Lark Rise, Flora Thompson [most life changing books .TXT] 📗

>furnished unlimited greenery.

 

Piled on desks, table, and floor, this supply appeared inexhaustible;

but the garland was large, and as the work of dressing it proceeded, it

soon became plain that the present stock wouldn’t ‘hardly go nowheres’,

as the children said. So foraging parties were sent out, one to the

Rectory, another to Squire’s, and others to outlying farmhouses and

cottages. All returned loaded, for even the most miserly and

garden-proud gave liberally to the garland. In time the wooden frame was

covered, even if there had to be solid greenery to fill up at the back,

out of sight. Then the ‘Top-knot’, consisting of a bunch of crown

imperial, yellow and brown, was added to crown the whole, and the

fragrant, bowery structure was springled with water and set aside for

the night.

 

While the garland was being dressed, an older girl, perhaps the May

Queen herself, would be busy in a corner making the crown. This always

had to be a daisy crown; but, meadow daisies being considered too

common, and also possessing insufficient staying power, garden daisies,

white and red, were used, with a background of dark, glossy, evergreen

leaves.

 

The May Queen had been chosen weeks beforehand. She was supposed to be

either the prettiest or the most popular girl in the parish; but it was

more often a case of self-election by the strongest willed or of taking

turns: ‘You choose me this year and I’ll choose you next.’ However

elected, the queens had a strong resemblance to each other, being

stout-limbed, rosy-checked maidens of ten or eleven, with great manes of

dark hair frizzed out to support the crown becomingly.

 

The final touches were given the garland when the children assembled at

six o’clock on May Day morning. Then a large china doll in a blue frock

was brought forth from the depths of the school needlework chest and

arranged in a sitting position on a little ledge in the centre front of

the garland. This doll was known as ‘the lady’, and a doll of some kind

was considered essential. Even in those parishes where the garland had

degenerated into a shabby nosegay carried aloft at the top of a stick,

some dollish image was mixed in with the flowers. The attitude of the

children to the lady is interesting. It was understood that the garland

was her garland, carried in her honour. The lady must never be roughly

handled. If the garland turned turtle, as it was apt to do later in the

day, when the road was rough and the bearers were growing weary, the

first question was always, ‘Is the lady all right?’ (Is it possible that

the lady was once ‘Our Lady’, she having in her turn, perhaps, replaced

an earlier effigy of some pagan spirit of the newly decked earth?)

 

The lady comfortably settled in front of the garland, a large white

muslin veil or skirt, obviously borrowed from a Victorian

dressing-table, was draped over the whole to act as drop-scene and

sunshade combined. Then a broomstick was inserted between the hoops for

carrying purposes.

 

All the children in the parish between the ages of seven and eleven were

by this time assembled, those girls who possessed them wearing white or

light coloured frocks, irrespective of the temperature, and girls and

boys alike decked out with bright ribbon knots and bows and sashes,

those of the boys worn crosswise over one shoulder. The queen wore her

daisy crown with a white veil thrown over it, and the other girls who

could procure them also wore white veils. White gloves were traditional,

but could seldom be obtained. A pair would sometimes be found for the

queen, always many sizes too large; but the empty finger-ends came in

handy to suck in a bashful mood when, later on, the kissing began.

 

The procession then formed. It was as follows:

 

Boy with flag. Girl with money box.

THE GARLAND with two bearers.

King and queen.

Two maids of honour.

Lord and lady.

Two maids of honour.

Footman and footman’s lady.

Rank and file, walking in twos.

Girl known as ‘Mother’. Boy called ‘Ragman’.

 

The ‘Mother’ was one of the most dependable of the older girls, who was

made responsible for the behaviour of the garlanders. She carried a

large, old-fashioned, double-lidded marketing basket over her arm,

containing the lunches of the principal actors. The boy called ‘Ragman’

carried the coats, brought in case of rain, but seldom worn, even during

a shower, lest by their poverty and shabbiness they should disgrace the

festive attire.

 

The procession stepped out briskly. Mothers waved and implored their

offspring to behave well; some of the little ones left behind lifted up

their voices and wept; old people came to cottage gates and said that,

though well enough, this year’s procession was poor compared to some

they had seen. But the garlanders paid no heed; they had their feet on

the road at last and vowed they would not turn back now, ‘not if it

rained cats and dogs’.

 

The first stop was at the Rectory, where the garland was planted before

the front door and the shrill little voices struck up, shyly at first,

but gathering confidence as they went on:

 

A bunch of may I have brought you

And at your door it stands.

It is but a sprout, but It’s well put about

By the Lord Almighty’s hands.

 

God bless the master of this house

God bless the mistress too,

And all the little children

That round the table go.

 

And now I’ve sung my short little song

I must no longer stay.

God bless you all, both great and small,

And send you a happy May Day.

 

During the singing of this the Rector’s face, wearing its mildest

expression, and bedaubed with shaving lather, for it was only as yet

seven o’clock, would appear at an upper window and nod approval and

admiration of the garland. His daughter would be down and at the door,

and for her the veil was lifted and the glory of the garland revealed.

She would look, touch and smell, then slip a silver coin into the

money-box, and the procession would move on towards Squire’s.

 

There, the lady of the house would bow haughty approval and if there

were visiting grandchildren the lady would be detached from the garland

and held up to their nursery window to be admired. Then Squire himself

would appear in the stable doorway with a brace of sniffing, suspicious

spaniels at his heels. ‘How many are there of you?’ he would call.

‘Twenty-seven? Well, here’s a five-bob bit for you. Don’t quarrel over

it. Now let’s have a song.’

 

‘Not “A Bunch of May,”’ the girl called Mother would whisper, impressed

by the-five-shilling piece; ‘not that old-fashioned thing. Something

newer,’ and something newer, though still not very new, would be

selected. Perhaps it would be:

 

All hail gentle spring

With thy sunshine and showers,

And welcome the sweet buds

That burst in the bowers;

Again we rejoice as thy light step and free

Brings leaves to the woodland and flowers to the bee,

Bounding, bounding, bounding, bounding,

Joyful and gay,

Light and airy, like a fairy,

Come, come away.

 

Or it might be:

 

Come see our new garland, so green and so gay;

‘Tis the firstfruits of spring and the glory of May.

Here are cowslips and daisies and hyacinths blue,

Here are buttercups bright and anemones too.

 

During the singing of the latter song, as each flower was mentioned, a

specimen bloom would be pointed to in the garland. It was always a point

of honour to have at least one of each named in the several verses;

though the hawthorn was always a difficulty, for in the south midlands

May’s own flower seldom opens before the middle of that month. However,

there was always at least one knot of tight green flower buds.

 

After becoming duty had been paid to the Rectory and Big House, the

farmhouse and cottages were visited; then the little procession set out

along narrow, winding country roads, with tall hedges of blackthorn and

bursting leaf-buds on either side, to make its seven-mile circuit. In

those days there were no motors to dodge and there was very little other

traffic; just a farm cart here and there, or the baker’s white-tilted

van, or a governess car with nurses and children out for their airing.

Sometimes the garlanders would forsake the road for stiles and footpaths

across buttercup meadows, or go through parks and gardens to call at

some big house or secluded farmstead.

 

In the ordinary course, country children of that day seldom went beyond

their own parish bounds, and this long trek opened up new country to

most of them. There was a delightful element of exploration about it.

New short cuts would be tried, one year through a wood, another past the

fishponds, or across such and such a paddock, where there might, or

might not, be a bull. On one pond they passed sailed a solitary swan; on

the terrace before one mansion peacocks spread their tails in the sun;

the ram which pumped the water to one house mystified them with its

subterranean thudding. There were often showers, and to Laura, looking

back after fifty years, the whole scene would melt into a blur of wet

greenery, with rainbows and cuckoo-calls and, overpowering all other

impressions, the wet wallflower and primrose scent of the May garland.

 

Sometimes on the road a similar procession from another village came

into view; but never one with so magnificent a garland. Some of them,

indeed, had nothing worth calling a garland at all; only nosegays tied

mopwise on sticks. No lord and lady, no king and queen; only a rabble

begging with money-boxes. Were the Fordlow and Lark Rise folks sorry for

them? No. They stuck out their tongues, and, forgetting their pretty May

songs, yelled:

 

Old Hardwick skags!

Come to Fordlow to pick up rags

To mend their mothers’ pudding-bags,

Yah!Yah!

 

and the rival troop retaliated in the same strain.

 

At the front-door calls, the queen and her retinue stood demurely behind

the garland and helped with the singing, unless Her Majesty was called

forward to have her crown inspected and admired. It was at the back

doors of large houses that the fun began. In country houses at that date

troops of servants were kept, and the May Day procession would find the

courtyard crowded with housemaids and kitchen-maids, dairymaids and

laundry-maids, footmen, grooms, coachmen, and gardeners. The songs were

sung, the garland was admired; then, to a chorus of laughter, teasing

and urging, one Maid of Honour snatched the cap from the King’s head,

the other raised the Queen’s veil, and a shy, sheepish boy pecked at his

companion’s rosy cheek, to the huge delight of the beholders.

 

‘Again! Again!’ a dozen voices would cry and the kissing was repeated

until the royal couple turned sulky and refused to kiss any more, even

when offered a penny a kiss. Then the lord saluted his lady and the

footman the footman’s lady (this couple had probably been introduced in

compliment to such patrons), and the money-box was handed round and

began to grow heavy with pence.

 

The menservants, with their respectable side-whiskers, the maids in

their little flat caps like crocheted mats on their smoothly parted

hair, and their long, billowing lilac or pink print gowns, and the

children in their ribbon-decked poverty, alike belong to a bygone order

of things. The boys pulled forelocks and the girls dropped curtseys to

the upper servants, for they came next in importance to ‘the gentry’.

Some of them really belonged to a class which would not be found in

service to-day; for at that time