Sing cuccu nu. Sing cuccu.
Sing cuccu. Sing cuccu nu!’[555]
The savour of the spring is still in the English May songs, the French maierolles or calendes de mai and the Italian calen di maggio. But for the rest they have either become little but mere quête songs, or else, under the influence of the priests, have taken on a Christian colouring[556]. At Oxford the ‘merry ketches’ sung by choristers on the top of Magdalen tower on May morning were replaced in the seventeenth century by the hymn now used[557]. Another very popular Mayers’ song would seem to show that the Puritans, in despair of abolishing the festival, tried to reform it.
‘Remember us poor Mayers all,
And thus we do begin
To lead our lives in righteousness,
Or else we die in sin.
‘We have been rambling all this night,
And almost all this day:
And now returned back again,