Miscellanea Part 16

A stupid old English custom of making fools of your friends on the 1st of May as well as on the 1st of April hardly deserves the t.i.tle of a game. The victims were called "May goslings."

One certainly would not expect to meet with anything like "Aunt Sally"

among May-day games, especially with the "May Lady" for b.u.t.t! But not the least curious part of a very curious account of May-day in Huntingdons.h.i.+re, which was sent to _Notes and Queries_ some years ago, is the pelting of the May Lady as a final ceremony of the festival. The May-garlands carried round in Huntingdons.h.i.+re villages appear to have been more like the "milkmaids' garland" than genuine wreaths. They were four to five feet high, extinguisher-shaped, with every kind of spring flower in the apex, and with ribbons and gay kerchiefs hanging down from the base, by the round rim of which the garland was carried; the flower-peak towering above, and the gay streamers depending below.

Against this erection (not unlike the "mistletoe boughs" of the North of England) was fastened a gaily-dressed doll. The bearers were two little girls, who acted as maids of honour to the May Queen. Mr. Cuthbert Bede describes her Majesty as he saw her twenty years ago. She wore a white frock, and a bonnet with a white veil. A wreath of real flowers lay on the bonnet. She carried a pocket-handkerchief bag and a parasol (the latter being regarded as a special mark of dignity). An "Odd Fellows'"

ribbon and badge completed her costume. The maids of honour bore the garland after her, whose peak was crowned with "tulips, anemones, cowslips, kingcups, meadow-orchis, wall-flower, primrose, crown-imperial, lilac, laburnum," and "other bright flowers." Votive offerings were dropped into the pocket-handkerchief bag, and with these a feast was provided for the children. If the gifts had been liberal, "goodies" were proportionately plentiful. Finally, the May-garland was suspended from a rope hung across the village street, and the children pelted the May-doll with b.a.l.l.s provided for the occasion. Their chief aim was to hit her nose.

Another correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ speaks of ropes with dolls suspended from them as being stretched across every village street in Huntingdons.h.i.+re on May-day, and adds, that not only ribbons and flowers were attached to these swinging May Ladies, but articles of every description, including "candlesticks, snuffers, spoons, and forks."

There are no May carols rivalling those of Christmas, and the verses which children sing with their garlands are very bald as a rule.

A Maypole song of the Gloucesters.h.i.+re children would do very well to dance to--

"Round the Maypole, trit-trit-trot!

See what a Maypole we have got; Fine and gay, Trip away, Happy is our New May-day."

I have read of a pretty old Italian custom for the friends of prisoners to a.s.semble outside the prison walls on May-day and join with them in songs. They are also said to have permission to have a May-day feast with them.

Under all its various shapes, and however adapted to the service of particular heathen deities, or to very rude social festivity, the root of the May-day festival lies in the expression of feelings both natural and right. Thankfulness for the return of Spring, anxiety for the coming harvests of the fruits of the earth, and that sense of exhilaration and hopefulness which the most exquisite of seasons naturally brings--brings more strongly perhaps in the youth of a nation, in those earlier stages of civilization when men are very dependent upon the weather, and upon the produce of their own particular neighbourhood--brings most strongly of all to one's own youth, to the light heart, the industrious fancy, the uncorrupted taste of childhood.

May-day seems to me so essentially a children's festival, that I think it is a great pity that English children should allow it to fall into disuse. One certainly does not love flowers less as one grows up, but they are more like persons, and their ways are more mysterious to one in childhood. The cares of grown-up life, too, are not of the kind from which we can easily get a whole holiday. We should do well to try oftener than we do. Wreaths do not become us, and we have allowed our joints to grow too stiff for Maypole dancing. But we who used to sigh for whole holidays can give them! We can prepare the cakes and cream, and provide ribbons for the Maypole, and show how garlands were made in our young days. We are very grateful for wild-flowers for the drawing-room. To say the truth, they last longer with us than with the children, and perhaps we combine the delicate hues of spring, and lighten our nosegays by gra.s.s and sword-flags and rushes with more cunning fingers than those of the little ones who gathered them.

For these is reserved the real bloom of May-day! And the orthodox customs are so various, that families of any size or age may pick and choose. One brother and sister can be Lord and Lady of the May. One sister among many brothers must be May Queen without opposition. Those of the party most apt to catch cold in the treacherous suns.h.i.+ne and damp winds of spring should certainly represent the Winter Queen and her attendants, in the warmest possible clothing and the thickest of boots.

The morning air will then probably only do them a great deal of good. It is not desirable to dig up the hawthorn-trees, or to try to do so, even with wooden spades. The votive offering of flowers for her drawing-room should undoubtedly await Mamma when she comes down to breakfast, and I heartily wish her as abundant a variety as Mr. Cuthbert Bede saw on the Huntingdons.h.i.+re garland. That Nurse should have a bunch of May is only her due; and of course the nursery must be decorated. Long strips of coloured calico form good ribbons for the Maypole. Bows and arrows are easily made. It is also easy to cut one's fingers in notching the arrows. When you are tired of dancing, you can be Robin Hood's merry men, and shoot. When all the arrows are lost, and you have begun to quarrel about the target, it will be well to hang up an old doll and throw b.a.l.l.s at her nose. Dressing-up is, at any time, a delightful amus.e.m.e.nt, and there is a large choice among May-day characters. No wardrobe can fail to provide the perfectly optional costumes of Mad Moll and her husband. There are generally some children who never will learn their parts, and who go astray from every pre-arranged plan. By any two such the last-named characters should be represented. In these, as in all children's games, "the more the merrier"; and as there is no limit to the number of sweeps, the largest of families may revel in burnt cork, even if dust-pans in proportion fail. If a bonfire is more appropriate to the weather than a Maypole, we have the comfort of feeling that it is equally correct.

It is hardly needful to impress upon the boys what vigour the blowing of horns and penny trumpets will impart to the ceremonies; but they may require to be reminded that Eton men in old days were only allowed to go a-Maying on condition that they did not wet their feet!

Above all, out-door May Fun is no fun unless the weather is fine; and I hope this little paper will show that if the 1st of May is chilly, and the flowers are backward, nothing can be more proper than to keep our feast on the 12th of May--_May-day, Old Style_. If the Clerk of the Weather Office is unkind on both these days, give up out-door fun at once, and prepare for a fancy-ball in the nursery; all the guests to be dressed as May-day characters. Garland-making and country expeditions can then be deferred till Midsummer-day. It is not _very_ long to wait, and penny trumpets do not spoil with keeping.

But do not be defrauded of at least one early ramble in the woods and fields. It is well, in the impressionable season of life, to realize, if only occasionally, how much of the sweetest air, the brightest and best hours of the day, people spend in bed. Any one who goes out every day before breakfast knows how very seldom he is kept in by bad weather. For one day when it rains very early there are three or four when it rains later. But we wait till the world has got dirty, and the air full of the smoke of thousands of breakfasts, and clouds are beginning to gather, and then we say England has a horrible climate. I do not believe in many quack medical prescriptions, but I have the firmest faith in May dew as a wash for the complexion. Any morning dew is nearly as efficacious if it is gathered in warm clothes, thick boots, and at a sufficient distance from home.

There are some households in which there are no children, and there are some in which the good things of this life are very abundant. To these it may not be very impertinent to suggest a remembrance of the old alderman of Lynn's kindly benefaction. To beg leave for the children of the workhouse to gather May-day nosegays for you, and to give them a May feast afterwards, would be to give pleasure of a kind in which such unhomely lives are most deficient. A country ramble "with an object,"

and the grace-in-memory of a traditionary holiday and feast, shared in common with many homes and with other children.

To go a-Maying "to fetche the flowres fresh" is indeed the best part of the whole affair.

But, when the sunny bank under the hedge is pale with primroses, when dog-violets spread a mauve carpet over clearings in the little wood, if cowslips be plentiful though oxslips are few, and rare orchids bless the bogs of our locality, pus.h.i.+ng strange insect heads, through beds of _Drosera_ bathed in perpetual dew--then, dear children, restrain the natural impulse to grub everything up and take the whole flora of the neighbourhood home in your pinafores. In the first place, you can't. In the second place, it would be very hard on other people if you could.

Cull skilfully, tenderly, unselfishly, and remember what my mother used to say to me and my brothers and sisters when we were "collecting"

anything, from fresh-water algae to violet roots for our very own gardens, "_Leave some for the Naiads and Dryads_."

IN MEMORIUM, MARGARET GATTY

In Memoriam.

MARGARET,

[Daughter of the Rev. Alexander John Scott, D.D.]

(LORD NELSON'S CHAPLAIN, AND THE FRIEND IN WHOSE ARMS HE DIED AT TRAFALGAR),

was Born June 3rd, 1809.

In 1839 she was Married to the Rev. Alfred Gatty,

OF ECCLESFIELD, YORKs.h.i.+RE,

where she Died on October the 4th, 1873, aged 64.

My mother became editor of _Aunt Judy's Magazine_ in May 1866. It was named after one of her most popular books--_Aunt Judy's Tales_; and Aunt Judy became a name for herself with her numerous child-correspondents.

The ordinary work of editors.h.i.+p was heavily increased by her kindness to tyro authors, and to children in want of everything, from advice on a life-vocation to old foreign postage stamps. No consideration of the value of her own time could induce her to deal summarily with what one may call her magazine children, and her correspondents were of all ages and acquirements, from nursery aspirants barely beyond pothooks to such writers as the author of _A Family Man for Six Days_, and other charming Australian reminiscences, who still calls her his "literary G.o.dmother."

The peculiar relation in which she stood to so many of the readers of _Aunt Judy_ has been urged upon me as a reason for telling them something more about her than that she is dead and gone, especially as by her peremptory wish no larger record of her life will ever be made public. I need hardly disclaim any thought of expressing an opinion on her natural powers, or the value of those labours from which she rests; but whatever of good there was in them she devoted with real affectionate interest to the service of a much larger circle of children than of those who now stand desolate before her empty chair. And those whom she has so long taught have, perhaps, some claim upon the lessons of her good example.

Most well-loved pursuits, perhaps most good habits of our lives, owe their origin to our being stirred at one time or another to the imitation of some one better, or better gifted than ourselves. We can remember dates at which we began to copy what our present friends may fancy to be innate peculiarities of our own character. The conviction of this truth, and of the strong influence which little details of lives we admire have in forming our characters in childhood, persuade me to the hard task of writing at all of my dear mother, and guide me in choosing those of the things that we remember about her which may help her magazine children on matters about which they have oftenest asked her counsel.

Many of her own innumerable hobbies had such origins, I know. The influence of German literature on some of her writings is very obvious, and this most favourite study sprang chiefly from a very early fit of hero-wors.h.i.+p for Elizabeth Smith, whose precocious and unusual acquirements she was stirred to emulate, and whose enthusiasm for Klopstock she caught. The fly-leaf of her copy of the Smith _Remains_ bears (in her handwriting) the date 1820, with her name as Meta Scott; a form of her own Christian name which she probably adopted in honour of Margaretta--or Meta--Klopstock, and by which she was well known to friends of her youth.

She often told us, too, of the origin of another of her accomplishments.

She was an exquisite caligraphist. Not only did she write the most beautiful and legible of handwritings, but, long before illuminating was "fas.h.i.+onable," she illuminated on vellum; not by filling up printed texts or copying ornamental letters from handbooks of the art, but in valiant emulation of ancient MSS.; designing her own initial letters, with all varieties of characters, with "strawberry" borders, and gold raised and burnished as in the old models. I do not know when she first saw specimens of the old illuminations, for which she had always the deepest admiration, but it was in a Dante fever that she had resolved to write beautifully, because fine penmans.h.i.+p had been among the accomplishments of the great Italian poet. How well she succeeded her friends and her printers knew to their comfort! To Dante she dedicated some of her best efforts in this art. In 1826, when she was seventeen, she began to translate the _Inferno_ into English verse. She made fair copies of each canto in exquisite writing, and dedicated them to various friends on covers which she illuminated. The most highly-finished was that dedicated to an old friend, Lord Tyrconnel, and the only plain one was the one dedicated to another friend, Sir Thomas Lawrence. The dedication was written in fine long characters, but there was no painting on the cover of the canto dedicated to the painter.

I do not know at what date my mother began to etch on copper. It was a very favourite pursuit through many years of her life, both before and after her marriage. She never sketched much in colour, but her pencil-drawings are amongst the most valuable legacies she has left us.

Trees were her favourite subjects. One of her most beautiful drawings in my possession is of a tree, marked to fall, beneath which she wrote:

"Das ist das Loos des Schonen auf der Erde."[2]

Of another talent nothing now remains to us but her old music-books and memories of long evenings when she played Weber and Mozart.

But to a large circle of friends, most of whom have gone before her, she was best known as a naturalist in the special department of phycology.

She has left a fine collection of British and foreign sea-weeds and zoophytes. Never permitted the privilege of foreign travel--for which she so often longed--her sea-spoils have been gathered from all sh.o.r.es by those who loved her; and there are sea-weeds yet in press sent by _Aunt Judy_ friends from Tasmania, which gave pleasure to the last days of her life. She did so keenly enjoy everything at which she worked that it is difficult to say in which of her hobbies she found most happiness; but I am disposed to give her natural history pursuits the palm.

Natural history brought her some of her dearest friends. Dr. Johnston, of Berwick-on-Tweed, to whom she dedicated the first volume of the _Parables from Nature_, was one of these; and with Dr. Harvey (author of the _Phycologia Britannica_, &c.) she corresponded for ten years before they met. Like herself, he combined a playful and poetical fancy with the scientific faculty, and they had sympathy together in the distinctive character of their religious belief, and in the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d in His works. But these, and many others, have "gone before."

One of her "collections" was an unusual one. Through nearly forty years she collected the mottoes on old sun-dials, and made sketches of the dials themselves. In this also she had many helpers, and the collection, which had swelled to about four hundred, was published last year.

Amateur bookbinding and mowing were among the more eccentric of her hobbies. With the latter she infected Mr. Tennyson, and sent him a light Scotch scythe like her own.

The secret of her success and of her happiness in her labours was her thoroughness. It was a family joke that in the garden she was never satisfied to dabble in her flower-beds like other people, but would always clear out what she called "the Irish corners," and attack bits of waste or neglected ground from which everybody else shrank. And amongst our neighbours in the village, those with whom, day after day, time after time, she would plead "the Lord's controversy," were those with whom every one else had failed. Some old village would-be sceptic, half shame-faced, half conceited, who had not prayed for half a lifetime, or been inside a church except at funerals; careworn mothers fossilized in the long neglect, of religious duties; sinners whom every one else thought hopeless, and who most-of all counted themselves so--if G.o.d indeed permits us hereafter to bless those who led us to Him here, how many of these will rise up and call her blessed!

Her strong powers of sympathy were not confined to human beings alone. A more devoted lover of "beasts" can hardly exist. The household pets were about her to the end; and she only laughed when the dogs stole the bread and b.u.t.ter from her helpless hands.

Her long illness, perhaps, did less to teach us to do without her, than long illnesses commonly do; because her sick-room was so little like a sick-room, and her interests never narrowed to the fretful circle of mere invalid fears and fancies. The strong sense of humour, which never left her, helped her through many a petty annoyance; and to the last she kept one of her most striking qualities, so well described by Trench--

---- "a child's pure delight in little things."

Whatever interest this little record of some of my mother's tastes and acquirements may have for her young readers, its value must be in her example.

Whatever genius she may have had, her industry was far more remarkable.