Generally each printed announcement by the Chief Constable of a statute fair for hiring within his hundred concluded with the intimation--"Dinner on Table at two o'clock, price 2s. 6d. each." From the last named item I conclude that the dinner on the table was intended for employers who could afford the 2s. 6d., and also, I believe, for the parish constables of the hundred whose "2s. 6d. for the constabel's fest" so frequently occurs in parish accounts. A number of these announcements before me all end in a similar strain, but I give one specimen below-- PUCKERIDGE STATUTE FOR HIRING SERVANTS, will be held at the BELL INN, On FRIDAY, the 23RD of SEPTEMBER, 1796, _THOMAS PRIOR, Chief Constable._ Dinner on the Table at Two o'clock. May-day observances may perhaps appear a too hackneyed topic for a place in these Glimpses, and yet they were very different from present day observances. The "May-dolling" by children in the streets of Royston as every first of May comes round is clearly a survival of the more picturesque mummeries of the past. There is this in common, in all the procession of Mayers through the ages, that their outward equipment has always sought some little bit of promise of greenery from nature's springtide, and rather a large piece of the human nature which runs to seed in the oriental "backsheesh"--a picturesque combination of blessing and begging. The "Mayers' song," and its setting in this district, was something like the following:--At an early hour in the morning a part of the townspeople would parade the town singing the Mayers' song, carrying large branches of may or other greenery, a piece of which was affixed to the door of the most likely houses to return the compliment. Sometimes delicate compliments or otherwise were paid to the servants of the house, and, if not in favour with the Mayers, the former would find on opening the door in the morning, not the greeting of a branch of "may" but a spiteful bunch of stinging nettles!--a circumstance which caused servants to take a special interest in what they would find at their door as an omen of good fortune. During the day the Mayers' procession went on in a more business-like form, with sundry masked figures, men with painted faces--one wearing an artificial hump on his back, with a birch broom in his hand, and the other in a woman's dress in tatters and carrying a ladle--acting the parts of "mad Moll and her husband." Two other men, one gaudily dressed up in ribbons and swathed in coloured bandages and {99} carrying a sword, and another attired as a lady in a white dress and ribbons, played the part of the "Lord and Lady." Other attendants upon these followed in similar, but less imposing, attire. With fiddle, clarionet, fife and drum, a substantial contribution from the townspeople was acknowledged with music and dancing, and a variety of clownish tricks of Mad Moll and her Husband.