Before passing on from Easter observances, let me mention one old custom still kept up at University College, Oxford, the most ancient college, I believe, in the University. A block, in the form of a long wooden pole decorated with flowers and evergreens, is placed outside the door of the hall, leaning against the wall of the buttery which is opposite. After dinner on Easter Day, the cook and his attendant, dressed in white paper caps and white jackets, take their stand on either side of the block, each bearing a pewter dish, one supporting a blunt chopping-axe from the kitchen, the other in readiness for the fees expected on the occasion. As the members of the college come out of the hall first the master, then the fellows, and so on each takes the axe, strikes the block with it, and then places in the proper dish the usual fee to the cook. This rite is called “chipping the block;” its origin is unexplained. The tradition among the undergraduates is that anyone who can chip the block in two (under the circumstances a physical impossibility) can lay claim to all the college estates, but the master and fellows dispute this.
The ancient observances on May Day, the Maypole and garlands, the May Queen, and the chimney-sweeper’s pageant, have, I fear, passed away throughout the North as well as the South, except in some remote localities, or where special pains have been taken by the upper classes to keep up or to revive them. In Devonshire, the local custom, now almost extinct, is for the children to carry about dolls, as richly dressed as may be, in baskets of flowers, doubtless with reference originally to the Blessed Virgin, patroness of the month of May. On May Day morning in Edinburgh, not many years ago, everyone went up to the top of Arthur’s Seat before sunrise to “meet the dew.” In Perth they climbed Kinnoul Hill for the same purpose, with a lingering belief in the old saying—that those who wash their faces in May
and the chaplain was the only man within their reach. Making the most of their opportunity, they rushed upon him, and lifted him, bestowing the usual salutations all the time. His screams and cries for help were alarming, and at last they brought the captain to the spot, but unfortunately he was too much amused to interfere, and the play was played out in spite of the poor victim’s intense alarm and disgust.—S. B. G.
