May-Day Dance in 1698.

This [engraving] of the milkmaids’ garland, and the costume of themselves and their fiddler, at the close of the century before last, is from a print in “Mémoires, &c. par un Voyageur en Angleterre,” an octavo volume, printed “à la Haye 1698,” wherein it is introduced by the author, Henry Misson, to illustrate a passage descriptive of the amusements of London at that time. His account of the usage is to the following effect:—

On the first of May, and the five or six days following, all the young and pretty peasant girls, who are accustomed to bear about milk for sale in the city, dress themselves very orderly, and carry about them a number of vases and silver vessels, of which they make a pyramid, adorned with ribbons and flowers. This pyramid they bear on their heads instead of the ordinary milk-pail, and accompanied by certain of their comrades and the music of a fiddle, they go dancing from door to door surrounded by young men and children, who follow them in crowds; and every where they are made some little present.