Rise up, fair maids, and take in your May.
It now remains to trace back these ceremonies—these survivals—to their origin, and to show how once they were the essential outcome of a living creed, and had a serious, and, so to speak, sacramental significance.[332] The May-day celebrations combined three different usages. First, the bringing in of the May and the decoration of the homestead. Secondly, the planting of the May-pole and the dancing around it. Thirdly, the selection of some youth or maiden as King or Queen of the May.
(1) The custom of going to the woods to fetch in the May is not by any means peculiar to England. It was until recently very general throughout Europe, and still survives in many districts, though sometimes Whitsuntide or Midsummer is the date chosen for the ceremony. This wide distribution at once stamps it as an ancient observance, and indeed it was already represented as such so long ago as the thirteenth century.[333] In some districts the branches that were brought in were fastened over the house door or upon the roof, or planted in front of the cattle stalls, a separate bush being attached for each head of cattle. Here the acknowledged purpose was to make the cows good milkers. “They fancy,” says a writer on the manners of the Irish, “that a green bough fastened on May-day against the house will produce plenty of milk that summer.”[334] In other districts the May-bushes were decorated with nosegays and ribbons and carried in solemn procession from house to house, the bearers singing a song and collecting their recompense in a basket. In some parts of Sweden on May-day eve boys still go round at the heels of the village fiddler, each with a bunch of freshly-gathered birch-twigs, singing songs in which fine weather, good harvests, and other blessings are entreated. At every cottage where they are duly compensated for their pains they adorn the door with one of their birch-sprays. In Stockholm on St. John’s eve miniature May-poles, known as Majstänger, are sold by the thousand.[335] In Russia the custom of decking the houses with branches at Whitsuntide is universal.[336] Similar instances might be multiplied indefinitely.
Much light has been thrown on these May-day ceremonies by the study of many cognate observances met with amongst different nations and at different periods. In Western Germany and over the greater part of France it is customary at harvest-time to select a green sapling or branch, adorn it with flowers, ribbons, and coloured paper, and hang it with harvest fruits, eggs, cakes, and sweetmeats, and sometimes even with sausages, rolls of tobacco, rings, needles, etc. Often bottles of wine or beer are also suspended to it. It is known as the May, harvest-May, bouquet de la moisson, and it is frequently set up in the field which is in process of cutting. When the reaping is over it is brought home on the last sheaf or on the last load, or is borne by a harvestman seated on the waggon or walking before it. On its arrival at the homestead it is solemnly welcomed by the farmer, and attached to some conspicuous spot on the barn or house. Here it remains for a year until replaced by its successor. Another feature of the ceremony, which is no doubt of the nature of a rain charm, consists in the drenching of the May and its bearers with water, or in the sprinkling of them with wine. A variant of this observance is met with in other parts of Europe, where at some date after harvest the farmer causes a lofty pole, dressed with ribbons and hung with handkerchiefs, articles of clothing, cakes, fruit, etc., to be erected in his field. The labourers then climb or race for the prizes.[337]
There can be no question as to the antiquity of these customs. Mannhardt, who has carefully studied the subject, finds a most remarkable similarity between the harvest festivals of ancient Greece and those of modern Europe. The eiresione or harvest-bush of the Greeks, which is reproduced “with almost photographic exactness” in the harvest-May above described,[338] was a branch of olive or laurel, bound with red and white wool, and hung with ribbons, the finest harvest-fruits, cakes, and jars of honey, oil, and wine. It was carried in solemn procession with choral songs, at the Thargelia or feast of first-fruits in the late spring, and at the Pyanepsia or true harvest-festival in the early autumn, its destination at the former festival being the temple of Athena Polias, at the latter that of Apollo. It was planted before the door of the temple, the contents of the jars attached to it were poured over it, and the following lines were sung: “Eiresione brings figs and plump loaves, and honey in jars, and oil wherewith to anoint yourself, and cups of wine unwatered, that you may drink yourself to sleep.”[339] In addition to this official ceremony each landowner who grew corn and fruit held his own festival, the eiresione in that case being suspended or fastened before his house-door, or placed inside the house beside the ancestral images. There it remained for a twelve-month, until on the bringing home of the next year’s branch it was taken down and burnt. It was to this private eiresione that the familiar passages in Aristophanes allude. Demos hearing a noise at his front door, jumps to the conclusion that a street brawl is imminent: “Who’s making that hullaballoo?” he cries; “away from my door. What, will ye tear down my eiresione?”[340] His dread is that his harvest-branch will be requisitioned as a weapon of offence, a possible application of it also alluded to by the poet in another passage.[341] Elsewhere it is jestingly said of a dried-up old woman, that if a spark fell on her, she would burn up like an old eiresione,[342] a comparison which throws light on the mode of disposing of the last year’s branch.
The Oschophoria, or carrying in procession of the oschos, a vine-branch with the ripe grapes upon it, was another of the Athenian harvest festivals, and is interesting in the present connection from its being associated, like some modern harvest observances, with a racing competition.
These festivals, which were probably of prehistoric origin, were in classical times sanctified for the popular mind by being linked with and accounted for by some legendary event which appealed to the patriotic sentiment. But in spite of this they would appear in course of time to have undergone something of the same debasement as our own May observances, and degenerated into a begging procession from door to door. At any rate the word eiresione, originally applied to the festival hymn as well as to the branch, became in later times the general name for all begging-songs. Initially, however, the eiresione was, no doubt, a symbolical representation of the genius of vegetation, and as such was addressed as a person.[343]
Traced to its remote origin, there can be little doubt that the ceremony of bringing in the May arose from a similar process of reasoning. The gods or spirits of those far-off times had their habitation, or at least manifested their activity, in the tree. The gifts of rain and sunshine were in their hands. They made the crops to grow, the herds to multiply, and women to give increase. According to Aeneas Sylvius, the Lithuanians believed that their sacred groves were the house of the god who gave them rain and sunshine.[344] In Circassia the pear-tree is still regarded as the protector of cattle, and in the autumn is cut down, carried home, and worshipped as a god.[345] In many countries trees are held to have the power of helping women in childbirth.[346] It was therefore no more unnatural for an ignorant peasantry to believe that the same power and influence existed in the cut branches of trees than it is for a modern uncultured Catholic to expect help from sacred relics. In each case the process of thought is the same. Eventually the ceremony of carrying the branch round the village, the primitive purpose of which was to make each house a sharer in the benevolent offices of the tree-spirit, degenerated into a meaningless observance, a pretext for indulging in festivities and levying contributions. But there can be no doubt that the securing of fertility and abundance, together with the supply of rain and sunshine necessary thereto, was originally the root-idea of the worldwide spring observances.
(2) The custom of setting up the May-pole on the village green had, no doubt, a similar genesis. It represented for the community what the May-day decoration of the house represented for the family. In parts of Europe the pole is sometimes planted in front of the Mayor’s or Burgomaster’s house.[347] The intention, evidently, was to bring to the village as a whole the newly-quickened generative spirit resident in the woods. The custom of cutting down a tree, decorating it with garlands and ribbons, re-erecting it, and fêting it with dance and song, has prevailed in almost every country in the world. In some instances it is further dressed as a mortal, or a human image is attached to it, as in the Attis rites, testifying to the anthropomorphic conception of the tree-spirit. The doll placed in the centre of the children’s May garlands would seem to be a survival of this custom. The same feature of the celebration is illustrated most clearly in the Greek festival of the little Daedala, which may be regarded as “a classical equivalent of an English May-day in the olden time.”[348] The festival was inaugurated in an ancient oak-forest. Cooked meat was placed upon the ground and the movements of the birds which came to feed upon it were carefully observed. The tree upon which a bird was first observed to alight with the meat in its bill was cut down, carved into the image of a woman, and dressed as a bride. It was then placed upon a cart and drawn in procession with singing and dancing. It must be added that Mr. Farnell regards this festival as a survival from prehistoric times of the processional ceremony of the “sacred marriage” between Zeus and Hera, which may possibly have been symbolical of the marriage of earth and heaven in spring.[349]
In the case of our own May-pole, it was originally, no doubt, the custom to erect a fresh tree every year, in order that the newly-awakened energy of the forest might be communicated to the village, and in many parts this feature of the custom appears to have survived, as we may gather from the Puritan accounts above quoted. Elsewhere, as the intention of the ceremony was lost sight of, a permanent May-pole was substituted for the annual tree, and was converted on May-day, by means of garlands and flowers, into the semblance of a living growth. The May-tree of the German village, for instance, is a permanent construction, made up of several tall trunks.[350] On May-day, cakes, sausages, eggs, and other desirable things are hung upon it, the villagers dance around it, and the young men climb it to secured its gifts. In some parts the May-pole is surmounted by a cross, and the symbol of a dead faith is consecrated by that of a living one.