ay seems to have been known by the name of
Furry Day. Perhaps a corruption of "Flora's Day." People wore hawthorn
in their hats, and danced hand-in-hand through the town to the sound of
a fiddle. This particular performance was known as a "faddy."

It is probable that some of our May-day customs came from the Romans,
who kept the festival of Flora, the goddess of flowers, at this season.
Others, perhaps, have a different, if not an older source. One custom
was certainly common to both nations. When the feast of Flora was
celebrated, the young Romans went into the woods and brought back green
boughs with which they decked the houses.

To "go a-Maying" is in fact the principal ceremony of the day wherever
kept, and for whatever reason. In the north of England children and
young folk "were wont to rise a little after midnight on the morning of
May-day, and walk to some neighbouring wood accompanied with music and
the blowing of horns, where they broke down branches from the trees, and
adorned them with nosegays and crowns of flowers. This done, they
returned homewards with their booty about the time of sunrise, and made
their doors and windows triumph in the flowery spoil." Stubbs, in the
_Anatomie of Abuses_ (A.D. 1585), speaks of this custom as
common to "every parish, town, and village." The churches, as well as
the houses, seem in some places to have been dressed with flowers and
greenery.

In an old MS. of the sixteenth century it is said that on the feast of
SS. Philip and James, the Eton boys were allowed to go out at four
o'clock in the morning to gather May to dress their rooms, and sweet
herbs to perfume them, "if they can do it without wetting their feet!"

Thirty or forty years ago May-day decorations, in some country places,
consisted of strewing the cottage doorsteps with daisies, or other
flowers.

In Hertfordshire a curious custom obtained of decking the neighbours'
doors with May if they were popular, and with nettles if they were the
reverse.

In Lancashire rustic wags put boughs of various trees at the doors of
the girls of the neighbourhood. Each tree had a meaning (well known in
the district), sometimes complimentary, and sometimes the reverse.

In France it was customary for lovers to deck over-night the houses of
the ladies they wished to please, and school-boys paid a like compliment
to their masters. They do not seem, however, to have been satisfied with
nosegays or even with green branches