human
They used to dress themselves in holiday guise on this morning, and come in bands with fiddles, whereto they danced, attended by a strange-looking pyramidal pile, covered with pewter plates, ribands, and streamers, either borne by a man upon his head or by two men upon a hand-barrow; this was called their garland.
gpt
or the decoration of springs and fountains with flowers, yet very common in some counties, and especially in Derbyshire, either owes its origin to the Roman Floralia, or to a still older custom, the common Aryan root of both. Dr. Stukeley, the celebrated antiquary, writing in 1724, speaks of a May-pole near Horn Castle, Lincolnshire, on a spot
human
He adds:
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The boys annually keep up the festival of the _Floralia_ on May-day, making a procession to this hill with May gads (as they call them) in their hands. This is a white willow wand, the bark peeled off, ty'd round with cowslips, a thyrsus of the Bacchanals. At night they have a bonefire, and other merriment, which is really a sacrifice or religious festival.
human
Whitsun-ale or a
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Morris-dance. Old Stubbs calls the May-pole a
human
and says it was brought home with
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hence his malediction. The attendant ceremony he describes as follows:
human
They have twenty or forty yoke of oxen, every ox having a sweet nosegay of flowers tied to the tips of his horns; and these oxen draw home the May-pole, covered all over with flowers and herbs, bound round with strings from the top to the bottom, and sometimes painted with variable colours, having two or three hundred men, women, and children following it with great _devotion_.
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This was followed by his famous proclamation, levelled chiefly against the
human
Puritans and precise people of Lancashire. This action culminated in the still more celebrated
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Book of Sports. Charles I., in 1633, republished
human
which decreed that
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The chief offence with which they were charged was that they had no visible mode of living,