Martinsburg independent. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1875-1900, 1897-07-10
AN OLD TIME MAY DAY. S
low ahe Festival Was Celebrated by
Grown People In ENGLAND.

Once during the foggy, dark weather
did old London, usually dirty and i'll smell
ing, blossom like rose To the forest,
with all its fresh leaves unfolding and its
sweet airs blowing, went the young work
ingmen and women of the city-for it was
not the children's May day yet, but a fes-
tival for older people-to gather spring
flowers.
How glad they were to get abroad sin
the open" in those old days of Queen
Elizabeth and King Jamesl They went
to the great forests near by, Hainault for
est, Epping forest and that great body Of
woods through which Waiting street ran
you know, Waiting street even trayersed
the Sherwood forest of Robin Hood and
his merry men-and they brought home
the wild rose and "the white May, for SO
they called the blossoming hawthorn, and
many bouquet and branch of goodly
green or delicate spring buds and flowers.
There were two or three principal streets
that they decked, singing all the while,
until these looked like fresh bowers, and
they made arches of greenery and bios
SONS over doors and gateways ON May eve,
and hung little colored lamps among them
until the children must have thought the
scene like fairyland. To the knobs of the
doors they also hung punches and baskets
OF flowers, and friends and lovers brought
each other "a branch of May" Nc sweet
er greeting could there be, surely, after
the long, cold, dark months of fog and
winter within doors.
Then, the next day, what dances around
the tall May pole, with it's futtering rib
bons; what reyels with plenteous tables
full of meats and drinks; what fair pag-
eants, with music and speech and the al
legorical characters that the English used
SO to delight in
But in tho course of time the Puritan
temper became dominant in England, and
the old sports and revels were fiercely put
away. Grown men and women ceased
their mumming and masking as unworthy
Of grave minds, and even this sweet May
festival only survived in the new world
across the seas as the sport and pageant of
children.
Strangely enough, New England kept
one part of it's celebration and the south
another. In New England, on the eve be-
fore the 1st of May, the merry children
hang their May baskets at the doors and
hide near by to see them taken in, while
in Virginia and the southern states they
celebrate the morning of May day by
what is really an Elizabethan pageant
the browning of the queen of May. Some
little girl is elected queen and is crowned
by another child as bishop. There is a
procession of children, some of them rep
resenting the scepter bearer, the ladies of
honor and spring herself, all bearing flow
ers and reciting poetical speeches in char
acter.
1t was just in this way that the digni-
fled lord mayor and other high officials
used to entertain Queen Elizabeth herself
when she went to visit the various towns
in her kingdom, and she sometimes got
very weary of the long speeches or poems,
but all the people enjoyed the merrymak-
ing and masking or piayiRg in character
immensely, as much as the children DO
now.-Ella f. Mosby in Philadelphia
Times.