In regard to the Fauna, little can be added except that the swallows and martins begin to be common; the nightingales now sing both night and day; glow-worms may be occasionally seen in the evening; the green Maybug, burnished with gold, and the brown cock-chafer are abundant; and generally the birds are in full song. ز The festival of May-day has existed in this country, though its form has often changed, from the earliest times and we find abundant traces of it both in our poets and old chroniclers.* Tollet imagines that it originally came from our Gothic ancestors; and certainly, if that is to be taken for a proof, the Swedes and Goths welcomed the first of May with songs and dance, and many rustic sports; but there is only a general, not a parti * Thus Shakspeare in Henry VIII. act v. scene iii. To scatter them as 'tis to make them sleep So too Chaucer in his Court of Love. + In Olaus Magnus we read "Postquam Septētrionales populi communiter à principio Octobris ad finem Aprilis asperrimas hyemes et longissimas noctes, sævosque flatus, pruinas, nives, caligines, tempestates, immensa que frigora, et reliquas sævientium elementorum mutationes, quasi concessa solatia alacriter transierant, mos est diversus in gentibus illis remotissimè distantibus, nempe quòd redeuntem solis splendorem singulari tripudio, præcipuè versus Polum Arcticum habitantes, excipere soleant. Qui enim montosa sublimioraque loca incolunt mutuis conviviis gaudia multiplicantes exultant, eò quòd uberior redit venatio et piscatura." Olaus Magnus de Gentium Septentrionalium Conditionibus, lib. xv. cap. viii. et seq. p. 571. The author then goes on to detail a custom, which has nothing whatever to do with May-day in England. "Alius ritus est ut primo die Maii, sole per Taurum agente cursum, duplices a magistratibus urbium constituantur robustorum juvenum et virorum equestres turmæ seu cohortes, tanquam ad durum aliquem conflictum progressuræ, quarum altera sorte deputato duce dirigitur, qui hyemis titulo et habitu, variis indutus pellibus, hastisque focalibus armatus, globatas nives et crus cular, likeness between our May-day festivities and those of our Gothic ancestors. Others again have sought for the origin of our customs in the Floralia, or rather in the Maiuma of the Romans, which were established at a later period under the Emperor Claudius, and differed perhaps but little from the former, except in being more decent.* tatas glacies spargens ut frigora prolonget, obequitat victoriosus, eòque duriorem se simulat et efficit, quò ab vaporariis stiriæ glaciales dependere videntur. Rursumque alterius cohortis præfectus æstatis, Comes Florialis appellatus, virentibus arborum frondibus, foliisque et floribus (difficulter repertis) vestitus, æstialibus indumentis parum securis, ex campo cum ducet hyemali, licet separato loco et ordine, civitates ingrediuntur, hastisque edito spectaculo publico, quòd æstas hyemem exuperet, experiuntur." The substance of all which in brief is, that it was a custom among the Southern Swedes on the first of May, for two parties of youths to take upon them respectively the characters of winter and summer. The one clad in furs flung about ice and snow in order to prolong the winter, while the other was led on by their Captain Florio, who was lightly dressed, with boughs and leaves, and then commenced a battle between them, which of course ended in summer being the victor. *The festival of the Maiuma originated probably at Ostia, a city on the sea-coast at the mouth of the Tiber, where the goddess Flora seems to have been more particularly worshipped, from her supposed power of calming the sea and rendering the winds mild and favourable. It is thus described by Suidas : " Πανήγυρις ἤγετο ἐν τῇ Ρώμη κατα τόν Μάϊον μῆνα. Τὴν παράλιον καταλαμβάνοντες πόλιν, τὴν λεγομένην Οστίαν, οἱ τα πρῶτα τῆς Ρώμης τελῦντες, ἡδυπαθειν ἠνείχοντο ἐν τοις θαλαττίοις ὕδασιν ἀλλήλους ἐμβάλ λοντες. Οθὲν καὶ Μαϊουμᾶς ὁ τῆς τοιαύτης ἑορτῆς καιρὸς ὠνοpáLETO." (Suidas, p. 2375, sub voce Maïovμaç, folio. Oxonii, 1834.) That is, "Maiumas was a Roman festival held in the month of May, when the heads of the city, going off to the sea-town called Ostia, gave themselves up to pleasure, and amused themselves with throwing each other into the sea. Hence the time of that festival was called Maiuma." This festival was celebrated with much splendour, both in banquets and in offerings, as we are told by the Emperor Julian, in But though it may at first seem probable that our May-games may have come immediately from the Floralia, or Maiuma of the Romans,* there can be little question that their final origin must be sought in other countries, and his satirical address, the Misopogon, to the people of Antioch, and in time it appears to have degenerated so deeply into licentiousness that it was suppressed, so far as laws could suppress it, in the reign of Constantine, together with the feasts of Pan and Bacchus. Under the united rule of Arcadius and Honorius, it was restored, though with caution, the imperial mandate declaring, "clementiæ nostræ placuit ut Maiumæ provincialibus lætitia reddatur ; ita tamen ut servetur honestas, et verecundia castis moribus perseveret." Imp. Cod. lib. xi. tit. 45. The admonition, however, in regard to decency and sobriety, does not seem to have produced any very desirable effect upon the minds of the people, for in the same reign it was once more forbidden on the plea of licentiousness by a rescript to the prefect Aurelian, which is still extant in the Theodosian Code, (lib. xv. tit. vi.) It is, however, plain, that though the Maiuma might be condemned by the edicts of emperors and the fulminations of saints-Chrysostom had particularly distinguished himself in this holy war against the popular amusement-still it could not be entirely repressed, for in the year 1573, we find the Council of Milan indulging in a furious tirade against the abomination of raising Maypoles, a pretty decisive evidence that the Maiuma had not been extirpated. But neither were the Roman clergy of the 16th century more successful than their predecessors had been; the detested Maypole was not to be put down, but has descended to our own days. * It may be as well, now I am upon this subject, to mention that the Romans had an absurd tradition of their May-games, their Floralia, or Larentalia, (Laurentalia) as they called them, having been derived from a prostitute named Flora or Larentia. The tale was this-It chanced one day, in the reign of Ancus, that the keeper of Hercules' temple, finding the time hang heavy on his hands for want of occupation, took it into his head to challenge the god to a game of dice the loser to pay the penalty of a good supper and to supply his victor with what Peele or Decker would have called a croshabell. Hercules being, we may suppose, in a good humour, accepted this challenge from his door-keeper, and won the game as might have been expected, whereupon he received his reward in meal and malt, and far remoter periods. Maurice* says, and I have no doubt truly, that our May-day festival is but a repetition of the phallic festivals of India and Egypt, which in those countries took place upon the sun entering Taurus, to celebrate nature's renewed fertility. Paλos in Greek signifies a pole, in addition to its more important meaning, of which this is the type; and in the precession of the equinoxes and the changes of the calendar we shall find an easy solution of any apparent inconsistencies arising from the difference of seasons. For obvious reasons I can do no more than hint at these mysteries, which besides would require a volume for their full discussion. That the May festival has come down to us from the Druids, who themselves had it from India, is proved by many striking facts and coincidences, and by none more than the vestiges of the God, Bel,† the Apollo or Orus of other nations. The Druids celebrated his worship on the first of May, by lighting immense fires in honour of him upon the various carns, ‡ and hence the day is called the possession of Larentia. But Hercules, though he might not have played upon the square, was yet in the main a liberal fellow, and the next morning, after the manner of gods and fairies, he bestowed a boon upon the lady,-it was, that the first person she met when returning home should prove of great advantage to her. And so it happened; for she met a rich man, by name Carucius, who was so smitten by her beauty, that he married her, and upon his death bequeathed to her the whole of his immense wealth. This she eventually left to the Roman people, in requital of which act of munificence King Ancus bestowed upon her a handsome funeral, ordered sacrifices to be offered to her manes, and a festival to be dedicated to Jove, because the ancients believed that the soul was given by him, and returned to him after death. This story will be found in the first book of the Saturnalia of Macrobius, vol. i. p. 241. Edit. Biponti, 1788. * Maurice's Indian Antiquities, vol. i. p. 87. + Bel was variously called Beal, Bealan, Belus, Belenus, and Bael. Toland's History of the Druids, p. 115. 8vo. Montrose. by the aboriginal Irish and the Scotch Highlanders-both remnants of the Celtic stock-la BEALTINE, BEALTAINE, or BELTINE, that is, the day of Belen's fire; for, in the Cornish, which is a Celtic dialect, we find that TAN is fire, and to tine, signifies to light the fire. The Irish still retain the Phenician custom of lighting fires at short distances, and making the cattle pass between them.* Fathers too, taking their children in their arms, jump or run through them, thus passing the latter, as it were, through the flames, the very practice so expressly condemned in Scripture. But even this custom appears to have been only a substitute for the atrocious sacrifice of children, as practiced by the elder Phoenicians. The God, Saturn-that is, Moloch-was represented by a statue bent slightly forward, and so placed that the least weight was sufficient to alter its position. Into the arms of this idol the priest gave the child to be sacrificed, when, its balance being thus destroyed, it flung, or rather dropt, the victim into a fiery furnace that blazed below.‡ If other proof were wanting of Eastern origin, we might find them in the fact that Britain was called by the earlier inhabitants the ISLAND OF BELI,§ and that BEL had also the name of Hu, a word which we see again occurring in the Huli festival of India. || * Higgin's Celtic Druids, chap. v. sect. 23. p. 181. "And made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abomination of the heathen." 2 Kings, xvi. 3. There is an able article on this subject in the British and Foreign Quarterly Review for April, 1844, No. xxxiii. p. 61. § Thus in one of the Welsh TRIADS, a collection of aphorisms, supposed to be of great antiquity, we read: "sincerely I worship thee, Beli, giver of good, and Manhogan the king, who preserves the honours of Bel, the island of Beli." Davies' Celtic Researches, p. 191, 8vo. London, 1806. For an account of the Huli festival, see Asiatic Researches, vol. ii. p. 334. |