Out of the mass of evidence on this subject a
few examples may be selected.
Sir Henry Piers, in his _Description of Westmeath,_ writing in 1682
says: "On May-eve, every family sets up before their door a green
bush, strewed over with yellow flowers, which the meadows yield
plentifully. In countries where timber is plentiful, they erect tall
slender trees, which stand high, and they continue almost the whole
year; so as a stranger would go nigh to imagine that they were all
signs of ale-sellers, and that all houses were ale-houses." In
Northamptonshire a young tree ten or twelve feet high used to be
planted before each house on May Day so as to appear growing;
flowers were thrown over it and strewn about the door. "Among
ancient customs still retained by the Cornish, may be reckoned that
of decking their doors and porches on the first of May with green
boughs of sycamore and hawthorn, and of planting trees, or rather
stumps of trees, before their houses." In the north of England it
was formerly the custom for young people to rise a little after
midnight on the morning of the first of May, and go out with music
and the blowing of horns into the woods, where they broke branches
and adorned them with nosegays and crowns of flowers.
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