The primerose, the violete, and the gold,
With fresh garlants party blew and white."[153:A]
And, it should be observed, that this, the simplest mode of celebrating May-day, was as much in vogue, in the days of Shakspeare, as the more complex one, accompanied by the morris-dance, and the games of Robin Hood. The following descriptions, by Bourne and Borlase, manifestly allude to the costume of this age, and to the simpler mode of commemorating the 1st of May: "On the Calends, or the 1st day of May," says the former, "commonly called May-day, the juvenile part of both sexes were wont to rise a little after midnight, and walk to some neighbouring wood, accompany'd with music, and the blowing of horns, where they break down branches from the trees, and adorn them with nosegays and crowns of flowers. When this is done, they return with their booty homewards, about the rising of the sun, and make their doors and windows to triumph in the flowery spoil. The after part of the day, is chiefly spent in dancing round a tall poll, which is called a May Poll; which being placed in a convenient part of the village, stands there, as it were consecrated to the Goddess of Flowers, without the least violence offered it, in the whole circle of the year."[153:B] "An antient custom," says the latter, "still retained by the Cornish, is that of decking their doors and porches on the first of May with green sycamore and hawthorn boughs, and of planting trees, or rather stumps of trees, before their houses: and on May-eve, they from towns make excursions into the country, and having cut down a tall elm, brought it into town, fitted a straight and taper pole to the end of it, and painted
the same, erect it in the most public places, and on holidays and festivals adorn it with flower garlands, or insigns and streamers."[154:A]
Now both these passages are little more than a less extended account of what Philip Stubbes was a witness of, and described, in the year 1595, in his puritanical work, entitled The Anatomie of Abuses. "Against Maie-day," relates this vehement declaimer, "every parish, towne, or village, assemble themselves, both men, women, and children; and either all together, or dividing themselves into companies, they goe some to the woods and groves, some to the hills and mountaines, some to one place, some to another, where they spend all the night in pleasant pastimes, and in the morning they return bringing with them, birche boughes and branches of trees to deck their assemblies withal. But their chiefest jewel they bring from thence is the maie-pole, which they bring home with great veneration, as thus—they have twentie or fortie yoake of oxen, every oxe having a sweete nosegaie of flowers tied to the tip of his hornes, and these oxen drawe home the maie-poale, their stinking idol rather, which they covered all over with flowers and hearbes, bound round with strings from the top to the bottome, and sometimes it was painted with variable colours, having two or three hundred men, women, and children following it with great devotion. And thus equipp'd it was reared with handkerchiefes and flagges streaming on the top, they strawe the ground round about it, they bind green boughs about it, they set up summer halles, bowers, and arbours, hard by it, and then fall they to banquetting and feasting, to leaping and dauncing about it, as the heathen people did at the dedication of their idolls.—I have heard it crediblie reported," he sarcastically adds, "by men of great gravity, credite, and reputation, that of fourtie, three score, or an hundred maides going to the wood, there have scarcely the third part of them returned home againe as they went."[154:B]
Browne also has given a similar description of the May-day rites in his Britannia's Pastorals:—
"As I have seene the Lady of the May
Set in an arbour —— —— ——
Built by the May-pole, where the jocund swaines
Dance with the maidens to the bagpipe's straines,