Cheshire.
In this county the young men formerly celebrated May-day by placing large bidden boughs over the doors of the houses where the young women resided to whom they paid their addresses; and an alder bough was often placed over the door of a scold.—Lysons’ Magna Britannia, 1810, vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 462.
Maypoles are also erected, and danced round in some villages with as much avidity as ever.—Jour. of Arch. Assoc., 1850, vol. v. p. 254. Washington Irving in his Sketch Book says, I shall never forget the delight I felt on first seeing a Maypole. It was on the banks of the 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 Maypole 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.