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778 SUMMER AND WINTER.
we have may-lushes brought into our houses at Whitsuntide :
do not fetch them in ourselves, nor go out to meet them. 1
England too had May-games or Mayings down to the 16-1 7th
century. On Mayday morning the lads and lasses set out soon
after midnight, with horns and other music, to a neighbouring
wood, broke boughs off the trees, and decked them out with
wreaths and posies ; then turned homeward, and at sunrise set
these May-bushes in the doors and windows of their houses.
with them a tall birch tree which had
Above all, they brought
been cut down ; it was named maiepole, maipoll, and was drawn
by 20 to 40 yoke of oxen, each with a nosegay betwixt his horns ;
this tree was set up in the village, and the people danced round
it. The whole festival was presided over by a lord of the May
elected for the purpose, and with him was associated a lady of
the Ifai/. 2 In England also a fight between Summer and Winter
was exhibited (Hone s Daybook 1, 359) ; the Maypole exactly
answers to the May-waggon of L. Saxony, and the. lord of the
May to the May- grave. 3 And here and there a district in France
too has undoubtedly similar May-sports. Champollion (Rech.
sur les patois, p. 183) reports of the Isere : Dept.
( ma ie} fete que
les enfans celebrent aux premiers jours du mois de mai, en
parant un d entre eux et lui donnant le titre de roi. A lawsuit
on the jus eundi prima die mensis maji ad majum colligendutn in
nemora is preserved in a record of 1262, Guerard cart, de N.D.
2, 117 (see Suppl.). In narrative poems of the Mid. Ages, both
French and German, the grand occasions on which kings hold
their court are Whitsuntide and the blooming Maytime, Rein. 41
seq. Iw. 33 seq., and Wolfram calls King Arthur der meienbcere
man/ Parz. 281, 16; conf.
pfingestlicher (pentecostal) kiiniges
name/ MS. 2, 128 a .
On the whole then, there are four different ways of welcoming
Horae belg. 2, 178-180. Conf. ic wil den mei gaen houwen voor mijns liefs vein-
sterkyn, go hew before my love s window, Uhland s Volksl. 178.
1 Has the May-drink still made in the Lower Rhine and Westphalia, of wine
and certain (sacred?) herbs, any connexion with an old sacrificial rite? On no
account must woodroof (asperula) be omitted in preparing it.
2 Fuller descript. in J. Strutt, ed. Lond. 1830, p. 351-6. Haupt s Zeitschr. 5,
477. 3 The AS. poems have no passage turning on the battle of S. and W. In Beow.
2266 ha waes winter scacen only means winter was past, el ibierno es exido, Cid
1627.
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