into town with rejoicings, and having fitted a straight taper pole to the end of it, and painted it, erect it in the most publick part, and upon holidays and festivals dress it with garlands of flowers, or ensigns and streamers.”[267] In Northumberland, down apparently to near the end of the eighteenth century, young people of both sexes used to go out early on May morning to gather the flowering thorn and the dew off the grass, which they brought home with music and acclamations; then, having dressed a pole on the green with garlands, they danced about it. The dew was considered as a great cosmetic, and preserved the face from wrinkles, blotches, and the traces of old age. A syllabub made of warm milk from the cow, sweet cakes, and wine was prepared for the feast; and a kind of divination, to discover who should be wedded first, was practised by dropping a marriage-ring into the syllabub and fishing for it with a ladle.[268] At Padstow in Cornwall, when shipbuilding was a thriving industry of the port, the shipwrights used to erect a tall May-pole at the top of Cross Street in the middle of a cross inlaid with stone. The pole was gaily decorated with spring flowers and so forth. But the custom has long been abandoned. A great feature of the celebration of May Day at Padstow used to be the Hobby Horse, that is, a man wearing a ferocious mask, who went dancing and singing before the chief houses, accompanied by a great flower-bedecked crowd of men and women, while the men fired pistols loaded with powder in all directions.[269]