Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs (1886) Part 22

Before the sun was up on May-day morning, the people of Edinburgh a.s.sembled at Arthur's Seat to "meet the dew." May-dew was thought to possess all kinds of virtues. English girls went into the fields at dawn to wash their faces in it, in order to procure a good complexion.

Pepys speaks of his wife going to Woolwich for a little change of air, and to gather the May-dew. In Croatia, the women get from the woods flowers and gra.s.ses which they throw into water taken from under a mill-wheel, and next morning they bathe in the water, imagining that thus the new strength of Nature enters into them. There is said to also exist a singular rain-custom in Croatia. When a drought threatens to injure the crops, a young girl, generally a gipsy, dresses herself entirely in flowers and gra.s.ses, in which primitive raiment she is conducted through the village by her companions, who sing to the skies for mercy. In Greece, too, there are many songs and ceremonies in connection with a desire for the rain, which never comes during the whole pitiless summer.

If there be a part of the world where spring plays the laggard, it is certainly the upper valley of the Inn. Nevertheless the children of the Engadine trudge forth bravely over the snow, shaking their cow-bells and singing l.u.s.tily:

Chalanda Mars, chaland'Avrigl Lasche las vachias our d'nuilg.

Were the cows to leave their stables as is here enjoined, they would not find a blade of gra.s.s to eat--but that does not matter. The children have probably sung that song ever since their forefathers came up to the mountains; came up in all likelihood from sunny Tuscany. The Engadine lads, after doing justice to their March-day fare, set out for the boundaries of their commune, where they are met by another band of boys, with whom they contend in various trials of strength, which sometimes end in hand-to-hand fights. This may be a.n.a.logous to the old English usage of beating the younger generation once a year at the village boundaries in order to impress on them a lasting idea of local geography. By the Lake of Poschiavo it is the custom to "call after the gra.s.s"--"chiamar l'erba"--on March-day.

In the end, as has been seen, March gets an ill-word from the Greek folk-singer, who is not more constant in his praise of April. It is the old fatality which makes the Better the Enemy of the Good.

May is coming, May is coming, comes the month so blithe and gay; April truly has its flowers, but all roses bloom in May; April, thou accurst one, vanish! Sweet May-month I long to see; May fills all the world with flowers, May will give my love to me.

May is pre-eminently the bridal month in Greece; a strange contradiction to the prejudice against May marriages that prevails in most parts of Europe. "Marry in May, rue for aye." The Romans have been held responsible for this superst.i.tion. They kept their festival of the dead during May, and while it lasted other forms of worship were suspended. To contract marriage would have been to defy the fates. Traces of a spring feast of souls survive in France, where, on Palm Sunday, _Paques fleuries_ as it is called, it is customary to set the first fresh flowers of the year upon the graves. Nor is it by any means uninteresting to note that in one great empire far outside of the Roman world the _fete des morts_ is a.s.signed not to the quiet close of the year but to the delightful spring. The Chinese festival of Clear Weather which falls in April is the chosen time for worshipping at the family tombs.

The marriage of Mary Queen of Scots and James Bothwell was celebrated on the 16th of May; an unknown hand wrote upon the gate of Holyrood Palace Ovid's warning:

Si te proverbia tangunt, Mense malas Maio nubere vulgus ait.

Of English songs treating of that "observance" or "rite" of May to which Chaucer and Shakespeare bear witness, there are unfortunately few. The old nursery rhyme:

Here we go a-piping, First in spring and then in May,

tells the usual story of house-to-house visiting and expected largess.

In Devonshire, children used to take round a richly-dressed doll; such a doll is still borne in triumph by the children of Great Missenden, Bucks, where a doggerel is sung, of which these are the concluding verses:

A branch of May I have you brought, And at your door I stand; 'Tis but a spray that's well put out By the works of the mighty Lord's hand.

If you have got no strong beer, We'll be content with small; And take the goodwill of your house, And give good thanks for all.

G.o.d bless the master of this house, The mistress also; Likewise the little children That round the table go.

My song is done, I must be gone, No longer can I stay; G.o.d bless you all, both great and small, And send you a joyful May.

The poets of Great Missenden not being prolific, the two middle stanzas are used at Christmas as well as on May-day.

May-poles were prohibited by the Long Parliament of 1644, being denounced as a "heathenish vanity generally abused to superst.i.tion and wickedness." A long while before, the Roman Floralia, the feast when people carried green boughs and wore fresh garlands, had been put down for somewhat the same reasons. With regard to May-poles I am not inclined to think too harshly of them. They died hard: an old Ess.e.x man told me on his death-bed of how when he was a lad the young folks danced regularly round the May-pole on May-day, and in his opinion it was a good time. It was a time, he went on to say, when the country was a different thing; twice a day the postillion's horn sounded down the village street, the Woolpack Inn was often full even to the attics in its pretty gabled roof, all sorts of persons of quality fell out of the clouds, or to speak exactly, emerged from the London coach.

The life of the place seemed to be gone, said my friend, and yet "the place" is in the very highest state of modern prosperity.

The parade of sweeps in bowers of greenery lingered on rather longer in England than May-poles. It is stated to have originated in this way. Edward Wortley Montagu (born about 1714), who later was destined to win celebrity by still stranger freaks, escaped when a boy from Westminster School and borrowed the clothes of a chimney sweep, in whose trade he became an adept. A long search resulted in his discovery and restoration to his parents on May 1; in recollection of which event Mrs Elizabeth Montagu is said to have inst.i.tuted the May-day feast given by her for many years to the London chimney-sweepers.

In the country west of Glasgow it is still remembered how once the houses were adorned with flowers and branches on the first of May, and in some parts of Ireland they still plant a May-tree or May-bush before the door of the farmhouse, throwing it at sundown into a bonfire. The lighting of fires was not an uncommon feature of May-day observance, but it is a practice which seems to me to have strayed into that connection from its proper place in the great festival of the summer solstice on St John's Eve. Among people of English speech, May-day customs are little more than a cheerful memory. Herrick wrote:

Wash, dress, be brief in praying, Few beads are best when once we go a-maying.

People neglect their "beads" or the equivalents now from other motives.

May night is the German Walpurgis-nacht. The witches ride up to the Brocken on magpies' tails, not a magpie can be seen for the next twenty-four hours--they are all gone and they have not had time to return. The witches dance on the Brocken till they have danced away the winter's snow. May-brides and May-kings are still to be heard of in Germany, and children run about on May-day with b.u.t.tercups or with a twist of bread, a _Bretzel_, decked with ribbons, or holding imprisoned may-flies, which they let loose whilst they sing:

Makaferchen fliege, Dein Vater ist in kriege, Deine Mutter ist in Pommerland, Pommerland ist abgebrannt, Makaferchen fliege.

May chafer must fly away home, his father is at the wars, his mother is in Pomerania, Pomerania is all burnt. May chafer in short is the brother of our ladybird. Dr Karl Blind is of opinion that "Pommerland"

is a later interpolation for "Holler-land"--the land of Freya--Holda, the Teutonic Aphrodite; and he and other German students of mythology see in the conflagration an allusion to the final end and doom of the kingdom of the G.o.ds. It is pointed out that the ladybird was Freya's messenger, whose business it was to call the unborn from their tranquil sojourn amongst celestial flowers, into the storms of human existence. There is an airy May chafer song in Alsace--Teutonic in tradition, though French in tongue:

Avril, tu t'en vas, Car Mai vient la-bas, Pour balayer ta figure De pluie, aussi de froidure.

Hanneton, vole!

Hanneton, vole!

Au firmament bleu Ton nid est en feu, Les Turcs avec leur epee Viennent tuer ta couvee.

Hanneton, vole!

Hanneton, vole!

Dr Blind recollects taking part, as a boy, in an extremely curious children's drama, which is still played in some places in the open air. It is an allegory of the expulsion of winter, who is killed and burnt, and of the arrival of summer, who comes decked with flowers and garlands. The children repeat:

Now have we chased death away, And we bring the summer weather; Summer dear and eke the May, And the flowers all together: Bringing summer we are come, Summer tide and sunshine home.

With this may be compared an account given by Olaus Magnus, a Swedish writer of the fifteenth century, of how May Day was celebrated in his time. "A number of youths on horseback were drawn up in two lines facing each other, the one party representing 'Winter' and the other 'Summer.' The leader of the former was clad in wild beasts' skins, and he and his men were armed with snow-b.a.l.l.s and pieces of ice.

The commander of the latter--'Maj Greve,' or Count May--was, on the contrary, decorated with leaves and flowers, and his followers had for weapons branches of the birch or linden tree, which, having been previously steeped in water, were then in leaf. At a given signal, a sham fight ensued between the opposing forces. If the season was cold and backward, 'Winter' and his party were impetuous in their attack, and in the beginning the advantage was supposed to rest with them; but if the weather was genial, and the spring had fairly set in, 'Maj Greve' and his men carried all before them. Under any circ.u.mstances, however, the umpire always declared the victory to rest with 'Summer.'

The winter party then strewed ashes on the ground, and a joyous banquet terminated the game." Mr L. Lloyd, author of "Peasant Life in Sweden" (1870), records some lines sung by Swedish children when collecting provisions for the _Maj gille_ or May feast, which recall the "Swallow-song":

"Best loves from Mr and Mrs Magpie, From all their eggs and all their fry, O give them alms, if ever so small, Else hens and chickens and eggs and all, A prey to 'Piet' will surely fall."

The Swedes raise their _Maj st[)a]ng_ or May-pole, not on May, but on St John's Eve, a change due, I suspect, to the exigencies of the climate.

German _Mailieder_ are one very much like the other; they are full of the simple gladness of children who have been shut up in houses, and who now can run about in the sunny air. I came across the following in Switzerland:

"Alles neu macht der Mai, Macht die Seele frisch und frei.

La.s.st dans Haus!

Kommt hinaus!

Windet einen Strauss!

"Rings erglanzet Sonnenschein, Dustend pranget Flur und Hain.

Vogel-sang, l.u.s.t'ger Klang Tont den Wald entlang."

In Lorraine girls dressed in white go from village to village stringing off couplets, in which the inhabitants are turned into somewhat unmerciful ridicule. The girls of this place enlighten the people of that as to their small failings, and so _vice versa_. All the winter the village poets harvest the jokes made by one community at the expense of another, in order to shape them into a consecutive whole for recital on May Day. The girls are rewarded for their part in the business by small coin, cakes and fruit. The May-songs of Lorraine are termed "Trimazos," from the fact that they are always sung to the refrain,

"O Trimazot, c'at lo Maye; O mi-Maye!

c'at lo joli mois de Maye, c'at lo Trimazot."

The derivation of _Trimazo_ is uncertain; someone suggested that _Tri_ stands for three, and _mazo_ for maidens; but I think _mazo_ is more likely to be connected with the Italian _mazzo_, "nosegay." The word is known outside Lorraine: at Islettes children say:

"Trimazot! en nous allant Nous pormenes eddans les champs Nous y ons trouve les bles si grands Les Aubepin' en fleurissant."

They beg for money to buy a taper for the Virgin's altar; for it must not be forgotten that the month of May is the month of Mary.

The villagers add a little flour to their pious offering, so that the children may make cakes. Elsewhere in Champagne young girls collect the taper money; they cunningly appeal to the tenderness of the young mother by bringing to her mind the hour "when she takes her pretty child up in the morning and lays him to sleep at night." There was a day on which the girls of the neighbourhood of Remiremont used to way-lay every youth they met on the road to the church of Dommartin and insist on sticking a sprig of rosemary or laurel in his cap, saying, "We have found a fine gentleman, G.o.d give him joy and health; take the May, the pretty May!" The fine gentleman was requested to give "what he liked" for the dear Virgin's sake. In the department of the Jura there are May-brides, and in Bresse they have a May-queen who is attended by a youth, selected for the purpose, and by a little boy who carries a green bough ornamented with ribands. She heads the village girls and boys, who walk as in a marriage procession, and who receive eggs, wine, or money. A song still sung in Burgundy recalls the prae-revolutionary aera and the respect inspired by the seigneurial woods:--

"Le voila venu le joli mois, Laissez bourgeonner le bois; Le voila venu le joli mois, Le joli bois bourgeonne.

Il faut laisser bourgeonner le bois, Le bois du gentilhomme."

The young peasants of Poitou betake themselves to the door of each homestead before the dawn of the May morning and summon the mistress of the house to waken her daughters:--