Ancient Sports and Pastimes. 625 
enough May is a bleak and dreary month, which may have 
something to do with the decline of the May-day festivities. 
It was customary to elect a Lord and Lady of the May, 
and about the beginning of the sixteenth century, accord- 
ing to Strutt, the Lord of the May assumed the dress and 
sustained the character of Robin Hood, who had just then 
become an extremely popular person. The Lady of the © 
May took the part of the celebrated Maid Marian, and the 
parts of Friar Tuck, Little John, and the other foresters, 
were taken by the rest of the villagers. 
It is narrated by an old author, that one May-Day, King 
Henry VIII. and Queen Catherine rode a-Maying from 
Greenwich to Shooter's Hill, “ Where, as they passed by 
the way, they espied a company of tall yeomen, clothed 
allin greene, with greene hoods, and with bows and arrows, 
to the number of 200, one being their chieftain, was called 
Robin Hood, who required the King and all his company 
to stay and see the men shoot ; whereunto the King grant- 
ing, Robin Hood whistled, and all the 200 archers shot off, 
loosing all at once, and when he whistled again, they like- 
wise shot again. The arrows whistled by craft of the head, 
so that the noise was strange and loud, which greatly de- 
lighted the King, Queen, and their company. Moreover, 
this Robin Hood desired the King, Queen, and their reti- 
nue to enter the greenwood, wherein arbours made with 
boughs, and decked with flowers, they were set and served 
plentifully with venison and wine by Robin Hood and his 
men.” 
The sport which was called the morris-dance was prac- 
tised at the May-games. The dancers had bells attached 
to different parts of their clothes, which jingled as they 
danced, and Robin Hood and Maid Marian joined in the 
dance. The Morris, or Moorish, dance, is supposed to have 
been brought from Spain in the reign of Edward III. 
There is an old tract, printed in 1609, which gives an 
amusing description of a morris-dance in Herefordshire. 
The dancers were twelve in number; besides these, there 
were four whifflers, or marshals of the field: these, with a 
fiddler and a taborer, made eighteen persons, whose united 
ages amounted to the extraordinary number of 1,836 years, 
giving each person an average of 102 years. The tract 
adds, that, for a good wager, it was easy to find in Here- 
fordshire four hundred persons more, within three years 
over or under a hundred years, yet the shire is no way 
four-and-twenty miles over. 
