They’re ‘bringing in the May’

This foliage would then be used to make garlands to hang over doorways and for other decorations such as the lugs (handles) of milkmaids yoke's and particularly to decorate the Maypole and provide a bright display for a procession. One late sixteenth century description shows that as many as "twenty or forty yoke of oxen, every ox having a sweet nose-gay of flowers placed on the tip of his horns" would bring home the Maypole, which would sometimes be brightly painted, and always covered with flowers and herbs, tied on with strings, from the top to the bottom.

When the Maypole had been erected the people would spread straw on the ground around it and then dance about it in a circle. Illustrations and descriptions show that young people danced round the pole and kissed at every turn. It was not until the nineteenth century that ribbons started to be attached to the pole and the dances became more intricate.

It has been theorised that the Maypole was a phallic symbol representing fertility, however the historian Ronald Hutton does not subscribe to this belief as trees were used in big towns trees instead of poles. He points out that the main feature of the Maypole was that it was a framework on which to hang garlands and something to dance around. There were other aspects of the May traditions that were seen as linked with fertility.

By the late sixteenth century it was written that young men and women and old men and their wives would go out to the woods, groves, hills and mountains for the night before May morning to enjoy "pleasant pastimes". They would return in the morning carrying branches of trees and birch (the May). The writer, Philip Stubbes, who was a staunch puritan also described the above as being a heathen custom and added that he had "heard it credibly reported ... that of forty, threescore, or a hundred maids going to the wood over night, there have scarcely the third part of them returned home again undefiled."

Similarly, in a song written in about 1630 we find the chorus "thus the Robin and the Thrush, Musicke make in every bush.

While they chaarm their pretty notes, Young men hurle up maidens cotes"

Modern demographic research has failed to show an increase in the birth rate nine months later...

Stubbes was not alone in his condemnation of the May festivities. They had become quite raucous and between 1570 and 1630 many towns, including Canterbury, Shrewsbury, Leicester, Lincoln and Banbury, had banned maypoles. In 1633, a puritan labourer got into a fight when he tried to stop the bringing in of the garland at a church in Oxford. When Oliver Cromwell came into power in 1644, one of his first actions was to ban Maypoles throughout the land.

The restoration of the monarchy saw the revival of the traditions and they lasted well for the next couple of centuries. Records show that in the eighteenth century Maypoles were still painted and decorated with flags and garlands and that people still danced around them. Unfortunately by the end of the century in many places the poles were neglected until they were rescued by the "Victorians" who had an interest in reviving and maintaining old customs.

A perfect example of this is when in 1844, the children of Barham Court in Kent went to a church service, and then enjoyed a "rustic" afternoon with tea and cake and dancing around a Maypole erected in the grounds of Lord and Lady Camden's mansion house. At Knutsford in Cheshire a similar "revival" took place in 1864 with a children's procession and the crowing of a May Queen.

The Victorians also enlarged on the tradition of making a May Garland. Flora Thompson included in "Lark Rise to Candleford" a description of the communities garland which was shaped like a bell on a four feet tall wooden frame and covered in violets, primroses, wallflowers and oxlips. She explained that the children (in the 1880s) would wear their best clothes - the girls in light-coloured frocks and the boys in bright ribbons and bows worn crosswise, and they would walk in procession, along with a May King and Queen. The children would walk seven miles around the district singing and collecting money from the big houses to be shared at school the next day. Hutton was sceptical of this account as though May Queens were common the participation of boys in the ritual was not.

Girls were encouraged by the village schools to make flower garlands and in some places the garland was replaced by a May doll laying on a bed of flowers. But it was just girls who gathered in the flowers and other foliage, the most popular of which were the flowering hawthorn, or whitethorn though in some areas such as the vale of Taunton Dene this was seen as unlucky. The people of the Wales and the Marches preferred birch and the Cornish preferred sycamore.

In many areas the men would a bring greenery to people's doors on May morning in return for money and in other places groups of girls would sing songs and sell garlands. In the fens of Cambridgeshire the young men would take foliage to the doors of the girls in the area and a code was developed exploring the meaning of the choices - sloe blossom for popular girls; blackthorn for girls with loose manners; an eldertree would be planted near a "slattern"; and a bunch of nettles tied to the doorlatch of the "scold". In Lancashire a similar custom evolved and the choices were remembered by rhyme: holly - folly; thorn - scorn; briar - liar; plum in bloom - married soon.

You may wonder what the rhyme at the top of this article has to do with the day. It is believed to be the song sung in 1790 by a group of "troublesome rogues" who would "go round the streets with drums or other noisy instruments, disturbing their sober neighbours and singing parts of a song, the whole of which nobody now recollects, and of which I know no more than that there is a mention in it of the grey goose quill and of going to the green wood to bring home the summer and the May-O': and, accordingly, hawthorn flowering branches are worn in hats."

Unfortunately, by the end of the nineteenth century most of the May Day traditions had waned, but the song "Hal an' Tow", the title of which is believed to derive from "Heel and Toe", lingers on in the Helston Furry Dance.