Page:Cornish feasts and folk-lore.djvu/49

 In many of the villages around Helston the children, on Flora-day, deck themselves with large wreaths, which they wear over one shoulder and under the other arm; and at Porthleven I observed, in 1884, in addition to these wreaths, several children with large white handkerchiefs arranged as wimples, kept on their heads with garlands of flowers.

One of the first objects on entering the village of St. Germans (East Cornwall) is the large walnut-tree, at the foot of what is called Nut-tree Hill. Many a gay May-fair has been witnessed by the old tree. In the morning of the 28th of the month splendid fat cattle from some of the largest and best farms in the county quietly chewed the cud around its trunk; in the afternoon the basket-swing dangled from its branches filled with merry, laughing boys and girls from every part of the parish. On the following day the mock mayor, who had been chosen with many formalities, remarkable only for their rude and rough nature, starting from some "bush-house" where he had been supping too freely of the fair-ale, was mounted on wain or cart, and drawn around it, to claim his pretended jurisdiction over the ancient borough, until his successor was chosen at the following fair. Leaving the nut-tree, which is a real ornament to the town, we pass by a spring of water running into a large trough, in which many a country lad has been drenched for daring to enter the town on the 29th of May without the leaf or branch of oak in his hat. — (R. Hunt, F.R.S., Drulls, &c., Old Cornwall.)

The wrestlers of Cornwall and their wrestling-matches are still famous, and in the May of 1868 4,000 assembled one day on Marazion Green, and 3,000 the next, to see one. The wrestlers of this county have a peculiar grip, called by them "the Cornish-hug." Any odd, foolish game is in West Cornwall called a May-game (pronounced May-gum), also a person who acts foolishly; and you frequently hear the expression—"He's a reg'lar May-gum!" There is a proverb that says—"Don't make mock of a May- gum, you may be struck comical yourself one day."

Whit-Sunday.—It was formerly considered very unlucky in Cornwall to go out on this day without putting on some new thing.