This Morris dance is supposed to have been brought in early times from Spain, where the Moors danced it, and where it still survives as the “fandango.”

All this May-day merriment came to an end when our grim Puritan fathers had power in England.  Dancing around the May-pole looked to them like heathen adoration of an idol.  Parliament made a law against it, and all the May-poles in the island were laid in the dust.  The common people had their turn, when, a few years later, under a new king, the prohibitory law was repealed and a new May-pole, the highest ever in England (one hundred and thirty-four feet), was set up in the Strand, London, with great pomp.  But the English people were fast outgrowing the sport, and the customs have been dying out ever since.  Now, a very few May-poles in obscure villages are all that can be found.

Though May-pole and Morris dancing were the most common, there were other curious customs in different parts of the kingdom.  In one place, the Mayers went out very early to the woods, and gathering green boughs, decorated every door with one.  A house containing a sweetheart had a branch of birch, the door of a scold was disgraced with alder, and a slatternly person had the mortification to find a branch of a nut-tree at hers, while the young people who overslept found their doors closed by a nail over the latch.

In other places, wreaths were made on hoops, with a gayly dressed doll in the middle of each, and carried about by girls, the little owners singing a ballad which had been sung since the time of Queen Bess,—­and expecting a shower of pennies, of course.

In Dublin, the youths decorated a bush, four or five feet high, with candles, which they lighted and danced around till burnt out.  They then lighted a huge bonfire, threw the bush on it, and continued their dance around that.  In other parts of Ireland, the boys had a mischievous habit of running through the streets with bundles of nettles, with which they struck the face and hands of every one they met.  The sting of nettle, perhaps you know, is a very uncomfortable pain.  The same people are very superstitious, and they believed that the power of the Evil Eye was greater on the first of May than at any other time; and they insured a good supply of milk for the year by putting a green bough against the house, which is certainly an easy way.  In old times, the Druids drove all the cattle through the fire, to keep them from diseases, and this custom still survives in parts of Ireland, where many a peasant who owns a cow and a bit of straw is careful to do the same.