Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/166

158 come to an end. In the country west of Glasgow it is still remembered how once the houses were adorned with flowers and branches on the first of May, and in some parts of Ireland they still plant a may-tree or may -bush before the door of the farm-house, throwing it at sundown into a bonfire. The lighting of fires was not an uncommon feature of May-day observance, but it is a practice which seems to us to have strayed into that connection from its proper place in the great festival of the summer solstice on St. John's Eve. Among people of English speech May-day customs are little more than a cheerful memory. Herrick wrote:

People neglect their "beads" or the equivalents now from other motives.

May night is the German Walpurgis-nacht. The witches ride up to the Brocken on magpies' tails, not a magpie can be seen for the next twenty-four hours—they are all gone and they have not had time to return. The witches dance on the Brocken till they have danced away the winter's snow. May-brides and May-kings are still to be heard of in Germany, and children run about on May-day with buttercups or with a twist of bread, a Bretzel, decked with ribbons, or holding imprisoned may-flies, which they let loose whilst they sing:

May chafer must fly away home, his father is at the wars, his mother is in Pomerania, Pomerania is all burnt. May chafer in short is the brother of our ladybird. Mr. Karl Blind recollects taking part as a boy in an extremely curious children's drama which is still played in some places in the open air. It is an allegory of the expulsion of winter, who is killed and burnt, and of the arrival of summer, who comes decked with flowers and garlands. The children repeat: