blue) and pers (grey),
And many hewes ful dyvers:

That is the robe I mene, iwis (truly),
Through which the ground to preisen is.

The briddes, that haven lefte her song,
While thei han suffrid cold so strong
In wedres gryl and derk to sight,
Ben in May for the sonne bright
So glade, that they shewe in syngyng
That in her hertis is such lykyng (pleasure),
That they mote syngen and be light.
Than doth the nyghtyngale hir myght
To make noyse and syngen blythe,
Than is blisful many sithe (times)

The chelaundre (goldfinch) and the papyngay
Than young folk entenden ay
For to ben gay and amorous;
The tyme is than so saverous.

Hard is his hart that loveth nought
In May, whan al this mirth is wrought;
Whan he may on these braunches here
The smale briddes syngen clere.'

The whole spirit of the poetry of mediæval England is embodied in the writings of Chaucer, and it is no wonder if we often find him singing the praises of May. The daisy, in Chaucer's estimate, was the prettiest flower in that engaging month

'How have I thanne suche a condicion,
That of al the floures in the mede
Thanne love I most these floures white and rede,
Suche as men callen daysyes in our toune.
To hem have I so grete affeccioun,

As I seyde erst, whanne comen is the May,
That in my bed ther daweth (dawns) me no day
That I nam (am not) uppe and walkyng in the mede,
To seen this floure ayein (against) the sunne sprede
Whan it up-ryseth erly by the morwe;
That blisful sight softeneth al my sorwe.'

Prologue to Legend of Goode Women. Chaucer more than once introduces the feathered minstrels welcoming and worshipping the month