They also gathered branches from the trees, and adorned them with nosegays and crowns of flowers, returning with their booty homewards, about the rising of the sun, forthwith to decorate their doors and windows with the flowery spoil. The after-part of the day, says an ancient chronicler, was “chiefly spent in dancing round a tall pole, which is called a May-pole; which, being placed in a convenient part of the village, stands there, as it were, consecrated to the goddess of flowers, without the least violation offered it in the whole circle of the year.” “Your May-pole deck with flowery coronal; Sprinkle the flowery coronal with wine; And in the nimble-footed galliard, all, Shepherd and shepherdess, lively join, Hither from village sweet and hamlet fair, From bordering cot and distant glen repair: Let youth indulge its sport, to old bequeath its care.” Old John Stowe tells us that on May-day, in the morning, “every man, except impediment, would walk into the sweet meadows and green woods, there to rejoice their spirits with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers, and with the harmony of birds praising God in their kind.” In the days of Henry VIII. it was the custom for all classes to observe the May-day festival, and we are told that the king himself rode a-Maying from Greenwich to Shooter’s Hill, with his Queen Katherine, accompanied by many lords and ladies. Chaucer relates how on May-day “Went forth all the Court both most and least; To fetch the floures fresh, and branch and blome, And namely Hawthorn brought both page and grome; And then rejoysen in their great delite, Eke each at other threw the floures bright. The Primrose, Violette, and the Golde, With garlands partly blue and white.” The young maidens repaired at daybreak to the meadows and hill-sides, for the purpose of gathering the precious May-dew, wherewith to make themselves fair for the remainder of the year. This old custom is still extant in the north of England and in some districts of Scotland. Robert Fergusson has told how the Scotch lassies swarmed at daybreak on Arthur’s Seat: “On May-day in a fairy ring, We’ve seen them round St. Anthon’s spring Frae grass the caller dew-draps wring, To wet their ein, And water clear as crystal spring. To synd them clean.” In Ross-shire the lassies pluck sprigs of Ivy, with the May-dew on them, that have not been touched by steel. It was deemed important that flowers for May garlands and posies should be plucked before the sun rose on May-day morning; and if perchance, Cuckoo-buds were included in the composition of a wreath, it was destroyed directly the discovery was made, and removed immediately from a posie. In the May-day sports on the village green, it was customary to choose as May Queen either the best dancer or the prettiest girl, who, at sundown was crowned with a floral chaplet--