1900), is, of course, invaluable. I have only included in the above list such works of general range as I have actually made most use of. Many others dealing with special points are cited in the notes. A fuller guide to folk-lore literature will be found in M. R. Cox, _Introduction to Folklore_ (2nd ed. 1897).] The central fact of the agricultural festivals is the presence in the village of the fertilization spirit in the visible and tangible form of flowers and green foliage or of the fruits of the earth. Thus, when the peasants do their ‘observaunce to a morn of May,’ great boughs of hawthorn are cut before daybreak in the woods, and carried, with other seasonable leafage and blossom, into the village street. Lads plant branches before the doors of their mistresses. The folk deck themselves, their houses, and the church in green. Some of them are clad almost entirely in wreaths and tutties, and become walking bushes, ‘Jacks i’ the green.’ The revel centres in dance and song around a young tree set up in some open space of the village, or a more permanent May-pole adorned for the occasion with fresh garlands. A large garland, often with an anthropomorphic representation of the fertilization spirit in the form of a doll, parades the streets, and is accompanied by a ‘king’ or ‘queen,’ or a ‘king’ and ‘queen’ together. Such a garland finds its place at all the seasonal feasts; but whereas in spring and summer it is naturally made of the new vegetation, at harvest it as naturally takes the form of a sheaf, often the last sheaf cut, of the corn. Then it is known as the ‘harvest-May’ or the ‘neck,’ or if it is anthropomorphic in character, as the ‘kern-baby.’ Summer and harvest garlands alike are not destroyed when the festival is over, but remain hung up on the May-pole or the church or the barn-door until the season for their annual renewing comes round. And sometimes the grain of the ‘harvest-May’ is mingled in the spring with the seed-corn[384].