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 this 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 particular, 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 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. 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 far remoter periods. Maurice says (_Indian Antiquities_, vol i. p. 87) 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. Φαλλος (_phallos_) 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. 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 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.