OLD MAY-DAY CUSTOMS.

The Ancient Romans and the Druids Are Partly Responsible for Some of the Modern Methods of Celebrating the Festival of the Spring Deities Which Are Now Represented by Youthful Queens and Kings.

Customs do not become established without reason. If no meaning is seen in a popular superstition or an annual festival, the significance or the apparent lack of significance, is simply that the ritual, as so often happens, has long outlived the belief.

In many of our hereditary customs we bow down, unaware, before the gods of our pagan ancestors. Thus May-Day rites, which have come to us through Roman and Druidical channels, are remains of a very early worship.

The Druids, on May 1, lighted great fires in honor of Bel or Belen—the Apollo, or Orus, of other nations. In Celtic centers of Great Britain the day is still called la Bealtine, Bealtine, or Beltine, which means "day of Belen's fire," since, in the Celtic language of Cornwall, tan means "fire," and the verb tine means to "light a fire."

In the Highlands of Scotland, as late as 1790, the Beltein, or rural sacrifice on May 1, was fully observed. The herdsmen of every village lighted a fire within a square outlined by cutting a trench in the turf. Over the fire was dressed a caudle of eggs, milk, oatmeal, and butter. Part was poured on the ground as a libation.

Then every one took a cake of oatmeal, upon which were nine knobs, each dedicated to some divinity. Facing the fire, they broke off the knobs, one at a time, throwing them over their shoulders and saying: "This I give to thee. Preserve thou my horses." "This to thee; preserve thou my sheep," and so on. The caudle was then eaten.

Traces of fire sacrifice are found in Ireland, particularly in the custom of lighting fires at short intervals and driving cattle between them, and the custom of fathers jumping over or running through fires with their children in their arms. Undoubtedly these singular forms of sport are modifications of what was once real sacrifice.

Our commonest May-Day games, however, probably come from the Floralia, or rather from the Maiuma, of the Romans, who, it is said, were but repeating the festal customs of ancient Egypt and India. The Maiuma were established under the Emperor Claudius, to take the place of the Floralia, from which they seem to have differed little, except, perhaps, that they were not made an occasion for so great license.

The May-festival, in its deepest meaning, is a recognition of the renewed fertility of the earth with the returning spring. It is one of the oldest of all festivals. The children who now go a Maying, or dance around the Maypole, or choose a May Queen, are unconsciously imitating the joyous ceremonies with which the ancients welcomed the new birth of Nature. Fertility was among the earliest of religious ideas.

"Going a Maying" is a very ancient custom in England. Bourne, in his "Antiquitates Vulgares," said:

On the calends, or first, of May, commonly called May Day, the juvenile part of both sexes are wont to rise a little after midnight and walk to some neighboring wood, accompanied with music and blowing of horns, where they break down branches from the trees, and adorn themselves with nosegays and crowns of flowers. When this is done, they return with their booty homeward, about the rising of the sun, and make their doors and windows to triumph with their flowery spoils.

In the "Morte d'Arthur" we find this passage:

Now it befell in the moneth of lusty May, that Queene Guenever called unto her the Knyghtes of the Round Table, and gave them warning that early in the morning she should ride on Maying into the woods and fields beside Westminster.

Shakespeare, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," alludes to the custom:

No doubt they rise up early to observe The rite of May.

The Maypole is still common in many countries. It used to be general throughout England, and the cutting and decorating of the pole was one of the many reasons for going a Maying. Often the pole was left standing until near the end of the year, and sometimes especially durable poles remained erect in their places for many seasons and were used in successive festivals.

The last Maypole erected in London was a hundred feet high and stood in the Strand. Taken down in 1717, it was removed to Wanstead Park, in Essex, where it was made part of the support for a large telescope which was set up by Sir Isaac Newton.

The May Queen traditionally represents the Roman goddess Flora.