THE MONTHS.
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We do not live in a part of the country where antique customs are still kept up on Mayday: so I have had my homage of the day pretty nearly to myself for some years past.
There was a time when my wife and I were still almost boy and girl, when we observed every festival that led us out into the country, at any season: but the extreme early rising of Mayday would give the busy and tired mamma a headache, and spoil the whole day for more than herself,—so I have been accustomed to go forth alone in the dawn, when the month of May is three hours old. I had observed, the night before, that others than myself had been watching the barometer; and when I crept quietly down stairs in the dim light, I found the hall door unfastened, and my daughter Jane waiting for me in the porch. It was a pleasant surprise to begin with. Bell had intended to make a third: but she was too sleepy when the time came. In the olden days, when doors were fastened with a latch, she would have been made a prisoner, with a nail driven in above the latch. Such was the fate of sleepy maidens on May-mornings,—to be shut in till their brisker acquaintances came back from their Maying.
As we went along under the hedgerows towards the pasture-fields, we thought of all the people we knew who were keeping May anywhere. They are not many now; but there are a few old-fashioned places in England in which there are still traces of old Roman observances: and the flowery festival of Mayday is one of these. Hoops and triangles are covered with flowers which must be still in the dew; and when they are hung up in public they make the day one long game at ball, every boy, and almost every passenger, trying to throw a ball over the garland, and catch it on the other side. Then, in Catholic countries abroad, there are worshippers in the dim, chilly churches at this hour, celebrating acts of grace and glory which signalise the day. In Ireland, there are whole districts where the inhabitants have their heads full of the pranks of the fairies on May-eve, in dread of the evil-eye; and there is perhaps never a Mayday which does not break on some watcher in the woods around Killarney, looking for the apparition of O’Donoghue flitting across the lake. In the calmest moment, when the lake is like glass, a great wave suddenly rises, and behind it appears the armed rider, plumed and scarfed, and his helmet glittering in the morning light, as he guides his horse right across the lake. We, however, had no rare sights to see. We wanted to hear the loudest clamour of birds; and that is to be heard in the open country at daybreak in May. We wanted to get among the flowers where they are most profuse: and the place in which to look for them is the meadow by the river side. There might be more in two or three weeks; but the grass would then be either so tall as to hide the blossoms, or the wild-flowers would have been in part cropped with the grass; for the kine would soon be all abroad in the meadows,—calves and all.
For a mile through the lanes we had met nobody; but, as we came near Widow Wilson’s farm-yard, we found that some people were up as early as we. The dash and hiss of the milk in