In the course of half an hour the entire hill is a moving mass of all sorts and sizes. At the summit may be seen a company of bakers, and other craftsmen, dressed in kilts, dancing round a Maypole. On the more level part “next door,” is usually an itinerant vender of whiskey, or mountain (not May) dew, your approach to whom is always indicated by a number of “bodies” carelessly lying across your path, not dead, but drunk. In another place you may descry two parties of Irishmen, who, not content with gathering the superficial dew, have gone “deeper and deeper yet,” and fired by a liberal desire to communicate the fruits of their industry, actively pelt each other with clods.
These proceedings commence with the daybreak. The strong lights thrown upon the various groups by the rising sun, give a singularly picturesque effect to a scene, wherein the ever-varying and unceasing sounds of the bagpipes, and tabours and fifes, et hoc genus omne, almost stun the ear. About six o’clock, the appearance of the gentry, toiling and pechin up the ascent, becomes the signal for serving men and women to march to the right-about; for they well know that they must have the house clean, and every thing in order earlier than usual on May-morning.
About eight o’clock the “fun” is all over; and by nine or ten, were it not for the drunkards who are staggering towards the “gude town,” no one would know that any thing particular had taken place.
Such, my dear sir, is the gathering of May-dew. I subjoin a sketch of a group of dancers, and
I am, &c.
P. P., Jun.
It is noticed in the “Morning Post” of the second of May, 1791, that the day before, “being the first of May, according to annual and superstitious custom, a number of persons went into the fields and bathed their faces with the dew on the grass, under the idea that it would render them beautiful.”
May-dew was held of singular virtue in former times. Pepys on a certain day in May makes this entry in his diary:—
“My wife away, down with Jane and W. Hewer to Woolwich, in order to a little ayre, and to lie there to night, and so to gather May-dew to-morrow morning, which Mrs. Turner hath taught her is the only thing in the world to wash her face with; and” Pepys adds, “I am contented with it.” His “reasons for contentment” seem to appear in the same line; for he says, “I (went) by water to Fox-hall, and there walked in Spring-garden;” and there he notices “a great deal of company, and the weather and garden pleasant: and it is very pleasant and cheap going thither, for a man may go to spend what he will, or nothing—all as one: but to hear the nightingale and other birds; and here a fiddler, and there a harp; and here a jew’s-trump, and here laughing, and there fine people walking, is mighty diverting,” says Mr. Pepys, while his wife is gone to lie at Woolwich, “in order to a little ayre, and to gather May-dew.”