Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/393

Rh of alien blood and speech. Once more we find that "cœlum non animam mutant qui trans mare current." These Germans who have never known Germany still eat sausages at Christmas, hunt for hares' eggs at Easter, and count Wednesday the unlucky day of the week, as did their forebears in the Vaterland across the ocean. Their whole folklore, in fact, seems singularly little affected by practices imported from England.

observance of May Day in Hertfordshire, as elsewhere, seems now to be chiefly kept up by parties of smartly-dressed little girls carrying "garlands" and sometimes dolls; but within living memory it was customary for young men to go round affixing "May-bushes" to the house-doors before the dawn of May morning, and later in the day to sing and dance in costume in the streets. Mr. Gerish, whose name we are sorry to see among those of members retiring from the Society, has been at the pains to collect and record no less than nine variants of their song, one of which is well known owing to its insertion in Hone's Every Day Book in 1826. Though every village has its own version, yet the song on the whole shows a well-marked local type. It is interesting as suggesting a well-meant seventeenth-century attempt to give an edifying and religious character to the May-day festival abhorred of the Puritans. It is a combination of a few verses appropriate to the occasion with others expressing decidedly sombre religious reflections, which appear independently and even more inappositely in the Christmas carol "The Moon Shines Bright" (see Sandys' Christmas Carols). The whole concludes with the usual request for beer. One verse Mr. Gerish is able to trace to an edition of the Geneva Bible printed in 1608, to which a cento of texts arranged as verse is prefixed. The song should be compared with the Cornish May songs, and with Mr. Percy Manning's collection from Oxfordshire.