A LETTER ABOUT OLD MAY DAY. 83 
too, and others from the farm-houses and gentlemen’s dwellings 
around the village are driven there in carts and waggonettes. 
Many grown-up people join the company, and Abbotsbury 
itself is left nearly empty, and quieter than ever — it always is 
very quiet — a mile away. 
The fishermen are on the beach too, with their boats. When 
the waves are not too rough, each company of children is taken 
out to sea in its own boat, with its “ garland,” and then the gar- 
land is thrown overboard and the boat returns to the beach. I 
did not see this myself, but was told afterwards that this was 
the regular thing to do, and that it was done yesterday by all 
the boats but one. 
Of course this throwing of the flower-pictures into the sea is 
now nothing but a custom. Not even the oldest people of the 
village now know why Garland Day is observed, nor why the 
garlands are thrown into the sea. But I feel very sure that in 
the years far far gone by — hundreds of years ago perhaps — the 
flowers were meant as a real offering to the sea, or to the spirits 
or the god who ruled the sea, in the hope of thereby obtaining 
good weather and an abundant fishing harvest in return for this 
really beautiful acknowledgment of their rights and powers. 
Very likely you have already read something in your books 
about May-day sports and May-day flowers, and perhaps have 
wondered why May-day is not now anything like what it was in 
the times which they tell you of. There is not often any real 
warm sunshine on May-day now, and not many sorts of flowers — 
not many flowers of any sort have yet appeared. 
The difference is easily explained. The first day of ]\Iay is 
now two weeks earlier than it used to be. The reckoning of the 
months and years was once — for reasons which you will find 
out as you grow older and learn more from your books and 
teachers — not so true as it is now ; and so it had to be changed. 
And the change was made since the old descriptions of May-day 
(the first day of INIay) were put into poetry ; since the old May- 
day customs — dances around the May-pole, flower-feasts. Queen 
of the INIay processions, and other pretty observances — were es- 
tablished. What is now the first day of May was formerly only 
the i8th day of April ; the old first of May is now the thirteenth 
day. This of course means a difference — that (almost) fortnight 
does — between the time when the flowers are just coming out 
and the time when many of them have appeared in all their 
beauty. It means the difference between a time when spring 
has scarcely more than begun and mornings and nights are still 
cold, and a later and brighter day when the sun is conquering 
and warm weather is really coming on — when trees are putting 
forth all their greenness, and the hedge-banks, woods, and fields 
have already dressed themselves in daisies, blue hyacinths, 
golden cowslips, and many other lovely things. 
Fishermen and children and people stay upon the beach 
until the sun sinks low and disappears behind the hills, and 
