This mention of the May-pole struck my attention, and I inquired whether the old customs connected with it were really kept up in this part of the country.  The Squire shook his head mournfully; and I found I had touched on one of his tender points, for he grew quite melancholy in bewailing the total decline of old May-day.  Though it is regularly celebrated in the neighbouring village, yet it has been merely resuscitated by the worthy Squire, and is kept up in a forced state of existence at his expense.  He meets with continual discouragements; and finds great difficulty in getting the country bumpkins to play their parts tolerably.  He manages to have every year a “Queen of the May;” but as to Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, the Dragon, the Hobby-Horse, and all the other motley crew that used to enliven the day with their mummery, he has not ventured to introduce them.

Still I looked forward with some interest to the promised shadow of old May-day, even though it be but a shadow; and I feel more and more pleased with the whimsical yet harmless hobby of my host, which is surrounding him with agreeable associations, and making a little world of poetry about him.  Brought up, as I have been, in a new country, I may appreciate too highly the faint vestiges of ancient customs which I now and then meet with, and the interest I express in them may provoke a smile from those who are negligently suffering them to pass away.  But with whatever indifference they may be regarded by those “to the manner born,” yet in my mind the lingering flavour of them imparts a charm to rustic life, which nothing else could readily supply.

I shall never forget the delight I felt on first seeing a May-pole.  It was on the banks of the Dee, close by the picturesque old bridge that stretches across the river from the quaint little city of Chester.  I had already been carried back into former days, by the antiquities of that venerable place; the examination of which is equal to turning over the pages of a black-letter volume, or gazing on the pictures in Froissart.  The May-pole on the margin of that poetic stream completed the illusion.  My fancy adorned it with wreaths of flowers, and peopled the green bank with all the dancing revelry of May-day.  The mere sight of this May-pole gave a glow to my feelings, and spread a charm over the country for the rest of the day; and as I traversed a part of the fair plain of Cheshire, and the beautiful borders of Wales, and looked from among swelling hills down a long green valley, through which “the Deva wound its wizard stream,” my imagination turned all into a perfect Arcadia.