MAY-DAY and MAYING. It was anciently the custom, observes Brand, for all ranks of people to go out a-maying early on the 1st of May. Bourne (` Antiq. Vulg.', ch. xxv.) tells us that, in his time, in the villages in the north of England, the juvenile part of both sexes were wont to rise a little after midnight on the morning of that day, and walk to some neighbouring wood, accompanied with music and the blowing of horns, where they broke down branches from the trees, and adorned them with nosegays and crowns of flowers. This done, they returned homeWard with their booty about the time of sunrise, and made their doors and windows triumph in the flowery spoil.
There was a time when this custom was observed by noble and royal personages as well as the vulgar. Chaucer, Shakspere, Browne (' Britannia's Pastorals'), and other writers in verse and prose, have described or alluded to the popular celebration of the day. The may pole was raised in every town and village, and milk-maids and morns, dancers danced round it. These customs gradually fell into disuse ; and in London the celebration of the day was left to the chimney sweepers,whose representatives still in London and its suburbs struggle for an existence with their Jack-in-the-green and their tawdry finery. In many country villages, however, the observance of May-day is kept up on a small scale, by children carrying from door to door garlands of paigles (or cowslips), blue-bells, and other field flowers ; and in some places there is a feeble imitation of "going a-maying." (See
Notes and Queries, Ist series, passim.) In the Highlands of Scotland the 1st of May was celebrated as Bel-tcin day, on which they made a fire, and performed certain puerile ceremonies, which are supposed to have had reference to the wbrship of Baal, or the sun. The Irish celebrated it by having a peculiar dish of food, the partaking of which they imagined secured them against want for the year. The Germans imagined that on the night of this day the witches had an assemblage on the Brocken in the Harz mountains. In France and Italy the youth of both sexes gathered branches in the night, which they placed before the doors of those to whom they wished to show good-will. There were many other super stitious observances connected with this day, nearly all of which are now obsolete, or about to become so.
The celebration of this day probably owed its origin to the heathen observances practised at this season of the year in honour of Flora, the deity who presided over fruits and flowers. (Hospinian, De Fads Judworum et Ethnieorum, fol. 100; Brand's Popular Antiquities; Strutt's Sports and Pastimes; Hone's Every Day Book.)