MA y-POLES. 259 



One can scarcely imagine a fat old alderman 

 searching for wild flowers, and waddling home with 

 great branches of may-blossom, whilst an H.R. H. 

 meets him on his return journey, and congratulates 

 him on the fact. 



It was the custom to decorate the doors and 

 window^s with flowers and branches of may ; besides 

 which every old town and village had a May-pole 

 as hieh as the mast of a vessel of a hundred tons, 

 on which every year as May Day returned there were 

 suspended wreaths of flowers, and round this May-pole 

 villagers or townspeople were wont to dance. The 

 May-pole, as it was called, was as much an institution 

 of village life a hundred years ago as the parish 

 church or the parish stocks. 



Washington Irving, who visited England early in 

 this century, records in his " Sketch-Book," that to 

 his delight he had seen an old English May-pole. 

 At the present day it is only the little children of 

 the village who perpetuate this custom that once was 

 regarded as so important. The children in my own 

 village, on the first of May, come to my front door 

 with bunches of wild fiowers tied to sticks. The 

 flowers are a good deal damaged by their rough 

 handling, and the children appear very uncertain as to 

 what they are to do with themselves or the sticks 

 which they grasp so nervously in their grubby little 

 hands. They sing a few songs, and, receiving a suitable 

 recompense, they go on their way rejoicing to visit other 

 houses to solicit more contributions. Taking them 

 all round, there are not more than a dozen children at 

 the outside, and in other villages throughout England 

 I have no doubt this is about the extent to which May 

 Day is now celebrated. Yet it is only two hundred 

 years ago that there was a May-pole in the Strand, 



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