VI.
The first of April is in Welsh called Calan Ebrill, and an April Fool a Ffwl Ebrill; the similarity of English and Welsh words may be said to typify the similarity of observance. The universality of this observance among Aryan peoples would certainly indicate an origin in a time preceding the dispersion of the human family over the world. The Druids, tradition says, celebrated the revival of Nature’s powers in a festival which culminated on the first of April in the most hilarious foolery. The Roman Saturnalia or feast of fools perpetuated the rite, though the purpose of the Christian revelry may quite possibly have been to ridicule the Druidic ceremonies.
The festivities of May-day are in like manner associated with the powers of Nature, whose vigour and productiveness were symbolized by the Maypole round which village lads and lasses danced. The rites of love were variously celebrated at this time, and some of these customs locally have long survived the Maypole itself. The ordinance for the destruction of Maypoles in England and Wales, printed in 1644, declared them ‘a heathenish vanity, generally abused to superstition and wickedness,’ wherefore it was ordained that they should be destroyed, and that no Maypole should thereafter be ‘set up, erected, or suffered to be within this kingdom of England or dominion of Wales.’
The Maypole in Wales was called Bedwen, because it was always made of birch, bedw, a tree still associated with the gentler emotions. To give a lover a birchen branch, is for a maiden to accept his addresses; to give him a collen, or hazel, the reverse. Games of various sorts were played around the bedwen. The fame of a village depended on its not being stolen away, and parties were constantly on the alert to steal the bedwen, a feat which, when accomplished, was celebrated with peculiar festivities. This rivalry for the possession of the Maypole was probably typical of the ancient idea that the first of May was the boundary day dividing the confines of winter and summer, when a fight took place between the powers of the air, on the one hand striving to continue the reign of winter, on the other to establish that of summer. Here may be cited the Mabinogi of Kilhwch and Olwen, where it speaks of the daughter of Lludd Llaw Ereint. ‘She was the most splendid maiden in the three Islands of the Mighty, and in the three Islands adjacent,’ and for her does Gwyn ap Nudd, the fairy king, fight every first of May till the day of doom.[126] She was to have been the bride of Gwythyr, the son of Greidawl, when Gwyn ap Nudd carried her off by force. The bereaved bridegroom followed, and there was a bloody struggle, in which Gwyn was victorious, and which he signalized by an act of frightful cruelty; he slew an old warrior, took out his heart from his breast, and constrained the warrior’s son to eat the heart of his father. When Arthur heard of this he summoned Gwyn ap Nudd before him, and deprived him of the fruits of his victory. But he condemned the two combatants to fight for the radiant maiden henceforth for ever on every first of May till doomsday; the victor on that day to possess the maiden.[127]
FOOTNOTES:
[126] ‘Mabinogion,’ 229.
[127] ‘Mabinogion,’ 251.
VII.
In the remote and primitive parish of Defynog, in Breconshire, until a few years since, a custom survived of carrying the King of Summer and the King of Winter. Two boys were chosen to serve as the two kings, and were covered all over with a dress of brigau bedw, (birchen boughs,) only their faces remaining visible. A coin was tossed and the boy chosen was the summer king; a crown of bright-hued ribbons was put upon his head. Upon the other boy’s head was placed a crown of holly, to designate the winter king. Then a procession was formed, headed by two men with drawn swords to clear the way. Four men supported the summer king upon two poles, one under his knees and the other under his arms; and four others bore the winter king in a similar undignified posture. The procession passed round the village and to the farm-houses near by, collecting largess of coin or beer, winding up the perambulation at the churchyard. Here the boys were set free, and received a dole for their services, the winter king getting less than the other.
Another May-day custom among the boys of that parish, was to carry about a rod, from which the bark had been partly peeled in a spiral form, and upon the top of which was set either a cock or a cross, the bearers waking the echoes of the village with ‘Yo ho! yo ho! yo ho!’[128]