The pleasure-loving Stuarts encouraged Sunday sports, and James I., in his Declaration of May 24th 1618, directed that the people should not be debarred from having May-games, Whitsun-ales, and Morris-dances, and the setting up of May poles.
During the Commonwealth, dancing round the Maypole and many other popular amusements were stopped, but no sooner had Charles II. come to the throne of the country than the old sports were revived. For a fuller account of this subject the reader would do well to consult Brand’s “Popular Antiquities,” and the late Alfred Burton’s book on “Rush-Bearing,” from both works we have derived information for this chapter.
The Folk-Lore of Midsummer Eve.
The old superstitions and customs of Midsummer Eve form a curious chapter in English folk-lore. Formerly this was a period when the imagination ran riot. On Midsummer Day the Church holds its festival in commemoration of the birth of St. John the Baptist, and some of the old customs relate to this saint.
On the eve of Midsummer Day it was a common practice to light bonfires. This custom, which is a remnant of the old Pagan fire-worship, prevailed in various parts of the country, but perhaps lingered the longest in Cornwall. We gather from Borlase’s “Antiquities of Cornwall,” published in 1754, that at the Midsummer bonfires, the Cornish people attended with lighted torches, tarred and pitched at the end, and made their perambulations round the fires, afterwards going from village to village carrying their torches before them. He regarded the usage as a survival of Druidical superstitions. In the same county it was a practice on St. Stephen’s Down, near Launceston, to erect a tall pole with a bush fixed at the top of it, and round the pole to heap fuel. After the fire was lit, parties of wrestlers contested for prizes specially provided for the festival. According to an old tradition, an evil spirit once appeared in the form of a black dog, and since that time the wrestlers have never been able to meet on Midsummer Eve without being seriously injured in the sport.
About Penzance, not only did the fisher-folk and their friends dance about the blazing fire, but sang songs composed for the joyous time. We give a couple of verses from one of these songs:—
“As I walked out to yonder green
One evening so fair,
All where the fair maids may be seen,
Playing at the bonfire.
Where larks and linnets sing so sweet,
To cheer each lively swain,
Let each prove true unto her lover,
And so farewell the plain.”
Mr. William Bottrell, one of the most painstaking writers on Cornish folk-lore, in an article written in 1873, asserts that not a few old people living in remote and primitive districts, “believe that dancing in a ring over the embers, around a bonfire, or leaping (singly) through its flames, is calculated to insure good luck to the performers, and serve as a protection from witchcraft and other malign influences during the ensuing year.” Mr. Bottrell laments the decay of these pleasing old Midsummer observances. He tells us that within “the memory of many who would not like to be called old, or even aged, on a Midsummer’s eve, long before sunset, groups of girls—both gentle and simple—of from ten to twenty years of age, neatly dressed and decked with garlands, wreaths, or chaplets of flowers, would be seen dancing in the streets.”