1827.] Our Maying. 150 



Whitley-wood. Carts and gigs, and horses and carnages, and people of 

 all sorts, arrived from all quarters ; and, lastly, the " blessed sun himself" 

 made his appearance, adding a triple lustre to the scene. Fiddlers, ballad- 

 singers, cake-baskets Punch Master Frost, crying cherries a French- 

 man with dancing dogs a Bavarian woman selling brooms half-a-dozen 

 stalls with fruit and frippery and twenty noisy games of quoits, and 

 bowls, and ninepins boys throwing at boxes girls playing at ball- 

 gave to the assemblage the bustle, clatter, and gaiety of a Dutch fair, as. 

 one sees it in Teniers' pictures. Plenty of drinking and smoking on the 

 green plenty of eating in the booths : the gentlemen cricketers, at one. 

 end, dining off a round of beef, which made the table totter the players, 

 at the other, supping off a gammon of bacon Amos Stokes crammed at 

 both and Landlord Brown passing and bustling every where with an 

 activity that seemed to confer upon him the gift of ubiquity, assisted by the 

 little light-footed maidens, his daughters, all smiles and curtsies, and by a 

 pretty black-eyed young woman name unknown with whom, even in 

 the midst of his hurry, he found time, as it seemed to me, for a little phi- 

 landering. What would the widow and Miss Lydia have said ? But they 

 remained in happy ignorance the one drinking tea in most decorous prim- 

 ness in a distant marquee, disliking to mingle with so mixed an assembly, 

 the other in full chase after the most unlucky of all her urchins, the boy 

 called Sam, who had gotten into a dem&le with a showman, inconsequence 

 of mimicking the wooden gentleman Punch, and his wife Judy thus, as 

 the showman observed, bringing his exhibition into disrepute. 



Meanwhile, the band struck up in the May-house, and the dance, after 

 a little demur, was fairly set afloat an honest English country dance ' 

 (there had been some danger of waltzing and quadrilling) with ladies and 

 gentlemen at the top, and country lads and lasses at the bottom; a pleasant 

 mixture of cordial kindness on the one hand, and pleased respect on the 

 other. It was droll though to see the beplumed and beflowered French 

 hats, the silks and the furbelows sailing and rustling amidst the straw bon- 

 nets and cotton gowns of the humbler dancers; and not less so to catch a 

 glimpse of the little lame clerk, shabbier than ever, peeping through the 

 canvass opening of the booth, with a grin of ineffable delight over the 

 shoulder of our vicar's pretty wife. Really, considering that Susan Green 

 and Jem Tanner were standing together at that moment at the top of the 

 set, so deeply engaged in making love that they forgot where they ought to 

 begin, and that the little clerk must have seen them, I cannot help taking 

 his grin for a favourable omen to those faithful lovers. 



Well, the dance finished, the sun went down, and we departed. The 

 Maying is over, the booths carried away, and the May-house demolished. 

 Every thing has fallen into its old position, except the love affairs of Land- 

 lord Brown. The pretty lass with the black eyes, who first made her 

 appearance at Whitley-wood, is actually staying at the Rose Inn, on a visit 

 to his daughters ; and the village talk goes that she is to be the mistress of 

 that thriving hostelry, and the wife of its master ; and both her rivals are 

 jealous, after their several fashions the widow in the tantrums, the maiden 

 in the dump?. Nobody knows exactly who the black-eyed damsel may 

 bo, but she's young, and pretty, and civil, and modest ; and, without 

 intending to depreciate the merits of either of her competitors, 1 cannot 

 thinking that our good neighbour has shewn his taste. M. 



