To which with silver feet lead you the way,
While sweet-breath’d nymphs attend you on this day.
This is your houre; and best you may command,
Since you are Lady of this fairie land.
Full mirth wait on you, and such mirth as shall
Cherrish the cheek, but make none blush at all.
With the “silver feet” of the Meadow Maid may be connoted the curious custom of the London Merrymaids thus described by a French visitor to England in the time of Charles II.: “On the first of May, and the five or six days following, all the pretty young country girls, that serve the town with milk, dress themselves up very neatly and borrow abundance of silver plate whereof they make a pyramid which they adorn with ribbons and flowers, and carry upon their heads instead of their common milk-pails.”[707] That this pyramid or pyre of silver represented a crown or halo is further implied by an engraving of the eighteenth century depicting a fiddler and two milk-maids dancing, one of the maids having on her head a silver plate. It is probable that this symbolised the moon, and that the second dancer represented the sun, the twain standing for the Heavenly Pair, or the Powers of Day and Night.
In Ireland there is little doubt that St. Mary was bracketed inextricably with St. Bride, whence the bardic assertion:—
There are two holy virgins in heaven
By whom may I be guarded