My uncle observed, that in Cornwall, where customs have been less changed than in most parts of England, the May-day ceremonies are kept up with great care. He learned from a friend, who lived in a remote town in that county, that all the houses were thrown open; lively music was everywhere heard, and the young maidens, decked with wreaths and festoons of flowers, danced along the streets, or formed dancing parties in every house they chose to select.
“The annual celebration of this day,” he continued, “may be traced up to a very high antiquity. The Romans had their Floralia, or games in honour of Flora, during the calends of May; and in Asia, when the sun entered the constellation of Taurus, which corresponded to that period, the same kind of festivities took place, accompanied by a similar display of flowers. Some antiquaries have shown that May-day was celebrated in this country long before the Roman invasion, and they ascribe the introduction of the custom to an Asiatic colony that settled here, and who of course brought with them their national habits. In the East, customs have undergone but little change; and many of the sports which are prevalent on May-day in some parts of England and Ireland, and which, at first sight, appear to proceed from unmeaning caprice, may be proved to be fragments of ancient Eastern ceremonies, by their similarity to those still practised there on that day.”
My aunt said, that she had seen a May-bush very prettily hung with flowers at Chamouni, in Switzerland; and she added, “in the old-fashioned custom too of making fools on the first of April, there is probably a vestige of the Eastern celebration of the season when the sun enters Aries; that is, when the year commences. In Persia, medals of gold were struck with the head of the Ram, on the festival of the Nauruz or new year’s-day; and the frolic of making fools still distinguishes the Nauruz festival, and is practised, I believe, from one end of India to the other.”
I asked my uncle when that Eastern colony to which he had alluded came to England, as I did not recollect seeing it mentioned in the History of England.
“The ancient Britons,” said my uncle, “had a tradition of their being descended from an Eastern tribe called Sacca; and undoubtedly there are many points of resemblance between their modes of worship, and those practised in some of the Indian provinces. It would probably be tiresome to a young person like you, Bertha, to read all the arguments on this disputed point; but hereafter you may find it a subject of curious inquiry to examine the coincidences said to exist in the manners of such remote nations of the East and the West.”
3rd.—I have such a severe cold, that, fine as the weather is, I am not allowed to go out; so I can write without interruption to my dear mamma. I must confess my own foolish imprudence was the cause of this cold: on the evening of May-day, my aunt allowed the school children to have a dance on the green, and we all joined in it round their pretty May-bush. I exerted myself so much, that I was soon over-heated; and, then stood in the wind to cool myself. My aunt warned me of the consequence, but I was too much diverted to attend immediately to her advice, and the next morning I had a violent head-ache, and all the symptoms of a heavy cold. However, as my uncle had arranged every thing for showing a cloth manufactory, several miles from this, to the Maudes and Miss Perceval, I could not bear to give up what I might not have another opportunity of seeing. Besides, we were to cross the river at the ferry, where horses had been ordered to meet us; and I hoped to see a great deal of new country. My friends, indeed, advised me to remain in bed, but I would not acknowledge how ill I was; and persisted in accompanying them. Of course my head grew very painful, and my cold oppressed and stupified me so much, as to prevent my remembering distinctly the half of what I saw.
I recollect, however, being shewn how the wool was washed and beaten in order to clean it. When well dried and picked, it was carded on large cylindrical brushes, made of wire instead of hair, which laid all the fibres in one direction; the wool was then oiled, and again combed or brushed with finer cards on the knee, and at last spun into yarn—that intended for the warp being always smaller and more twisted than that of the woof. The yarn for the woof was then wound on little bobbins or tubes; and in weaving, one of these is placed in the middle of the shuttle, on a pin, round which it easily turns, so as to let the thread run off through a hole called the eye of the shuttle, as it travels from side to side of the loom.
I will not tease you with the manner of warping the yarn from one beam to the other; nor with a description of the heddles, or looped strings, which raise and depress the alternate threads of the warp for the shuttle to pass between them, and which the weaver works by his feet; nor of the batten and reed for driving the woof home every time the shuttle carries it across; all these appeared very simple, while looking at the operation, but I am afraid that I should give but a very lame account of them. Still less can I attempt to describe a power-loom which has been just set up; it seems to do every thing without the interference of the weaver—the heddles rise and fall, the batten strikes in regular time and with equal force, and the shuttle flies to and fro from selvage to selvage as if it was alive.
At another loom they were taking off the cloth from the beam on which it had been rolled in the process of weaving, and many hands were immediately employed with iron nippers in trimming and cutting off the knots and threads. The obliging proprietor of the manufactory partly described and partly shewed us the subsequent operations of scouring the cloth with potter’s clay, steeping and fulling it, and then stretching it lengthwise to take out the wrinkles. This is repeated several times, then it is washed in clear water, and given wet to other workmen to raise the nap, by means of a flower called teasel, which somewhat resembles a thistle. When the nap is well raised on the right side, it is given to the shearers, and then to the dyer; and when dyed it is again washed in plain water, and spread on a table, where the nap is laid properly with a brush. It is then hung up to dry, and stretched in every direction; after which it is folded and laid under a press.
It seemed very curious to see a homely wild plant like the teasel, fresh from the field, used along with so much complex machinery: many imitations of it have been tried, but nothing answers so well as the beautiful little hooks contrived by nature. In the west of England, therefore, wherever the soil is dry and gravelly, teasels are cultivated on a large scale for the cloth manufactories.