IRELAND.
The following custom of the Irish is described in a MS. of the sixteenth century, and seems to have been of Pagan origin: “Upon Maie Eve they will drive their cattell upon their neighbour’s corne, to eate the same up; they were wont to begin from the vast, and this principally upon the English churl. Unlesse they do so upon Maie daie, the witch hath power upon their cattell all the yere following.”—N. & Q. 1st S. vol. vii. p. 81.
Sir Henry Piers, in his Account of Westmeath, 1682, says:—“On May Eve, every family sets up before their door a green bush, strewed over with yellow flowers, which the meadows yield plentifully. In counties where timber is plentiful, they erect tall slender trees, which stand high, and they continue almost the whole year; so that a stranger would go nigh to imagine that they were all signs of ale-sellers, and that all houses were ale-houses.”
