American telegraph. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1851-1851, 1851-04-18

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| From Graham's Magazine for May.
l.1.a MAY-DAY.
M BY WILLIAM HowIrr.
/ Of this fine old popular festival scarcely a
trace now remains From one of the most uni
versally adopted ones by the people Of both an
cient and modern nations, it is now become the
most completely obsolete. In my q Rural Life
| OF England l have shown what were its GUS
toms, which may be traced back to the Romans,
to our Danish ancestors, and to the Hindoos,
who still hold festival of a like nature, and
erect a pole wreathed with flowers. Our Saxon
ancestors, going to their Witenagemote, left
their servants to saturnalia of this kind, where
a king and queen were chosen. They also
raise maypole, as their standard Of justice, in
their great out-of-d door tribunals held at this
season The Danes blew horns at this feast;
and traces Of the custom still remain at Oxford,
Cambridge, and other places. But still stronger
traces yet remain in Germany, where the boys
on May-day make long horns from the bark Of
the elm, which they strip off, and calling them
| Schalmeien, get upon all the hill tops, and make
a most singular clamor with them. The cele-
bration of this festival by the Drlids and Celts
points it out as belonging to the worship of the
sun. In Ireland and the highlands of Scotland,
the people still kindle fires on the tops of their
mountains on this day, called Beal Fires, and
the festival there celebrated Beltane or Beal-
tane--thelast remnant of the worship of Baal.
| In Sweden, as we learn from Miss Bremen,
the country-people still get the hill-tops, and
make great fires. In Germany this used to be
the custom but the fires on the hills being pro-
hibted owing to the confagrations sometimes
occasioned by them in the forests, the boys still
make bonfres in the by-lanes of towns and in
villages, and leap to and fro oyer them-thus,
in fact, passing through the fire to Mooch, with
out knowing why. In Spain, the yillage-queen
is still called Maia, showing the Roman origin
. of the custom there; and in France they still
adorn their houses with boughs; and hence their
| epo1ses, or brides of the month of May. In fact,
ms we have elsewhere shown, the yestiges of the
rites and festival of May prove how ancient and
| universal was their observance. The poets were
as enamored of May-day and its jollity and
i love making as, the people, and in the " Rural
i Life will be found ample quotations from Chau-
! Ger, Shakespeare, Milton, Herrick, and other po-
cts, full of the spirit and the praises of the
time. ls rd qal 9f ~
Solong as Paganism, and even Catholicism, con-
tinued in the ascendant, the mirth of May-day re-
manned undiminished. Thepeople lived easily,
and, like the bird onrthe bough, sang and sported
care-free through life. They were like so many
l.
but taking Gods sunshine and his flowers as
they came, and rejoicing in them while they
lasted. But in came Puritanism, and down
went all the old festivities and pageants 1t
was not merely that sterner discipline had
been introduced, but that great revolution had
arrived, in which thought and intellect asserted
their sober but enhancing power, fertile in
deeper joys, as well as sorrows, and casting a
distaste on the mind for the puerilities of the
worlds childhood. From this hour the pageants
of May-day persisted irrevocably; and may
pole now is one of the rarest sights to be mot
with, only in the most primitive and obscure
villages. !"
! Not but that there have been many attempts
to revive the celebration Of May-day, from its
supposed greater congeniality to the spirit of
youth than that of any other festivity. But the
error lay in attempting to graft on a thinking
age the pastimes Of an untbinking one; in not
perceiving the real nature of the change which
had taken place. This change was less in the
outward circumstances than in the inner mind
There was a new nature created, in which the
| old could no longer exist The times and the
spirit of the times, were changed :aa rs..
Happy the age, and harmless tho days
For then true love and amity found
when every village did nnypole raise,
And Whitsun-aes and May-games did abound;
And all the lusty younkers IN route
With merry lasses, danced the rod al,out.
Then Friendship TO their banquets bid the guests,
And the poor Jared the better for their feasts
The lords of manors, castles. towns, and towers,
Rcjoiced when they beheld the farmers flourish,
And would come down unto the summer bowers
To see the country galants dance the Morrice
| But since the SUMNER POLES ovERTHRowN a
And all good sports and merriments decayed,
How times and May changed, well Is known,
IL were but labor lost If more were said
@a "@e.ft E PAsourSs Falinofa.
This is great, and in some degree melan-
choly truth and it would be very melancholy
if We did not perceive that we are now merely
in transition state, and that q new and better
era must ultimately issue from our present
chaos The world has had the same experience
as st. Paul, who declares that when he was
child, he thought and spake as child but
becoming a man, he regarded only the things
of a man. The man has, however, yet to learn
that amusement as well MS work is necessary,
and what is the true sort for him. With all our
progress VIC have not progressed into half the
ease and gayety that our ancestors possessed.
With oil our improvements we have not inn
proved into their habit of enjoying themselves
With all our trnmphs of machinery and of.
knowledge we have won no leisure, no happi-
ness, not even our daily bread. We have lost
all that our ancestors possessed, and have gained
nothing which they had not That is poor
story to tell; that is strange result Of progress
and civilization. tt q sG.u. i. H#
Progress Is it a progress into poverty, TOLL
and wretchedness that we boast of? Let those
boast who wim Civilization Isit civilization
to have famine and expulsion from house and
home iu Ireland; "work work, work." and
Bremhi and Goatacre in England
All there is something still hugely wrong
Whichever way we turn, giant t-monster meets
us, and startles us out of our dreams of poetry.
Nc coll fbig utf nrl;obteY,ad ora In what is III
enlightened? With all our light and know
ledge, can any man tell us, even ON this ques-
ton of May-day, how the people, as one uni
t,oreo al ,,ooyio c,,,h t,,tn ort for sinu1n daty