And in the wood, a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
To do observance to a morn of May,
There will I stay for thee."

And Theseus says (iv. 1):

"No doubt they rose up early to observe
The rite of May."[656]

[656] Cf. "Twelfth Night" (iii. 4): "More matter for a May morning."

In the "Two Noble Kinsmen" (ii. 3), one of the four countrymen asks: "Do
we all hold against the Maying?"

In Chaucer's "Court of Love" we read that early on May day "Fourth goth
al the Court, both most and lest, to fetche the flowris fresh and
blome." In the reign of Henry VIII. it is on record that the heads of
the corporation of London went out into the high grounds of Kent to
gather the May, and were met on Shooter's Hill by the king and his
queen, Katherine of Arragon, as they were coming from the palace of
Greenwich. Until within a comparatively recent period, this custom still
lingered in some of the counties. Thus, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the
following doggerel was sung:

"Rise up, maidens, fie for shame!
For I've been four long miles from hame,
I've been gathering my garlands gay,
Rise up, fair maidens, and take in your May."

Many of the ballads sung nowadays, in country places, by the village
children, on May morning, as they carry their garlands from door to
door, undoubtedly refer to the old practice of going a-Maying, although
fallen into disuse.

In olden times nearly every village had its May-pole, around which,
decorated with wreaths of flowers, ribbons, and flags, our merry
ancestors danced from morning till night. The earliest representation of
an English May-pole is that published in the "Variorum Shakespeare," and
depicted on a window at Betley, in Staffordshire, then the property of
Mr. Tollet, and which he was disposed to think as old as the time of
Henry VIII. The pole is planted in a mound of earth, and has affixed to
it St. George's red-cross banner and a white pennon or streamer with a
forked end. The shaft of the pole is painted in a diagonal line of black
colors upon a yellow ground, a characteristic decoration of all these
ancient May-poles, as alluded to by Shakespeare in "A Midsummer-Night's
Dream" (iii. 2), where it gives point to Hermia's allusion to her rival
Helena as "a painted May-pole."[657] The popularity of the May-pole in
former centuries is shown by the fact that one of our London parishes,
St. Andrew Undershaft, deri