In these days, when so much is done to equalise the seasons, when in the flower-shops spring treads on the heels of autumn, and Christmas windows are gay with tropical fruits, when fresh meat is always on the stalls, and the earth is tapped of its light and warmth to make up for the absent sun, it is difficult to realise the delight and enthusiasm with which our forefathers welcomed the yearly miracle of the spring. It meant so much to them,—release from the cold and the darkness that fell hardly on all but the rich; a feast of colour to eyes weary of winter grays; luscious, varied, and plentiful food to palates dulled by salt meat and pease-pudding. No wonder that the first hint of the sun’s return at Christmas, and the fulfilment of the promise of spring at May-day, were welcomed with an abandonment of joy to which our modern festivals offer but a pale parallel. It is doubtful, however, whether, even in the far-off days when the ceremonies possessed the highest religious sanction and significance, they were celebrated with a finer exuberance than in the comparatively recent times when this country was still “merrie England.” Fetching in the May or going a-Maying was then a most important festival, in which people of all ranks took part. Henry VIII. himself rode a-Maying with Queen Katharine and his Court. Every village had its May-pole, and the first of May was everywhere “the maddest, merriest day of all the glad New Year.” The celebration was recognised by the Roman Church, the note for the 30th of April in an old Calendar being, “The boys go out and seek May-trees.”[325] Chaucer represents the whole Court as going into the fields “on May-day when the lark begins to rise”— To fetch the floures fresh and branch and blome. And namely hawthorne brought both page and grome, With freshë garlants party blew and white, And than rejoysen in their great delight.[326] The poet makes the whole Court pelt each other with flowers, “the primerose, the violete and the gold,” but the general custom was to bring home the branches and flowers as an adornment for the house. Even the barns and the cow-byres were carefully decorated, long after the primitive intention of the ceremony had been forgotten, and it had degenerated into a licensed opportunity for revelry and love-making. The two aspects of the celebration, the decorative and the amatory, are charmingly illustrated in this lyric of Herrick’s:—