While reading one evening towards the close of April 1861, says a writer in the _Book of Days_ (vol. i. p. 546), I was on a sudden aware of a party of waits or carollers who had taken their stand on the lawn in my garden,[41] and were serenading the family with a song. There were four singers, accompanied by a flute and a clarionet, and together they discoursed most simple and rustic music. I was at a loss to divine the occasion of this loyal custom, seeing the time was not within any of the great festivals, Easter, May-day, or Whitsuntide. Inquiry resulted in my obtaining from an old “Mayer” the words of two songs, called by the singers themselves “May Songs,” though the rule and custom are that they _must_ be sung before the 1st of May. My chief informant, an elderly man named Job Knight, tells me that he went out a May-singing for about fourteen years, but has now left it off. He says that the Mayers usually commence their singing-rounds about the middle of April, though some parties start as early as the beginning of that month. The singing invariably ceases on the evening of the 30th of April. Job says he can remember the custom for about thirty years, and he never heard any other than the two songs which follow. These are usually sung, he says, by five or six men, with a fiddle or flute and clarionet accompaniment. The songs are verbally as recited by Job Knight, the first of which leaves marks of some antiquity, both in construction and phraseology. There is its double refrain--the second and fourth lines in every stanza--which both musically and poetically are far superior to the others. Its quaint picture of manners, the worshipful master of the house in his chain of gold, the mistress with gold along her breast, &c., the phrases “house and harbour,” “riches and store,”--all seem to point to earlier times. The last line of this song appears to convey its object and to indicate a simple superstition that these songs were charms to draw or drive “these cold winters away.” There are several lines in both songs, in which the sense, no less than the rhythm, seems to have been marred from the songs having been handed down by oral tradition alone, but I have not ventured on any alteration. [41] In the hamlet of Swinton, township of Worsley, parish of Eccles. In the second, and more modern, song, the refrain in the fourth line of each stanza is again the most poetical and musical of the whole. OLD MAY SONG. All in this pleasant evening, together comers (? come are) we, For the summer springs so fresh, green, and gay; We’ll tell you of a blossom and buds on every tree, Drawing near to the merry month of May. Rise up, the master of this house, put on your chain of gold, For the summer springs so fresh, green, and gay; We hope you’re not offended, (with) your house we make so bold, Drawing near to the merry month of May.