Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/475

 Collectanea. 45 1

iii. May boughing. On May Day, at Minchinhampton, some thirty years ago, it was the custom to wear a sprig of oak or beech, not to be carried after mid-day, on pain of being called " May fool." The custom was known as " May boughing." I have recently seen a charming sketch, made by a 'Hampton lady about 1894, of a group of children a la Kate Greenaway ; under- neath were the words — " The schoolchildren may be seen on the I St of May carrying branches of young beech to school in the morning, which they call ' May.' " The late Mr. John Bellows of Gloucester, writing in 1881,-^ says that our boys and girls arm themselves with boughs of the beech, and perform certain games with them, before mid-day on May i. I have not been able to discover anything about the " certain games " ; but a lady in Nailsworth tells me that the green carried home on May Day was beech, and that a friend used always to take to their house a spray of young beech leaves, for luck. The beech is our tree par excellence in the Cotswolds.

iv. Maypole. Mr. Frost of Avening has seen a maypole on the outskirts of Bristol, forty years ago or more. At Cherrington Fair, on May 6, there used to be a maypole ; and one still exists at Paganhill, between Stroud and Randwick.

v. Jack-in-the-Green. A Bristol lady remembers seeing Jack- in-the-Green, with a sweep and a Queen, on the outskirts of Bristol about 1865. Mr. Crooke says that Jack-in-the-Green is still kept up at Cheltenham.^'^

vi. May dew. Belief in the virtues of May dew has not quite died out. In 1906, I overheard this conversation between two Minchinhampton girls. "They do say that if you wash your face in May dew early in the morning, you'll have a good com- plexion." "Oh, you silly, they only tell you that to make you get up early ! "

May 29. — Until some thirty years ago, Minchinhampton people used to gather boughs of oak with oak-apples, which they covered with gold-leaf bought on purpose; the decorated boughs were then stuck up in the houses. At Randwick, oak leaves or oak

"^"^ Gloucestershire Archceological Traftsactions, vol. vi., p. 229. ^"See picture and article by Dr. W. H. D. Rouse in Folk-Lore, vol. iv., PP- 50-54.