tering the houses as unceremoniously. At present a select party only make their progress through the street very late in the evening, when they quickly vanish from the view, reappearing in the ball-room."*

A correspondent of Hone's gives a somewhat different account of the Cornish festivities on this occasion." It is," he says, "an annual custom on May-eve for a number of young men and women to assemble at a public-house and sit up till the clock strikes twelve, when they go round the town with violins, drums, and other instruments, and by sound of music call upon others who had previously settled to join them. As soon as the party is formed, they proceed to different farm-houses, within four or five miles of the neighbourhood, where they are expected as regularly as May morning comes; and they there partake of a beverage called junket, made of raw milk and rennet, or running, as it is there called, sweetened with sugar and a little cream added. After this they take tea and heavy country cake, composed of flour, cream, sugar, and currants; next, rum and milk; and then a dance. After thus regaling, they gather the May. While some are breaking down the boughs, others sit and make the May-music. This is done by cutting a circle through the bark at certain distances from the bottom of the May branches; then by gently and regularly tapping the bark all round, from the cut circle to the end, the bark becomes loosened, and slips away whole from the wood, and a hole being cut in the pipe it is easily formed to emit a sound when blown through and becomes a whistle. The gathering and the May-music being finished they then

*Polwhele's History of Cornwall, vol. i. p. 42.

This bark-whistle, so laboriously described by Hone's correspon dent, must, I should think, be familiar to every school-boy. It is usually made from willow.

bring home the May by five or six o'clock in the morning, with the band playing, and their whistles blowing. After dancing through the town they go to their respective employments. Although May-day should fall on a Sunday, they observe the same practice in all respects, with the omission of dancing in the town.*

On the first Sunday after May-day it is a custom with families at Penzance to visit Rose-hill, Poltier, and other adjacent villages by way of recreation. These pleasureparties usually consist of two or three families together. They carry flour and other materials with them to make the heavy-cake, just described, at the pleasant farm-dairies,

*In regard to the celebration of May day though it fell upon a Sunday, such also was the custom in the time of James the First, the king only stipulating that the games should not be during the hours of divine service, and-which does not seem quite so reasonable-that no one should participate in them who had not been to church. In all other respects his view of the matter affords so excellent a lesson and rebuke to the bigots of our own time that I can not forbear giving a brief extract from it. "This prohibition barreth the common and meaner sort from using such exercises as may make their bodies more able for warre, when wee or our successors shall have occasion to use them. And in place thereof sets up filthy tiplings and drunkennesse, and breeds a number of idle and discontented speeches in their alehouses. For when shall the common people have leave to exercise if not upon the Sundayes and holydaies, seeing they must apply their labour and win their living in all working daies ?"

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The king then goes on to say our pleasure is that after divine service our good people be not disturbed, letted, or discouraged from any lawful recreation, such as dancing, either men or women; archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmlesse recreation, nor from having of Maygames, Whitson-Ales, and Morrisdances, and the setting up of Maypoles.... And that women shall have leave to carry rushes to the church for the decoring of it, according to the old custome." The KING'S DECLARATION CONCERNING LAWFUL SPORTS. London, 1633.

which are always open for their reception." Nor do they forget to take tea, sugar, rum, and other comfortable things for their refreshment, which by paying a trifle for baking, and for the niceties awaiting their consumption, contents the farmers for the house-room and pleasure they afford their welcome visitants. Here the young

ones find delicious junkets, with sour milk, cut in diamonds, which is eaten with sugar and cream. New-made cake, refreshing tea and exhilirating punch satisfy the stomach, cheer the spirits, and assist the walk home in the evening. These pleasure-takings are never made before May-day; but the first Sunday that succeeds it, and the leisure of every other afternoon is open to the frugal enjoyment; and among neighbourly families and kind friends the enjoyment is frequent."*

INVENTIO CRUCIS; HOLY-ROOD DAY; HOLY-CROSS DAY,-May 3d.-This day takes its first name, Inventio Crucis, i. e. Discovery of the Cross, from its being the anniversary of the finding of the real cross by Saint Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great. According to the legend, told by Ambrosius, Theodoretus, and other veracious historians of the church, the good lady in 326 took it into her head to make a pilgrimage to Palestine, she being then very near eighty years of age.† Her first visit is to Golgotha, when she is seized with a fancy -Ambrosius calls it a divine inspiration—for seeing the

* This lamely-written account, which might have come from the pen of a school-boy, occurs in Hone's Every Day Book, vol. i. p. 561; but indeed Hone and his contributors generally wrote in the most childish style that can be imagined. I have given it for the sake of the facts which are sufficiently interesting.

+ Πρὸ γὰρ ὀλίγο τῆς τελευτῆς τὴν ἀποδημίαν ταύτην ἐποίησατο ὀγδοηκοντᾶτις δὲ τὸ τέρμα το βίω κατειληφεν. B. Theodoreti Ecclesias. Hist. lib. i. cap. xvii. p. 794. tom. iii. 8vo. Halæ, 1771.

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true cross, and is exceedingly wrath with the devil for having hid it; for it seems he had put it into the head of his heathen friends to build a temple to Venus on the ground where Christ was buried, and to erect a statue to Jupiter on the place of his resurrection. All this was sufficiently provoking to an empress who was not used to be thwarted in any of her fancies; "here," says the pious pilgrim, “is the battle-ground, but where is the victory? I seek the standard of salvation, but find it not; shall I sit in royalty, and the cross of the Lord in dust? shall I dwell in gilded palaces, and the triumph of Christ is in ruins? I see what you have been doing, Satan, that the sword which smote you might be hidden.”* But how was the sable gentleman to be defeated? Eusebius says that she was helped out of this difficulty by a vision, a resource common to poets and ecclesiastical historians; but other authorities more modestly state that she had recourse to a council of old women-male as well as female—of Jerusalem, who agreed that if she could discover the sepulchre she would be sure to find also the instruments of punishment, it being always the custom among the Jews to make a great hole near the place where the body of any criminal was buried, and to throw into it whatever belonged to the execution, for they held such objects too detestable to be kept in sight. Thus advised, she ordered the fane to be pulled down, and was rewarded for her pious zeal by finding three crosses, the

* "Accessit ad Golgotha, et ait; 'ecce locus pugnæ, ubi est victoria? quæro vexillum salutis, et non invenio. Ego.' inquit, ‘in regnis, et crux Domini in pulvere? ego in aureis, et in ruinis Christi triumphus? .... Video quid egeris, diabole, ut gladius quo peremtus es, obstrueretur.'" Sancti Ambrosii Opera, tom. vii. p. 38, sect. 43 and 44.-De Obitu Theodosii Oratio. I am sorry to be forced to add that Erasmus declares this amusing oration is spurious.

nails employed in the crucifixion, and the title, or label, which had once been affixed to the real cross.

But now came another difficulty; the title having been separated by decay or accident, how was she to distinguish the cross of Christ from those of the two thieves? This would have puzzled most people, but it did not puzzle the inspired bishop, Macarius, who on being consulted recommended that all three should be taken to a lady of rank then lying ill, and their powers severally tested in her cure. Two were tried without effect, but the third restored the patient to perfect health, and was consequently pronounced to be the genuine. Great, hereupon, was the delight of the poor old empress. Part of the nails she manufactured into a helmet for her son, as a sure guard against hostile weapons, part she did into his horse's bridle, both for his soul's health and in fulfilment of the oracle of Zechariah.* Another portion she destined for the palace, and the rest she enclosed in a silver case made especially for the purpose, and presented to the bishop as a memorial for posterity. In conclusionwithout which all the rest would have gone for nothing with the pious-she built a splendid church upon the ruins of the heathen temple.t

HOLY-ROOD DAY, the name sometimes given to the third of May, takes its rise from the same circumstance, the rood, as Fuller informs us, being an image of Christ on the cross, made generally of wood, and erected in a

+ Theodoreti Ecclesiastica Historia, lib. i. cap. xvii. I presume it is from the same source that the Rev. Alban Butler has drawn the account given by him in his Lives of the Fathers, (vol. vi. p. 45,) but he has omitted all mention of the talismanic helmet-why, I can not imagine, that little incident being so exceedingly characteristic of the good empress.