Linen and cotton, and even flannel under-clothing, may generally be darned and pieced until the whole fabric is too much worn to be worth making into garments of any other form. It may sometimes be worth while, where the material has been originally good, to slightly make from them shirts and petticoats for infants; as the growth of the infant forbids their being worn any great length of time, and the material having been previously used is softer than new.
MAY-DAY.
The observance of May-day was a custom which, until the close of the reign of James the First, alike attracted the attention of the royal and the noble, as of the vulgar class. Henry the Eighth, Elizabeth, and James patronized and partook of its ceremonies; and, during this extended era, there was scarcely a village in the kingdom but had a May-pole, with its appropriate games and dances.
The origin of these festivities has been attributed to three different sources—Classic, Celtic, and Gothic. The first appears to us to establish the best claim to the parentage of our May-day rites, as a relic of the Roman Floralia, which were celebrated on the last four days of April, and on the first of May, in honor of the goddess Flora, and were accompanied with dancing, music, the wearing of garlands, strewing of flowers, &c. The Bettein, or rural sacrifice of the Highlanders, on this day, as described by Mr. Pennant and Dr. Jamieson, seems to have arisen from a different motive, and to have been instituted for the purpose of propitiating the various noxious animals which might injure or destroy their flocks and birds. The Gothic anniversary on May-day makes a nearer approach to the general purpose of the Floralia, and was intended as a thanksgiving to the sun; if not for the return of flowers, fruit, and grain, yet for the introduction of a better season for fishing and hunting. The modes of conducting the ceremonies and rejoicings on May-day may be best drawn from the writers of the Elizabethan period, in which this festival appears to have maintained a very high degree of celebrity, though not accompanied with that splendor of exhibition which took place at an earlier period, in the reign of Henry the Eighth. It may be traced, indeed, from the era of Chaucer, who, in the conclusion of his "Court of Love," has described the feast of May, when
Forth goth all the court, both most and leas,
To fetch the floures fresh, and braunch and blome;
And namely hauthorn brought both page and grome:
And then, rejoysen in their great delite,