The spring has dawned with all its brightness and beauty; the
nightingale's song is heard, and all nature seems to rejoice in the
sweet spring-time. Our forefathers delighted, too, in the advent of
the bright month of May, which the old poets used to compare to a
maiden clothed in sunshine dancing to the music of birds and brooks;
and May Day was the great rural festival of the year.

Long before the break of day, men and women, old and young, of all
classes, used to assemble and hurry away to the woods and groves to
gather the blooming hawthorn and spring flowers, and laden with
their spoils returned when the sun rose, with merry shouts and
horn-blowings, and adorned every door and window in the village. The
poet Herrick sings of this pleasant beginning to the day's
festivities. Addressing a maiden named Corinna, he says--

"Come, my Corinna, come, and coming mark
How each field turns a street, and each street a park,
Made green and trimmed with trees; see how
Devotion gives each house a bough
Or branch; each porch, each door, ere this
An ark, a tabernacle is
Made up of white-thorn neatly interwove."

The men blew cow-horns to usher in the spring, and the maids carried
garlands to hang them in the churches; while at Oxford the
choristers of Magdalen College assemble at the top of the tower at
early dawn, and sing hymns of thankfulness because spring has come
again. This pleasing custom is still observed every year on the
first of May.