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wolfinthewoodA massive hayfever attack (largely caused, I have no doubt at all, by oilseed rape) has turned into a nasty summer cold – which wouldn’t worry me much if I did not have a long record of colds developing into bronchitis.
Still, I cannot let May Day pass unmarked:
In the moneth of May, namely on May day in the morning, every man, except impediment, would walke into the sweete meadowes and greene woods, there to rejoyce their spirites with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers, and with the harmony of birds, praysing God in their kind ... I find also that in the moneth of May, the Citizens of London of all estates, lightly in every Parish, or sometimes two or three parishes joyning togither, had their severall mayings, and did fetch in Maypoles, with diverse warlike shewes, with good Archers, Morice dauncers, and other devices for pastime all the day long, and towards the Evening they had stage playes, and Bonefiers in the streetes...
John Stow (1525–1605)
from A Survey of London (1603)
They have twenty or forty yoke of oxen, every ox having a sweet nose-gay of flowers placed on the tip of his horns; and these oxen draw home this Maypole (this stinking idol, rather) which is covered all over with flowers and herbs, bound round about with strings from the top to the bottom, and sometime painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred men, women and children following it with great devotion. And thus being reared up with handkerchiefs and flags streaming on the top, they straw the ground about, bind green boughs about it, set up summer-halls, bowers, and arbours hard by it; and then fall they to banquet and feast, to leap and dance about it, as the heathen people did at the dedication of their idols, whereof this is a perfect pattern, or rather the thing itself.
Philip Stubbes (fl. 1579–1593)
from The Anatomie of Abuses (1583)
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(no subject)
Date: May 1st, 2009 09:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: May 11th, 2009 08:05 pm (UTC)This year's May Day post (http://wolfinthewood.livejournal.com/2009/05/11/) has been late in coming, but I think you will like it.