May Days

 I was told that in former times, on May Day it was customary to indulge in dancing on the green.  The decline in a charming old custom was thus deplored by one old lady who was my informant  ‘happy days when we all danced together on the first of May, gentle and simple alike.  Not as nowadays when people are all  ‘stuck up’ one above the other.  Oh! The paltry stinkien pride of today!’  After which would come a profound sigh at the memory of those well-remembered times.

 The same kindly old soul I often heard as she crooned a fragment of an old song-

‘Garlands of roses and sweet pretty posies

Excellent music on my loves birthday

She was my lovely maid, she has my heart betrayed

I am afraid I shall see her no more’

Those are the exact words as I heard them when a child.  Disconnected or distorted by length of time no doubt but bringing to me all the charm of an old world music with a faint scent of an old world nosegay – sweet brian, lavender and boys love

Shillington maypole day was also a well known fixture.  The lofty mast itself may still be erect in the village as it stood a few years ago, having been oft patched up or renewed.  During the frost and snow of winter there could sometimes be seen the remains of a garland, hanging disconsolate halfway up the height; a brown withered sheaf rustling in the wind, a skeleton to remind passers –by of revellings long dead and gone.

On May 29th a quaint custom still survived among our schoolboys, commemorating the escape of Charles 11 from his pursuers, by hiding in the oak tree.  Older scholars who were ‘in the know’, would furnish themselves with a leafy spray of oak twigs which they thrust violently in the face of smaller boys who were not so provided with the exclamation ‘cheat Zack; cheat Zack’.   I never discovered what those cryptic words had to do with the royal adventure.  Probably another case of distortion by the passage of time.  This boyish prank must have died out by 1872.

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