Forth stream these happy bands from their club-room, making the procession of the town before they go to church, and then again after church and before going to dinner, for then begins the serious business of feasting, too important to admit of any fresh holiday parade for the rest of the day. Nothing can be more joyously picturesque than this rural holiday. The time of the year—the latter end of May, or early part of June, is itself jubilant. The new leaves are just out in all their tender freshness: the flowers are engoldening the fields, and making odorous the garden: there are sunshine and brightness to gladden this festival of the lowly. In my mind are associated with this time, from the earliest childhood, sunshine, flowers, the sound of bells, and village bands of music. I see the clubs, as they are called, coming down the village; a procession of its rustic population all in their best attire. In front of them comes bearing the great banner, emblazoned with some fitting scene and motto, old Harry Lomax the blacksmith, deputed to that office for the brawny strength of his arms, and yet, if the wind be stirring, evidently staggering under its weight, and finding enough to do to hold it aloft. There it floats its length of blue and yellow, and on its top nods the huge posy of peonies, laburnum flowers, and lilachs, which our own garden has duly furnished. Then comes sounding the band of drums, bassoons, hautboys, flutes, and clarionets: then the honorary members—the freeholders of the place—the sage apothecary, and the priest whose sermon says “be merry”—literally, for years, his text being on this the words of Solomon—“Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.”—and then the simple sons of the hamlet, walking as stately and as gravely as they can for the nods and smiles of all their neighbours who do not join in the procession, but are all at door and window to see them go by. There they go, passing down the shady lane with all the village children at their heels, to the next hamlet half a mile off, which furnishes members to the club, and must therefore witness their glory. Now the banner and the gilded tops of their wands are seen glancing between the hedge-row trees; their music comes merrily up the hill; and as it dies away at the next turn, the drumming of distant villages becomes audible in half a dozen different quarters. Then come, one after another, the clubs of the neighbouring hamlets, as the old ballad of the Earl of Murray very expressively says, “sounding through the town;” giving occasion to a world of criticism and comparison to the village gossips, no doubt always terminating in favour of their own folk.
But the most beautiful sight is that of the women’s clubs, which in some places walk on the same day with those of the men, but more commonly on Tuesday. Here the contrast between the band and banner-bearer, and the female array that follows them, gives great effect. In some places they are graced with the presence of some of the ladies of the neighbourhood who are honorary members, and their cultivated countenances, and style of bearing, again contrast with the simple elegance or showy finery of the rustic train which succeeds, consisting of the sedate matrons and blooming damsels of the village. Their light dresses, their gay ribbons and bonnets, their happy, and often very handsome faces, cannot be seen without feeling with Wordsworth, that
Their beauty makes you glad.
In all the pageants and processions that were ever seen, there is nothing more beautiful than those light wands with which they walk, each crowned with a nosegay of fresh flowers. These posied wands were worthy of the most chastely graceful times of Greece; and amongst the youthful forms are often such as Stothard would have gloried in seizing upon to figure in his charming procession pieces. Indeed a Whitsuntide procession in his hands would have formed altogether a picture equal to his Canterbury Pilgrimage, and the Procession of the Flitch of Bacon. It has never had justice done it, and Stothard is gone; but we have artists remaining from whose pencil it may, and I trust will, receive honour due. Why not Leslie add it to his Sir Roger Coverley going to church, or Sir Roger and the Gipsies? I can see the painting already in my mind’s eye. The village church is in one extremity; the banner of the men’s club is stooping at the porch as the train is about to enter, and the women’s club is advancing up the street in the foreground: the band composed of figures full of strong character; the female figures full of simple elegance and arch beauty,—their posied wands depicted with the force of reality; the village street in perspective; the village alehouse with depending sign; booths and stalls, and all round merry faces and holiday forms.
These love-feasts of the Friendly Societies seem very appropriately celebrated at this festival, which was originally derived from the Agapai, or love-feasts of the early Christians. It is, indeed, a great improvement on the Whitsun-Ales, which succeeded the Agapai in the Roman church. It is, as I have before observed, the happiest and almost sole adaptation of a modern institution to an ancient custom by the Church of England; a policy, on the contrary, so closely studied and extensively practised by the Catholic church. The Whitsun-Ales were so called from the churchwardens buying, and laying in from presents also, a large quantity of malt, which they brewed into beer, and sold out in the church or elsewhere. The profits, as well as those from Sunday games—there being no poor-rates—were given to the poor, for whom this was one mode of provision, according to the Christian rule, that all festivities should be rendered innocent by alms. “In every parish,” says Aubrey, “was a church-house, to which belonged spits, crocks, and other utensils for dressing provisions. Here the housekeepers met. The young people were there too; and had dancing, bowling, shooting at butts, etc., the ancients sitting gravely by, and looking on.”
King James, to check the progress of nonconformity, and keep people to church, published his “Book of Sports,” and commanded attendance on Whitsun-ales, church-ales, etc.; but he soon found that forced sport is no sport at all. These Friendly Societies, however, by adopting this day, have revived the Agapai in a more popular shape, and long may they continue, refined indeed, and made more temperate by better information, and a better morality. These being held at public-houses, and their monthly nights, on which they pay their contributions, being held there too, has made many persons object to them; and the utilitarian spirit, especially during periods of general distress, has induced many of them to give up their bands, banners, and ribbons, and to throw the money thus saved into the general stock: but if we are to retain any rustic festival at all, we cannot, I think, have a more picturesque one, or at a pleasanter time. Let all means be used to preserve a day of relaxation and good-fellowship from gross intemperance, but let not the external grace and rustic pageantry be shorn away. As I have met these Whitsuntide processions in the retired villages of Staffordshire, or as I saw them in the summer of 1835 at Warsop in Nottinghamshire, I would wish to see them as many years hence as I may live. In the latter village, Miss Hamilton, a lady of poetical taste, and author of several poetical works, had painted the banner for this rural fête with her own hands, and the flowers with which the wands were crowned were selected and disposed in a spirit of true poetry. Long, I say, may this bright day of rejoicing come to the hamlet; and the musing poet stop in the glades of the near woodlands, and exclaim with Kirk White:
Hark how the merry bells ring jocund round,
And now they die upon the veering breeze;
Anon they thunder loud,
Full on the musing ear.
Wafted in varying cadence, by the shore
Of the still twinkling river, they bespeak
A day of jubilee,
An ancient holiday.
And lo! the rural revels are begun,
And gaily echoing to the laughing sky,
On the smooth-shaven green
Resounds the voice of mirth.
Mortals! be gladsome while ye have the power,
And laugh, and seize the glittering lapse of joy;
In time the bell will toll
That warns ye to your graves.