[47.] May Day Carol. Melody and words noted down a good many years ago by J.S. Cayzer, Esq. It was sung, till of late years, in my neighbourhood, where a bunch of flowers at the end of a stick was carried about by children. It was customary in England for a lover on May morning to take a green bough to the house of the beloved. If she opened the door and took it in, this was a token of acceptance. At the Puritan epoch this custom was altered, and the song was converted into a carol with a moral to it, see "Notes and Queries," Third Series, ix. p. 380; Hone's "Every Day Book," 1826, i. p. 567; Chambers' "Book of Days," i. p. 578. Herrick refers to the custom of youths bringing their May bushes to the maids of their choice:—
"A deale of youth ere this is come
Back, and with white thorn laden home,
Some have dispatched their cakes and cream,
Before that we have left to dream."
The melody is a very early one in the Dorian mode, and resembles that of the carol, "The Moon shines bright," Broadwood's "County Songs," p. 108. The carol is still sung in Cornwall.
[48.] The Lovers' Tasks. This very curious song belongs, as I was told, in Cornwall, to a sort of play that was wont to be performed in farmhouses at Christmas. One performer, a male, left the room, and entered again singing the first part. A girl, seated on a chair, responded with the second part. The story was this. She had been engaged to a young man who died. His ghost returned to claim her. She demurred to this, and he said that he would waive his claim if she could perform a series of tasks he set her. To this she responded that he must, in the first place, accomplish a set of impossible tasks she would set him. Thus was he baffled.
"In all stories of this kind," says Professor Child, "the person upon whom a task is imposed stands acquitted if another of no less difficulty is devised which must be performed first."
This ballad and dramatic scene corresponds with that in "Cold blows the wind" ([No. 6]). There, in the original, the ghost desires to draw the girl underground, when she is seated on his grave. She objects, and he sets her a task—
"Go fetch me a light from dungeon deep,
Wring water from a stone,
And likewise milk from a maiden's breast,
That never babe had none."
She answers the requirement—
"She stroke a light from out a flint,
An icebell squeezed she,
And likewise milk from a Johnnis' wort,
And so she did all three."