they have made the day especially their own; they are its annalists. A poet's invitation to his mistress to enjoy the festivity, is historical; if he says to her, "together let us range," he tells her for

what; and becomes a grave authority to the grave antiquary. The sweetest of all British bards that sing of our customs, beautifully illustrates the May-day of England :—

Get up, get up for shame, the blooming morne
Upon her wings presents the God unshorne.
See how Aurora throwes her faire
Fresh-quilted colours through the aire;
Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and sce

The dew bespangling herbe and tree.

Each flower has wept, and bow'd toward the east,
Above an houre since, yet you not drest,
Nay! not so much as out of bed;

When all the birds have matteyns seyd,
And sung their thankfull hymnes; 'tis sin,
Nay, profanation to keep in,

When as a thousand virgins on this day,
Spring sooner ther the lark, to fetch in May.

Rise, and put on your foliage, and be seene
To come forth, like the spring-time, fresh and greene,
And sweet as Flora. Take no care

For jewels for your gowne or haire;
Feare not, the leaves will strew
Gemms in abundance upon you;

Besides, the childhood of the day has kept,
Against you come, some orient pearls unwept.
Come, and receive them while the light
Hangs on the dew-locks of the night:
And Titan on the eastern hill

Retires himselfe, or else stands still

Till you come forth. Wash, dresse, be brief in praying ;
Few beads are best, when once we goe a Maying.

Come, my Corinna, come; and, comming, marke
How each field turns a street, each street a parke

Made green, and trimm'd with trees; see how
Devotion gives each house a bough,

Or branch; each porch, each doore, ere this,
An arke, a tabernacle is,

Made up of white-thorn neatly interwove;
As if here were those cooler shades of love
Can such delights be in the street,
And open fields, and we not see't?
Come, we'll abroad, and let's obay
The proclamation made for May:

And sin no more, as we have done, by staying;
But, my Corinna, come, let's goe a Maying.

There's not a budding boy or girle, this day,
But is got up, and gone to bring in May.

A deale of youth, ere this, is come
Back, and with white-thorn laden home.
Some have dispatcht their cakes and creame
Before that we have left to dreame;

And some have wept, and woo'd, and plighted troth,
And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth:
Many a green gown has been given;

Many a kisse, both odde and even;
Many a glance, too, has been sent
From out the eye, love's firmament;

Many a jest told of the keye's betraying

This night, and locks pickt; yet w'are not a Maying.

Come, let us goe, while we are in our prime
And take the narmlesse follie of the time.
We shall grow old apace and die
Before we know our liberty.

Our life is short, and our dayes run
As fast away as do's the sunne;
And as a vapour, or a drop of raine
Once lost, can ne'r be found againe ;
So when or you or I are made
A fable, song, or fleeting shade;
All love, all liking, all delight

Lies drown'd with us in endless night.
Then, while time serves, and we are but decaying,
Come, my Corinna, come, let's goe a Maying.

I have seen the Lady of the May
Set in an arbour (on a holy-day)
Built by the May-pole, where the jocund swaines
Dance with the maidens to the bag-pipes straines,
When envious night commands them to be gone,
Call for the merry youngsters one by one,
And, for their well performance, soon disposes,
To this a garland interwove with roses,

To that a carved hooke, or well-wrought scrip;
Gracing another with her cherry lip;
To one her garter; to another, then,
A handkerchiefe, cast o'er and o'er again;
And none returneth emptie that hath spent
His paines to fill their rural merriment.

Dee, close by the picturesque old bridge that stretches across the river from the quaint little city of Chester. I had already been carried back into former days by the antiquities of that venerable place; the examination of which is equal to turning over the pages of a black-letter volume, or gazing on the pictures in Froissart. The May-pole on the margin of that poetic stream completed the illusion. My fancy adorned it with wreaths of flowers, and peopled the green bank with all the dancing revelry of May-day. The mere sight of this May-pole gave a glow to my feelings, and spread a charm over the country for the rest of the day; and as I traversed a part of the fair plains

of Cheshire, and the beautiful borders of Wales, and looked from among swelling hills down a long green valley, through which the Deva wound its wizard stream,' my imagination turned all into a perfect Arcadia.-One can readily imagine what a gay scene it must have been in jolly old London, when the doors were decorated with flowering branches, when every hat was decked with haw thorn; and Robin Hood, friar Tuck, Maid Marian, the morris-dancers, and alí the other fantastic masks and revellers were performing their antics about the May-pole in every part of the city. On this occasion we are told Robin Hood presided as Lord of the May :

"With coat of Lincoln green, and mantle too,
And horn of ivory mouth, and buckle bright,
And arrows winged with peacock-feathers light,
And trusty bow well gathered of the yew;

“whilst near him, crowned as Lady of the May, maid Marian,
"With eyes of blue,

Shining through dusk hair, like the stars of night,
And habited in pretty forest plight-

His green-wood beauty sits, young as the dew:

❝and there, too, in a subsequent stage of the pageant, were "The archer-men in green, with belt and bow, Feasting on pheasant, river-fowl, and swan, With Robin at their head, and Marian.

"I value every custom that tends to infuse poetical feeling into the common people, and to sweeten and soften the rudeness of rustic manners, without destroying their simplicity. Indeed it is to the decline of this happy simplicity that the decline of this custom may be traced; and the rural dance on the green, and the homely May-day pageant, have gradually disappeared, in proportion as the peasantry have become expensive and artificial in their pleasures, and too knowing for simple enjoyment. Some attempts, indeed, have been made of late years, by men of both taste and learning, to rally back the popular feeling to these standards of primitive simplicity; but the time has gone by, the feeling has become chilled by habits of gain and traffic; the country apes the manners and amusements of the town, and little is heard of May-day at present, except from the lamentations of authors, who sigh after it from among the brick walls of the city.”

There will be opportunity in the course of this work to dilate somewhat concern

ing the May-pole and the characters in the May-games, and therefore little will be adduced at present as to the origin of pastimes, which royalty itself delighted in, and corporations patronized. For example of these honours to the festal day, an honest gatherer of older chronicles shall relate in his own words, so much as he acquaints us with :

"In the moneth of May, namely on May day in the morning, every man, except impediment, would walke into the sweet meddowes and green woods, there to rejoyce their spirits with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers, and with the harmonie of birds, praising God in their kinde. And for example hereof, Edward Hall hath noted, that king Henry the eighth, as in the third of his reigne, and divers other yeeres, so namely in the seventh of his reigne, on May day in the morning, with queene Katharine his wife, accompanied with many lords and ladies, rode a Maying from Greenwich to the high ground of Shooters-hill where as they passed by the way, they espyed a company of tall yeomen, clothed all in greene, with greene hoods, and with

bowes and arrowes, to the number of 200. One, being their chieftaine, was called Robin Hood, who required the king and all his company to stay and see his men shoot: whereunto the king granting, Robin Hood whistled, and all the 200 archers shot off, loosing all at once; and when he whistled againe, they likewise shot againe their arrows whistled by craft of the head, so that the noise was strange and loud, which greatly delighted the king, queene, and their com

pany.

"Moreover, this Robin Hood desired the king and queene, with their retinue, to enter the greene wood, where, in arbours made of boughes, and deckt with flowers, they were set and served plentifully with venison and wine, by Robin Hood and his meyny, to their great contentment, and had other pageants and pastimes; as yee may read in my said author.

"I find also, that in the month of May, the citizens of London (of all estates) lightly in every parish, or sometimes two or three parishes joyning together, had their severall Mayings, and did fetch in May-poles, with divers warlike shewes, with good archers, morice-dancers, and other devises for pastime all the day long; and towards the evening, they had stageplaies, and bonefires in the streets.

"Of these Mayings, we read in the reign of Henry the sixth, that the aldermen and sheriffes of London, being on May day at the bishop of Londous wood in the parish of Stebunheath, and having there a worshipfull dinner for themselves and other commers, Lydgate the poet, that was a monk of Bury, sent to them by a pursivant a joyfull commendation of that season, containing sixteene staves in meeter royall, beginning thus:

"Mighty Flora, goddesse of fresh flowers,
which clothed hath the soyle in lusty green,
Made buds to spring, with her sweet showers,
by influence of the sunne shine,

To doe pleasance of intent full cleane,

unto the states which now sit here,

Hath Ver downe seat her own daughter deare,

"Making the vertue, that dured in the root,
Called the vertue, the vertue vegetable,

for to transcend, most wholesome and most soote,
Into the top, this season so agreeable :
the bawmy liquor is so commendable,

That it rejoyceth with his fresh moisture,
man, beast, and fowle, and every creature," &c.

Thus far hath our London historian conceived it good for his fellow citizens to know.

Of the manner wherein a May game was anciently set forth, he who above all writers contemporary with him could best devise it has "drawn out the platform," and exhibited the pageant, as performed by the household servants and dependants of a baronial mansion in the fifteenth century. This is the scene:"In the front of the pavilion, a large square was staked out, and fenced with ropes, to prevent the crowd from pressing upon the performers, and interrupting the diversion; there were also two bars at the bottom of the inclosure, through which the actors might pass and repass, as occasion required.-Six young men first entered the square, clothed in jerkins of leather, with axes upon their shoulders

like woodmen, and their heads bound with large garlands of ivy-leaves, intertwined with sprigs of hawthorn. Then followed six young maidens of the village, dressed in blue kirtles, with garlands of primroses on their heads, leading a fue sleek cow decorated with ribbons of viarious colours, interspersed with flowers; and the horns of the animal were tipped with gold. These were succeeded by six foresters, equipped in green tunics, with hoods and hosen of the same colour; each of them carried a bugle-horn attack. ed to a baldrick of silk, which he sounded as he passed the barrier. After them came Peter Lanaret, the baron's chief falconer, who personified Robin Hood; he was attired in a bright grass-green tunic, fringed with gold; his hood and his hosen were parti-coloured, biue and white; he had a large garland of rosebuds on his head, a bow bent in his hand,