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In an old MS. of the sixteenth century it is said that on the feast of SS. Philip and James, the Eton boys were allowed to go out at four o’clock in the morning to gather May to dress their rooms, and sweet herbs to perfume them, “if they can do it without wetting their feet!”

Thirty or forty years ago May-day decorations, in some country places, consisted of strewing the cottage doorsteps with daisies, or other flowers.

In Hertfordshire a curious custom obtained of decking the neighbours’ doors with May if they were popular, and with nettles if they were the reverse.

In Lancashire rustic wags put boughs of various trees at the doors of the girls of the neighbourhood. Each tree had a meaning (well known in the district), sometimes complimentary, and sometimes the reverse.

In France it was customary for lovers to deck over-night the houses of the ladies they wished to please, and school-boys paid a like compliment to their masters. They do not seem, however, to have been satisfied with nosegays or even with green branches; they transplanted young trees from the woods to the side of the door they wished to honour, and then decked them with ribbons, etc. There is a curious record that “Henry II., wishing to recompense the clerks of Bazoche for their good services in quelling an insurrection in Guienne, offered them money; but they would only accept the permission granted them by the king, of cutting in the royal woods such trees as they might choose for the planting of the May–a privilege which existed at the commencement of the French Revolution.” In Cornwall, too, it seems to have been the custom to plant “stumps of trees” before the houses, as well as to decorate them with boughs and blossoms. And Mr. Aubrey (1686) says, “At Woodstock in Oxon they every May-eve goe into the parke, and fetch away a number of haw-thorne-trees, which they set before their dores; ’tis a pity that they make such a destruction of so fine a tree.”

One certainly agrees with Mr. Aubrey. Thorns are slow to grow, hard to transplant, and very lovely when they are old. It is not to be regretted that such ruthless destruction of them has gone out of fashion.

In Ireland “tall slender trees” seem to have been set up before the doors, as well as “a green bush, strewed over with yellow flowers, which the meadows yield plentifully.” A writer, speaking of this in 1682, adds, “A stranger would go nigh to imagine that they were all signs of ale-sellers, and that all houses were ale-houses,” referring to the old custom of a bunch of green as the sign of an inn, which is illustrated by the proverb, “Good wine needs no bush.” I have an old etching of a river-side inn, in which the sign is a garland hanging on a pole.

I fancy the yellow flowers must have been cowslips, which the green fields of Erin do indeed “yield plentifully.”

Besides these private May-trees, every village had its common Maypole, gaily adorned with wreaths and flags and ribbons, and sometimes painted in spiral lines of colour. The Welsh Maypoles seem to have been made from birch-trees, elms were used in Cornwall, and young oaks in other parts of England. Round these Maypoles the young villagers danced, and green booths were often set up on the grass near them.

In many villages the Maypole was as much a fixture as the parish stocks, but when a new one was required, it was brought home on May-eve in grand procession with songs and instrumental music. I am afraid there is a good deal of evidence to show that the Maypoles were not always honestly come by! However, the Puritan writers (from whose bitter and detailed complaints we learn most of what we know about the early English May-day customs) are certainly prejudiced, and perhaps not quite trustworthy witnesses. One good man groans lamentably: “What adoe make our young men at the time of May? Do they not use night watchings to rob and steale young trees out of other men’s grounde, and bring them into their parishe, with minstrels playing before?”