[Sidenote: May-trees and May-bushes in England.] Sir Henry Piers, in his _Description of Westmeath_, writing in 1682 says: “On May-eve, every family sets up before their door a green bush, strewed over with yellow flowers, which the meadows yield plentifully. In countries where timber is plentiful, they erect tall slender trees, which stand high, and they continue almost the whole year; so as a stranger would go nigh to imagine that they were all signs of ale-sellers, and that all houses were ale-houses.”[239] In Northamptonshire a young tree ten or twelve feet high used to be planted before each house on May Day so as to appear growing; flowers were thrown over it and strewn about the door.[240] “Among ancient customs still retained by the Cornish, may be reckoned that of decking their doors and porches on the first of May with green boughs of sycamore and hawthorn, and of planting trees, or rather stumps of trees, before their houses.”[241] In the north of England it was [Sidenote: May garlands in England.] formerly the custom for young people to rise a little after midnight on the morning of the first of May, and go out with music and the blowing of horns into the woods, where they broke branches and adorned them with nosegays and crowns of flowers. This done, they returned about sunrise and fastened the flower-decked branches over the doors and windows of their houses.[242] At Abingdon in Berkshire young people formerly went about in groups on May morning, singing a carol of which the following are two of the verses:— “_We’ve been rambling all the night, And sometime of this day; And now returning back again, We bring a garland gay._ _A garland gay we bring you here; And at your door we stand; It is a sprout well budded out, The work of our Lord’s hand._”[243]